News and commentary from the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
concerning child abuse, child welfare, foster care, and family preservation.
● The
Nation zeroed in on one key part of the problem: families destroyed because parents can’t afford
adequate housing. The story focuses on Missouri, where the problem is
particularly acute and getting worse still, thanks to the horrifying approach taken by the new head of that state’s family police
agency.
● The Nation didn’t stop with what was wrong; they turned to places that are doing better: three counties in
Wisconsin working to reduce needless removals because of housing. The story also cuts through the hype
about the so-called Family First Act, pointing out that, particularly when it
comes to providing families with the concrete help they really need, “Families
First Act funding comes with so many strings attached it’s nearly impossible to
use.”
● Hearst Connecticut Media did a superb job exposing the problem in one of
the richest states in America.
Back in Missouri, the Missouri Independent did stellar
work:
● The cruelty of the family police agency in that state
is apparent in this outstanding story from
the Missouri Independent. It is a story about a family that, through
enormous will and determination, marshaled meager resources to weave a safety
net – only to have the family police come in, over and over, and rip it apart.
It is a story as beautifully written as it is scrupulously reported.
● Still, as this
follow-up story makes clear, you’ve got to
give the Missouri agency credit for this much: They united all sides in the
abortion debate – everyone thinks the behavior of the family police agency in
this case stinks. The story also includes NCCPR’s perspective and that of Prof.
Kelley Fong, author of the landmark study Investigating
Families.
● But it’s not just one case. In another example, the family police agency found all the allegations against
Megan Knight to be unfounded. She even passed a background check to care for
foster children in residential treatment. But her own children are still in
foster care. That’s what can happen when families are literally
defense-less.
As the Independent reports, indigent parents in Missouri are not guaranteed an
attorney at all – and when they get one, they’re often far too overloaded to do
much of anything. Here’s what that means in the case of Ms. Knight:
Her four-year-old daughter has been moved seven times
since she was taken into foster care in April 2022. Knight said she’s developed
behavioral issues Knight attributes to the trauma of separation and being
tossed around from home to home.
“When I was able to see her, she would always beg the
caseworker, ‘Please, let me go home to my mom,’” she said.
Now, her daughter is in care with a foster family and
Knight doesn’t know where in Missouri they are or who the family is. Two of her
kids are in another stranger’s home.
Part one of NCCPR’s news and commentary year in review for 2025
Part two, on this blog tomorrow, looks
at some of 2025’s finest journalism exploring wrongful removal and other harms
to children caused by our current system of family policing.
America’s massive child
welfare surveillance state was built on horror stories. Stories
about children murdered or tortured in their own homes stampeded us into
building a gigantic system that destroys children in the name of saving them.
This approach has torn apart millions of families needlessly. It’s also so
overloaded the system that workers have no time to find the few children in
real danger.
A system that attempts
to make policy-by-horror-story makes all children less safe. That’s why
we’ve long extended an offer to the fearmongers in the child welfare
establishment: a mutual moratorium on using horror stories to "prove” anything.
We can do that because
we have actual evidence that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, family
preservation is not only more humane than foster care or massive
surveillance, it’s also safer. But
the fearmongers will never give up their horror stories because horror stories
are all they’ve got.
That’s why we’ve taken
to reminding people that the horror stories go in all directions. And
when it comes to the high rate of abuse in foster homes, group homes, and
institutions, the horror stories are backed up by study after study showing the rates of abuse in those settings are
appalling.
● You know how family police agency workers often claim they can’t
throw children into foster care entirely on their own? Check out this story in The Imprint
that makes clear, once and for all: Most of the time, they’re lying.
A former
University of Minnesota pediatrician filed a federal lawsuit against the
university, its associated medical groups and several doctors on Friday,
claiming his June 2023 termination was retaliation for exposing a fraudulent
scheme to maximize child abuse prosecutions.
Dr. Bazak Sharon
accuses the defendants — including the University of Minnesota’s governing
board and child abuse specialist Dr. Nancy Sanders Harper, among others — of
civil rights violations and racketeering.
Sharon, who
served at the university for 17 years, says the scheme was intended to maximize
the identification and prosecution of child abuse cases to secure funding and
increase the prestige of the university’s child abuse fellowship program.
● In Lucas County,
Ohio (metropolitan Toledo) the family police agency is blaming the federal
Family First Act for the fact that residential treatment centers are jacking up
rates so the county has to spend more money (because it’s not like you could
actually stop dumping all those children into institutions, right)? As I
explain in a letter to the Toledo Blade
(subscription required) the real problem is the agency’s own lack of guts and
imagination.
In this week’s
edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions:
The family of a
girl who was repeatedly raped at a Springfield group home when she was 14 years
old sued the state Thursday, alleging state agencies failed to protect her from
terrible conditions at the facility.
The city and
county of San Diego, along with two private entities, have agreed to legal
settlements totaling more than $31 million in the death of an 11-year-old
Spring Valley girl. The settlements resolve a lawsuit brought on behalf of
Arabella McCormack’s two younger sisters. All three girls were allegedly abused
by their adoptive parents and grandparents.
Mom says
daughter was forced to fight another child in Las Vegas group home; state
revokes licenses
The state of
Nevada revoked the licenses of four group homes for children and teens after
several reports by the 8 News Now Investigators.
Nevada Health
Authority’s Health Care Purchasing and Compliance Division sent notices of
revocation to four psychiatric residential treatment facilities operated by
Moriah Behavioral Health, also known as Ignite Teen and Eden Treatment, on Dec.
11, citing safety concerns, a lack of cooperation from the business and a lack
of compliance with state and federal laws.
More than 20 years ago, the journal of the Child Welfare
League of America devoted an entire issue to the problem of children removed to
foster care or trapped there because their families didn’t have adequate
housing. The issue noted that three separate studies found that at least 30% of
foster children could be home right now if their families had adequate housing.
A fourth was even more disturbing. If found that child
protective caseworkers were, to use one of their own favorite phrases, in
denial, concerning the extent of the problem. The study found that workers “may
tend to ignore housing as a problem rather than deal with the cognitive
dissonance caused by the recognition that they cannot help their clients with
this important need.”
Perhaps that’s why, in the Current’s stories on this issue,
while I read comment after comment about how it might be a “filthy house” that
may lack heat or air conditioning and may have “toddlers crawling around the
floor,” never once was such a comment followed by “so we sent in a cleaning
crew” or, “so we bought them an air conditioner.” After all, what would be the
point if the “real” problem is mental illness or substance abuse? ...
The
increased costs facing Lucas County Children Services are not the fault of a
federal law or state stinginess. They’re the fault of the county’s own lack of
guts and imagination. ...
● I’m not sure how
to talk about this first item without sounding all clickbaity, but what
happened in a New York appellate court late last week really did play out
almost like the climactic scene in a Hollywood movie. It was oral argument in
the latest in a string of cases concerning the New York City family police
agency harassing survivors of domestic violence and their children. Fortunately, it’s all on video. I have a blog post about the case,
with a link to the video.
● New York State’s
highest court is sending a similar message. I’ve often written that, in much of
the country, families would get about as much “representation” from a cardboard
cut-out in a three-piece suit as they get from the overloaded court-appointed
lawyers who may meet them for the first time five minutes before the court
hearing. That can happen even when it’s a hearing to terminate children’s
rights to their parents (a more accurate description of the stakes than “termination
of parental rights”). The Imprint reports on a case
in which the New York State Court of Appeals said that’s not good enough.
Perhaps most
notably, when a lawyer defending the termination tried to play the bonding card,
the court didn’t buy it. From the story:
“There is no
question that it is very important and imperative that these cases be resolved
in a speedy fashion,” [Judge] Troutman said during the appeal proceedings. “But
we cannot throw the Constitution in the garbage with respect to people’s rights
in order to get there.”
● One hopes the
message all these judges are sending will reach all across the nation, or at
least across New York, including to Rochester, where, writing in the Rochester Beacon,
a mother describes what happened when she fought for a better education for her
son, and the school retaliated by calling the family police agency:
As a Black
parent, I do not feel safe asking for the support I need. I fear I will be met
with accusations and racialized surveillance. For Jeremiah, he becomes very
anxious when asked personal questions—especially from those in authority
positions. He fears threats of being removed from his environment. The reality
is, we were both traumatized by our interactions with CPS.
● Study after study
keeps showing that, in typical cases, children left in their own homes fare
better even than children alleged to be comparably maltreated but placed in
foster care.Most recently, there was
that Swedish study showing that, by age 20, the foster children were more than
four times more likely to have died. But there’s an even more fundamental
question: Why have we allowed foster-care apologists to reverse the burden of
proof? My column in The Imprint: Safer
Compared to What? Foster care apologists set an incredibly low bar — and still
can’t clear it
Now,
thanks to excellent reporting from The Marshall Project – Cleveland, add Ohio. In the follow-up story, in which various officials shoveling
children into the institution tell us how shocked – shocked! -- they are, a
spokesperson for metropolitan Cleveland says that now, after all the abuse has
been exposed, and they need to find someplace to put all those children,
“reunification also is a priority.”
In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories go in All
Directions:
In 2003, Dewey Sloan, then the chief juvenile
prosecutor in an Iowa county where Native American children were in foster care
at a rate seven times higher than the rate for white children told
the Des Moines Register, "I don't think there's
anything in any of these cases that points to something positive about Indian
culture, except the culture of drugs and the culture of poverty and the culture
of abuse."
Five years later, the
Iowa Capital Dispatch reports, Sloan’s office got a judge to
terminate the rights of a family of Native American children to live with their
mother. Here’s what happened next, according to a lawsuit filed by one of the
children, now an adult:
In 2009, when [Mikalla Starr] Winkel was 4 years old, she
and two of her siblings were placed in the foster home of Norman and Cammie
Winkel of Sioux City – a couple who had no connection to the Santee Sioux
Nation or any other Native American community.
According to the lawsuit, at the time of the foster-home
placement Norman Winkel was a former prison inmate who “had an extensive
drug-related criminal history with five drug convictions, including a felony
for which he received a 25-year prison sentence.”
In 2010, Winkel was legally adopted by the couple. The
lawsuit alleges that while Mikalla lived in the home, Norman Winkel “began to
exhibit grooming behaviors toward Mikalla,” and then, as she matured, the
“grooming escalated to sexual assault, including fondling, mutual touching, and
sexual assault in the foster home.” The alleged sexual abuse “continued for
multiple years,” according to the lawsuit.
A recent study in Sweden followed children in more than
21,000 cases of child abuse or neglect allegations. Part of the sample went to
foster care, the others were allowed to stay in their homes.
It found that though the two groups were no worse off to
begin with, by age 20, the foster children were more than four times more
likely to have died than the children allowed to stay with their families.
We’re not talking about a small difference: the study finds that if a child
facing the prospect of being taken into care is indeed removed from their home,
the risk of dying by the year they turn 20 increases from 1.8% to 8.6%. ...
That’s just one of the choice words appellate court
justices applied to the behavior of the New York City family police agency during
oral argument last week.
Imagine being 11 years old. You’ve moved with your brother
and your mother to a new state to start a new life in a new school. Suddenly,
armed sheriff’s deputies are marching through the halls, calling out your name.
When they find you, all your new friends can see as they bring you to a
semi-public place to interrogate you.
Now imagine it’s Christmas morning. You’re at home
celebrating, family are visiting. Suddenly the armed sheriff’s deputies are
back, pounding on the door, loudly calling out that they’re there because there’s
a child welfare agency case against your mother.They demand entry, “observe” you and your
brother and search the entire apartment, all in front of the guests.
Of course, it’s all ok because a “child welfare” agency
would only do this when parents are accused of beating or raping children,
right?Well, OK, maybe they’d also do it
if parents were accused of starving children, or running a drug lab in a
basement, right?But they’d never, ever
inflict so much trauma on children whose parents were accused of doing nothing
to them at all – would they?
Of course they would. It’s the sort of thing that happens
all the time. But last week, in a scene that played out like the climax of a
courtroom drama, one mid-level appellate court judge pledged that, at last, in one
state, in at least one type of case, it will no longer be tolerated. She called
the behavior of the agency in question, New York City’s Administration for
Children’s Services (ACS), “despicable.”
The
issue here is that this woman has done nothing wrong, but she's being treated
like a criminal, and her children are being retraumatized again and again.
That's the issue here, and that's going to be put to a stop!
You can see it all in the video above of oral argument in the
case, known as Matter of Liam M. The argument starts at 2:22:22 in.If you follow this link it goes a little past that, to 2:38:00. That's the point where, at long last, an agency which
normally is accountable to no one, finally is held to account for what it has
done to so many children.
Lawyers sometimes refer to judges who ask a lot of questions
as a “hot bench.” This one was on fire. That requires some explanation.
The context
More
than 20 years ago, a federal court barred ACS from tearing apart families
and throwing children into foster care just because a parent, usually the
mother, was herself a survivor of domestic violence. New York’s highest court,
the Court of Appeals, effectively extended that statewide. (NCCPR’s Vice
President, Carolyn Kubitschek, was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in that
landmark case, which has been cited scores of times across the country in the
intervening years.)
Of course this didn’t stop the practice completely, but it
curbed it. But the response from ACS could be summed up as: Oh yeah? Maybe we
can’t take the kids, but we can still harass families with endless supervision
and surveillance as much as we want!
Two recent appellate court decisions stopped
ACS from doing this at an early stage in the process. To which ACS
effectively responded: Oh yeah? Maybe you can stop us early on, but we can
still harass families with endless supervision and surveillance at later stages
in the case!
That brings us to the case argued last week.
The facts of the case
What might prompt such questioning from the justices?
The family is from Florida. They moved to New York to be
close to the children’s grandmother, who was suffering from cancer. They moved
to a New York home that the mother owned with her ex-husband. On one occasion,
the ex got violent with her in front of the children. The mother did everything
right, immediately calling the police and then getting all the court orders she
needed to kick the father out of the house and keep him out. He followed those
orders to the letter.
The father consented to a finding of neglect against him.
The mother was never charged with anything, and, indeed, ACS records repeatedly
attest to the fact that she took excellent care of the children.Eventually, she and the children moved back
to Florida. So any supposed “threat” from the father was now 1,300 miles away.
But through it all, ACS repeatedly demanded that the mother
and the children be under their surveillance and control, and the Family Court
repeatedly rubber-stamped those requests. The only grounds ever given for this
surveillance: the father had not yet jumped through all the hoops in his case
plan.
Here’s what this did to the family:
ACS
monitored Ms. C.’s care of her children for more than five months, conducting
numerous announced and unannounced searches of her home, from which the
respondent father remained judicially barred. Caseworkers searched every room
in the apartment during every home search. They even repeatedly inspected
inside the refrigerator.
I keep wondering: Did ACS think the father was hiding in the
fridge?
When ACS said, “Jump!” the family immediately had to say,
“How high?” If they weren’t home when the caseworker was at the door, they had
to drop everything and race back there – even when they were visiting their
grandmother, sick with cancer.
When the family moved back to Florida, things actually got
worse. ACS went high-tech, demanding the right to virtually enter the home at
any time and surveil every room (and, yes, the refrigerator again) by video.
But that wasn’t enough for them. They recruited armed Florida sheriffs to inspect
the family in person, and not just at home. As the children’s lawyer told the
court, and the brief explains, one of the children
was at
school with her new schoolmates, and these unformed people with guns come, like,
running into the school, calling out her name and saying they're there on
behalf of ACS. They take her out of class. They interview her in a quasi-public
space. Kids she wanted to be friends with saw.
She
began “shaking and crying with embarrassment and rage” and “yelling at the
sheriffs to leave her alone.”
She
was so humiliated and mortified, her mother had to come to school to take her
off campus. She couldn't even calm down. She was so upset.
And
after that, it was hard for her to even come back to school. But when she did
come back … she started having problems that she had never had before. She
started having behavioral problems. She started getting in fights. …
She's
finally doing better now, but it took a while. It took a really long time.
And then, two months later, this happened:
On
Christmas morning, ACS sent armed sheriffs to Ms. C.’s apartment. In public
outside the apartment building, the sheriffs loudly announced that they were
there because of a children’s services case against Ms. C. and demanded to see
her children. The sheriffs observed Liam and Sari and searched the apartment.
Ms. C. had family over for the holiday and testified that the law enforcement
search was “humiliating.”…
Ms. C.
felt “constantly threatened” that she would lose her children if she did not
comply, a possibility that kept her awake at night. As she explained, “I [felt]
like I left one abuser for another. …ACS use[d] methods of control, including sending sheriffs to my
apartment, to remind me that they’re in charge.”
[The
children] felt “watched and controlled” by ACS, and were “embarrassed and
frightened” by sheriffs demanding to see them at school and at home … They
implored the caseworker directly: “we don’t want to talk to you, don’t call
us.”
Even a family court judge overseeing the case said:
“[I]t
bothers me that ACS reached out to the Florida law enforcement authorities that
put [Ms. C.] and her children through . . . these embarrassing ordeals.”
But the judge let ACS keep on doing it anyway.
Now, however, some appellate justices are making clear
they’re not going to tolerate such “despicable” behavior.
● Another example
of the journalism of child welfare at its best: From CT Mirror: A project that involved reporting over two
years, revealing how the “child welfare” system fails on so many levels and
leaves so much heartbreak in its wake. We’re pleased to have NCCPR’s
perspective included.
● Having exposed the
terrible harm done to children when they are torn from their parents because
those families lack adequate housing (and how it’s clear the leadership in the
family police agency in Missouri is just fine with that), The Nation turns now
to places that are doing better: three counties in Wisconsin.
The story also cuts
through the hype about the so-called Family First Act, pointing out that,
particularly when it comes to providing families with the concrete help they
really need, “Families First Act funding comes with so many strings attached
it’s nearly impossible to use.”
● Yes, again:
Another lawsuit against child abuse pediatricians. This time, the IndyStar reports
on a case from Indiana.
● While in Georgia,
WXIA-TV reports
on child abuse pediatricians resisting reform.
● And in Psychology Today,
a pediatrician with decades of experience reviewing suspected child abuse cases
says she has observed
a troubling
pattern: many allegations arise not from actual abuse or neglect, but from
misinterpreted childhood injuries or medical conditions. When these events are
viewed through socioeconomic bias, parents can experience intense stress, fear,
and trauma while navigating everyday challenges and worrying that ordinary
accidents might be mistaken for abuse or neglect.
● In The Imprint,
Jessica Castillo writes this about her experience in foster care:
I was placed in
foster care right after turning 12. I was in five foster homes, adopted at 16,
and kicked out at 17, resulting in a brief period of homelessness. During my
time in foster care, I experienced abuse in all of my placements, the third
being the worst. … I remember her telling me and my foster sisters, “You think
your social workers will believe you? I’ve been a foster parent for over 20
years, and I’m very good friends with the supervisors at DCFS. If you have a
problem with me, they’ll just move you somewhere else, and good riddance.” …There wasn’t a single day in foster care
where I felt peace and safety.
● Massachusetts has
a committee to nominate candidates to be the state’s next “Child Advocate.” I’ve posted my statement to the committee,
which discusses not only the criteria for the person who should get the job but
also the urgent need to restructure the entire office. (And it applies to
almost every such office in the country.)
● There’s still
another study out documenting the transformative power of cash in reducing
child abuse and neglect, this time from Flint, Michigan.
● And finally,
here’s something I never thought I’d write: Check out the op-ed from the Trump
Administration’s highest-ranking child welfare official – in The Daily Signal.And see also this research report
from the America First Policy Institute. (No, I don’t agree with all of either of these,
but a lot seems headed in the right direction.)
Their car was
pulled over for driving with “dark tint and traveling in the left lane while
not actively passing.” Then, a police officer found five grams of marijuana in
the car, a misdemeanor in Tennessee.
It was reason
enough for someone to call the Tennessee family police. They took away the
children, “ages 7, 5, 3, 2 and a nursing four-month-old baby.” They were split among
three foster homes before ultimately being placied with a family friend. It was
nearly two months before the family was reunited.
Let us now compare
this case to one that just turned up in Georgia. In that case, if police
allegations are correct, the offenses are quite different, but so is the
complexion, and the political status of the driver. As this impressively thorough story in The
Imprint reports:
Jason Broce was
arrested Oct. 16 north of Atlanta on six misdemeanor charges after allegedly
getting into an accident with another vehicle and fleeing the scene in his
F-150 truck. The charges included driving under the influence, hit and run, and
two counts of child endangerment, according to a police report obtained by The
Imprint.
The child
endangerment charges stem from the fact that Broce’s two children, ages 8 and
5, were in the car with him. (“Hit and run” apparently refers to hitting the car and fleeing the scene, there is no charge that Broce hit a person.)
UPDATE: How drunk was he alleged to be?
"The [arrest] report
describes the father as being so intoxicated that when stopped by a Georgia
State Patrol trooper, he put his Ford F-150 in reverse and nearly struck the
patrol car. Then he "nearly fell over" when instructed to walk to the
trooper's car, with the trooper considering him too unsteady to conduct a field
sobriety test. The report lists his blood alcohol content as 0.333 – well above
the legal limit of 0.08%."
But Jason’s
children did not spend so much as a minute in foster care. And, to be clear,
that is as it should be.
As far as we know, Jason
wasn’t even ordered to stay out of the house while the case is investigated –
if there is an investigation. Again, as it should be.
Jason, as you’ve
almost certainly figured out, is white. He’s also a prominent lobbyist and
former campaign policy advisor to the governor.
And what about his
wife? After all, might there be “failure to protect” issues here? The Imprint
story cites “Amber Walden, a Georgia attorney who specializes in child
welfare cases. …
Walden said the
child welfare agency and judges often question the other parent about where
they were at the time of the incident, what they knew, and why they allowed an
intoxicated parent to drive with the kids.
“It would have
been like, ‘Where was the mother?’” she said. “Somebody would have had to give
a really good reason as to why this happened. Judges and [the state child
welfare agency] are just known for saying out of an abundance of caution,
‘We’re going to keep this case open.’”
Again, no
indication any of this happened – again, as it should be. There is no reason to
harass a non-offending parent and add stress for the entire family.So it’s a good thing they didn’t do it -in
this case.
In fact, there is
no indication the police ever even called the child welfare agency. Again, from
the story:
It remains
unclear whether the state child welfare agency is investigating the Jason Broce
incident. Law enforcement personnel are mandated reporters of suspected child
abuse and neglect under state law. But Crystal Zion, a spokesperson for the
arresting agency, the Georgia State Patrol, said in an email that the
responding officer did not “directly” notify CPS on the scene.
Instead, it seems
someone simply called Broce’s wife and “a sergeant waited for her to arrive at
the arrest scene, where she picked up her children and the truck.”
Oh, wait. Perhaps
that’s what the Georgia State Patrol spokesperson means by not calling CPS directly.
Because Broce’s wife is Candice
Broce, who is both commissioner of Georgia’s Department of Human Services and
director of its Division of Family and Children Services. That's the agency that's been cutting services to keep families together and dealing with a scandal over a child abuse pediatrician, and a the scandal over false positive drug tests.
UPDATE: It's still not clear what the police did, but ...
"State Patrol
spokeswoman Capt. Crystal Zion added that 'consistent with state-wide law
enforcement handling, the arrest eliminated any imminent danger to the
children, thereby satisfying the intent, purpose, and spirit of Georgia
law.'"
What a commendable approach! If there's no imminent danger mandated reporters apparently are not mandated to report! I wonder if the same standard is applied to poor Black families - nah, I really don't wonder.
Again, the light
touch response here is correct. The odds that the children would be harmed by foster
care are vastly greater than the odds that Jason is going to go out driving
with the children again when, it is alleged, he’s had too much to drink or that
his wife won’t be watching closely whenever he has the car keys – assuming he
keeps his license. (The right punishment for Jason, if guilty, is dependent on
much we don’t know, including whether this would be a first offense.)
If only that same
standard were applied to all the poor and nonwhite families who are stopped by
police for the same reason, or for far, far less.
At a minimum, I
hope the experience might prompt Candice Broce to do some serious thinking
about how her agency deals with issues of alleged drug or alcohol abuse by
parents.
It reminds me of
that case involving the “druggie mom” who used to live in my
neighborhood -- The one who was addicted to prescription
opioids, and was an alcoholic and had mental illness issues, but who never
faced so much as a knock at the door from child protective services.That’s because this “druggie mom” – Betty Ford
-- had the money to get help and to be sure her drug use didn’t hurt her
children.
So just as I’ve
suggested we apply the Betty Ford standard to drug use by parents, let’s also
apply what seems to be the Candice Broce standard to any so-called “failure to
protect” case.
