Publishing early this week because, let’s face it, by Wednesday, who’s going to be around?
● The New Jersey Monitor reports that the state Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors cannot simply assume that if a child dies of otherwise unexplained head trauma with a particular set of symptoms, it’s so-called “Shaken Baby Syndrome” and then claim it proves the child died of abuse. The widely-questioned “syndrome” (so widely-questioned that proponents slapped a new name onto it: “abusive head trauma”) has been abused by some doctors and family police agencies, who rush to blame abuse and rule out any other explanation. From the story:
Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis, in a lengthy majority decision that five other justices joined, said the syndrome has not been generally accepted in the biomechanical community, making expert testimony about it unreliable and inadmissible in court. … “Regardless of the severity or viciousness of a crime … Thursday’s decision affirms lower court rulings that had declared shaken baby syndrome “junk science.”
● But are there also times when medical experts will do amazing rhetorical handstands to avoid labeling what happened to a child as abuse, and come up with other explanations, no matter how implausible? Of course! Provided those under suspicion are foster or adoptive parents. Honolulu Civil Beat has a case in point.
● A stunning expose from the Arizona Republic: A group home operator gave $400,000 in campaign contributions to the governor. Shortly thereafter, that operator got a 30% rate increase. The state family police agency says the two are entirely unrelated. But the agency’s explanation is nearly as bad. I have a blog post about it.
● Arizona claimed they had to give that big increase because of a supposed shortage of foster homes. But when a desperate family, finding no place else to turn for help with their severely autistic son, turned to the state family police agency, the agency then refused to give the child back – for years. KNXV-TV reports that the family just won a big lawsuit. Bad as their ordeal was, at least it didn’t end the way it did for a Baltimore family in a similar situation.
● The Imprint reports on Keeping Families Connected Minnesota, “launched in early October, [that] provides free or low-cost consultation and representation to kinship caregivers.”
● It’s not just kin who often can’t get legal help. WTVT in Tampa reports on the plight of foster children who have no one to fight in court for what they actually want. That’s because, unlike in some other states, they don’t get a lawyer. And, though the story doesn’t mention it, the biggest obstacle to changing that is, of course, the Florida CASA program, something we wrote about in 2019.
● The New Yorker reports on a key problem with the Trump Administration’s so-called “fostering the future” initiative – and how it has a familiar ring.
● We’ve published our annual call on the child welfare establishment to stop those obscene celebrations of family executions.
