Throwing foster kids out of court is nothing to gloat about

…and the fact that the Alaska family police agency is gloating at kids’ expense says everything you need to know about that agency. 

A federal judge in Alaska has thrown out one of those typical McLawsuits brought by the latest group Marcia Lowry founded to bring such McLawsuits, A Better Childhood. (ABC is the group Marcia founded after leaving Children’s Rights, which now has effectively rejected Lowry’s approach. She founded Children’s Rights after leaving the ACLU, which now has effectively rejected Lowry’s approach. She joined the ACLU after leaving the New York Civil Liberties Union, which now has effectively rejected Lowry’s approach.) 

Alaska’a family police agency, the Office of Children’s Services, is gloating about this, falsely claiming it's some sort of vindication for them. For reasons discussed below, it is nothing of the sort. 

I wrote a column for the Alaska Beacon criticizing the lawsuit – for the same reasons I criticize almost all the nearly identical McLawsuits Lowry has brought. But unlike OCS, I’m not gloating. That’s because the reason the Alaska McLawsuit would have failed, even had it been allowed to proceed, is not that it was wrong about the problems – its condemnation of Alaska foster care was almost certainly spot on. The problem is that, as usual, the McLawsuit ignored the only solution that has a chance of working: Alaska needs to stop tearing apart families at the fifth-highest rate in America, a rate nearly triple the national average. 

Dismissing the lawsuit won’t advance real solutions – it will just make it easier for OCS to hide the problems. 

Contrary to what OCS implies, the lawsuit was not dismissed because of anything having to do with the merits of the case against the system. It was dismissed only because A Better Childhood and its co-counsel couldn’t show that the children chosen to represent an entire class of foster children, known as “named plaintiffs,” were personally affected by the alleged failures. (This is not the first time there have been questions about how Marcia Lowry has chosen named plaintiffs.) 

The real failing in the lawsuit also is the failing at the heart of a column in the Beacon by Les Gara. Gara writes from personal as well as professional experience. He’s a former foster child as well as a former state legislator. But he condemns OCS only for not doing things the legislature ordered it to do in 2018: lower caseloads, recruit more foster parents, recruit more caseworkers – in other words, the usual. But whether it’s caseworkers or foster parents, you can’t recruit your way out of a crisis caused by tearing apart families at one of the most obscene rates in America. A laser-focus on curbing wrongful removal is the essential prerequisite for fixing any system, especially an extreme outlier like Alaska. 

One constructive solution Gara does embrace is making greater use of kinship foster care. OCS replies that Alaska’s percentage of children placed in this form of foster care is above the national average. Gara replies that the proportion actually appears to be declining. Both are correct. But as Gara points out, “The reality is most states do poorly on foster care work. Comparing bad apples to bad apples isn’t much of a goal.” 

So, what next? A Better Childhood might appeal the dismissal of the suit. A better option would be for better lawyers to start over and bring a better lawsuit.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending April 1, 2026

● You know what the take-the-child-and-run crowd says about the rampant confusion of poverty with neglect, right? Well, it’s not poverty alone; thry say, there’s something else, like domestic violence. Often that’s not true. But it certainly was true in the Georgia case described in this column for The Imprint. But as you read the story, consider how things would have played out if the domestic violence that started it all took place in, say, a McMansion in Berkeley Lake, instead of a homeless shelter. And consider what it was that kept the family apart for three years – because it wasn’t domestic violence. Or, just compare the handling of the case to this other, actual case from Georgia. It all illustrates why the “it’s not poverty alone” argument is a red herring.

● The first time California’s private foster care agencies sought a $30 million taxpayer bailout, they said the sky would fall if they had to close. They got the bailout. Twenty-four agencies closed anyway. As I write in Cal Matters, before giving them another bailout, perhaps lawmakers should step outside and look up. 

● The Imprint reports on a new study finding that, when it comes to tearing apart indigenous families, the United States has a record that is, of course, awful. Other countries are even worse. From the story: 

Discussing the study with The Imprint, [one of the authors] said he was most struck by the study’s findings that despite disparities in these “very different societies, we see these continuous patterns.’’ 

● Sometimes in other countries, as in the United States, to have your children taken, you just have to be different. Fox News reports on what happened to a deeply religious Romanian family living in Sweden. From the story: 

[The father] shared videos with Fox News Digital of his daughters pleading to be reunited with their family and of his eldest daughter describing her suicide attempts while in state care. 

That should come as no surprise, given that a Swedish study found that children in that nation’s foster care system were four times more likely to die by age 20 even than comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes (and in this case, there appears to have been no maltreatment at all). The most common cause of death for the foster children: suicide. 

● And finally, NCCPR’s annual reminder: If it’s April Fools’, it must be Child Abuse Hype and Hysteria Month.

Our annual reminder: If it's April Fools', it must be Child Abuse Hype and Hysteria Month

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIL 1, 2010 , MOST RECENT UPDATE:  MARCH 21, 2026.

Back in 2003, one of the groups most responsible for fomenting hype and hysteria about child abuse came remarkably close to admitting that they did just that – and that it had backfired. 

Rather like Dr. Frankenstein admitting he’d created a monster, in a 2003 Request for Proposals concerning how to improve their messaging, Prevent Child Abuse America wrote: 

While the establishment of a certain degree of public horror relative to the issue of child abuse and neglect was probably necessary in the early years to create public awareness of the issue, the resulting conceptual model adopted by the public has almost certainly become one of the largest barriers to advancing the issue further in terms of individual behavior change, societal solutions and policy priorities. 

In 2020, PCAA went further. They actually branded what they had done “health terrorism” – but refused to apologize for it. 

This is especially worth remembering as we begin “Child Abuse Awareness Month” – a month, which, appropriately, starts on April Fools Day. 

So I’ve reprinted below our 2010 blog post on the topic – with some updates and links to newer data – since, unfortunately, aside from those data, little has changed. Because it's a lot easier to create a monster than to bring it under control.

If it's April Fools', it must be Child Abuse Hype and Hysteria Month

Get ready for a seemingly endless stream of cookie-cutter news stories and Astroturf op-ed columns (the kind written by national groups with blanks to fill in to make them sound home-grown) touting "Child Abuse Awareness Month" – based on the bizarre premise that the American people are blissfully unaware of child abuse. 

There is something appropriate about the fact that "Child Abuse Awareness Month" starts on April Fools' Day, since it involves fooling the public in order to push an agenda of hype and hysteria that obscures the real nature of the problem, and real solutions, in favor of approaches that only make a serious and real problem worse. Your typical Child Abuse Awareness month news story or op-ed column follows a standard formula: 

1.  1. Take the most horrifying case to occur in your community over the past year, the more lurid the better.

2.   2. Jump immediately from that story to a gigantic number which actually is only the number of "reports" alleging any form of child maltreatment. Ignore the fact that the vast majority of those reports are false and most of the rest are nothing like the horror story. Rather, they often involve the confusion of poverty with neglect. Or…

3.   3.  Use only the total number of cases that caseworkers guess might be true, but call them "confirmed," giving the guesses, which are simply the opinion of a worker checking a box on a form, far more credibility than they deserve. A major federal study found that workers are two- to six-times more likely to wrongly label an innocent family guilty than to wrongly label real child abusers innocent.

4.   4. Pile hype onto hype by reasserting the racist, discredited COVID-19 “pandemic of child abuse” myth.  (Now that we know child abuse actually went down when COVID forced the family police to step back, and simply because memories of COVID are fading, that myth seems to pop up less often.)

5.    5. Throw in huge lists of "symptoms" or "warning signs" that "might" be "signs" of child abuse – and might as easily be signs of any number of other things.

6.     6. Instruct us all that it is our duty to phone the local child abuse hotline with any suspicion of anything no matter how vague and how dubious – instead of cautioning us about the harm of even well-meaning false reports and advising us to report when we have "reasonable cause to suspect" actual maltreatment - not poverty -- the same standard theoretically used in law to guide "mandated reporters."  

      7. Remind us that we are welcome to call the hotline anonymously – thereby encouraging those who want to harass an ex-spouse, a neighbor or anyone else against whom they may have a grudge to go right ahead, secure in the knowledge that they'll never get caught because they can conceal their identity. (Fortunately, in most cases in Texas and New York, you can't do that anymore.)

Of course, given that the child welfare establishment has no shame, in recent years the usual op-eds have included token boilerplate statements about racial justice – even as these establishment groups propose making a profoundly racist family policing system, one that will, at some point investigate the families of more than half of America's Black children, even bigger and more powerful.  But watch what they do, not what they say.  Are they proposing anything that would actually curb the power of the family police, or just tacking on the usual “prevention” programs and blathering about “more training."

All of this can do enormous harm to children.  

Hotlines wind up with more false reports and trivial cases; children are harassed and traumatized by needless child abuse investigations – often including stripsearches as caseworkers look for bruises - and some of those children are forced needlessly into foster care. The caseworkers wind up even more overloaded by these false allegations, so they have even less time to find children in real danger.  

Reality check 

NCCPR has some resources on our website for any journalists and others interested in putting all this into context, countering the hype and hysteria and pressing for real solutions: 

·        -- Issue papers on Understanding Child Abuse Numbers, False Allegations: What the Data Really Show. The Failure of Mandatory Reporting,  and many more.

·        -- Solutions pages: Our Due Process Agenda, Doing Child Welfare Right and the NCCPR Good Bill Bank.

·        -- Our presentation on how to really prevent child abuse: take a social justice approach instead of a public health approach. And our warning to be cautious when you hear the phrase "child and family well-being system."

If the people behind "Child Abuse Awareness Month"  (also known as "Child Abuse Prevention Month") really want to prevent "child abuse" then how about campaigning to ameliorate the worst effects of poverty?  

Poverty increases the stress that can lead to actual abuse and, as noted above, poverty itself often is confused with "neglect." This can be seen by the fact that study after study shows even small increases in income significantly reduce what child welfare systems call "neglect."

The problem of child abuse is serious and real, but the solutions have been phony. The distortion and exaggeration that typify child abuse "awareness" campaigns only promote phony solutions and make those serious, real problems even worse.

If only there were a Statistics Abuse Prevention Month.

NCCPR in Cal Matters: California shouldn’t bail out beleaguered foster family agencies

California’s private foster care agencies are running back to Sacramento, demanding another taxpayer bailout to cover rising insurance costs. Cal Matters reported recently that the state’s foster family agencies want another $30 million, on top of the $31.5 million they got last year. 

One of the many reasons these agencies should not get a bailout — or any other help — can be found in the very reason they’re in trouble: … 

Read the full column in Cal Matters 

NCCPR in the Louisiana Illuminator: Who’s doing child welfare better than Louisiana? Here’s the answer.

Confronted with the failure of the Department of Children and Family Services, lawmakers and administrators in Louisiana have responded the way they do in most states … None of this worked. It never does. But at least now one Louisiana lawmaker, Sen. Thomas Pressly, is asking the right question.

“Someone has to be doing it better,” Pressly asked DCFS Secretary Rebecca Harris last week,  wanting to know who. … 

Read the answer, and the full column, in the Louisiana Illuminator

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 25, 2026

We start this week with three items from New York City, and my usual reminder: New York has one of the least bad systems in the country; wherever you are, it’s probably worse.

● You know how family police agencies love to say, “We can’t remove children – only a judge can do that!” It is, of course, a lie. And here, first from Gothamist and then the New York Post, is the latest example: 

A lawsuit alleges that an 11-month-old was torn from the arms of her mother and taken away, screaming “mama” – cries that could be heard a block away -- after the city family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, decided there was no safety threat in the home. The mother was never so much as accused of abuse or neglect. Nobody asked a judge first. When a judge did get to hear the case, five days after the removal, the judge ordered the child returned, but still placed the mother under months of onerous surveillance. This kind of never-mind-the-judge-just-take-the-child-and-run removal happens in half of all entries into foster care in New York City. 

● A new commissioner for ACS could change that. In the Daily News, Sandy Santana, executive director of Children’s Rights, writes about the kind of leader Mayor Zohran Mamdani should be looking for: 

The next commissioner must be willing to acknowledge past failures, center the voices of youth and families who have experienced the system’s harm, and prioritize racial justice in every decision. They must understand that supporting families and protecting children are aligned, not competing priorities. Without this type of bold leadership, the results are predictable: families investigated for material hardship and over-burdened systems that miss opportunities to keep children safe. 

● The federal Family First Act reimburses only a small group of “preventive services,” – and that small group does not include what most families need most: concrete help. But, the New York City Family Policy Project and Action Research point out, once the federal reimbursement comes in, those funds can be used for all the good stuff Family First itself won’t fund. The amounts are small, and not every state is even participating, but it’s a small opportunity that shouldn’t go to waste. Though the data are specific to New York, the principle applies in any state. 

In other news: 

● At a recent legislative hearing in Louisiana, one lawmaker, frustrated with the failures of the state family police agency, said “Someone has to be doing it better.” He wanted to know who. NCCPR answers his question in the Louisiana Illuminator.

● Maryland is going to spend more than $1 billion over five years to fund 637 beds for foster children. At that price, we’re not talking family foster homes, we’re talking institutionalization. You can guess who will be disproportionately institutionalized. I thought of that when I read this column in The Imprint from two former top officials of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services. It shows how this kind of horror goes back centuries. 

● Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has been held in contempt for failing to provide financial records to a court hearing a case brought by his estranged Ethiopian adopted son. As the Kentucky Lantern reports, Jonah Bevin “alleges his affluent parents abandoned him at age 17 in a brutally abusive youth facility in Jamaica.” Jonah is now seeking financial support. 

And, the Kentucky Lantern reports, there’s also this: 

Three Republican lawmakers have filed a bill that would bar children from intervening in a parent’s divorce case and limit their ability to obtain child support. … While the proposed bill doesn’t mention the parents’ divorce pending in Jefferson Family Court, the legislation tracks developments in the case in which Jonah Bevin, now 19, has intervened and is seeking support. 

Two of the bill’s three sponsors, Rep. Steven Doan, R-Erlanger, and Rep. John Hodgson, R-Fisherville, worked in the Bevin administration …

NCCPR in Youth Today: Children suffer when child welfare ignores the evidence base

In an evidence-based world, one recent landmark study of foster care would be enough to give America’s child welfare establishment second thoughts. Add to that a second study — with findings the study author called “staggering” — and it should be enough to turn the entire system on its head. 

These studies undermine the entire rationale for a child welfare surveillance apparatus so huge that more than one-third of all children, and more than half of Black children, will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18 — and almost always it will turn out to be a false allegation or a case in which family poverty is confused with neglect. And though entries into foster care have declined in recent years, more than 170,000 children are torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care every year. … 

Read the full column in Youth Today

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 18, 2026

● As I approach the 50^th anniversary of my first work on this issue as a reporter, I can add another to the “I never thought I would see it in my lifetime” file: The Ethicist columnist for The New York Times telling a writer she may well have done the right thing by not reporting a family to the family police. From his response: 

This probably wouldn’t be a hard call if we all trusted the ability of social services to intervene — and to refrain from intervening — thoughtfully and protectively. After all, child abuse and neglect take place on a distressing scale. In an ideal world, you could note the car’s plate number, report what you’d seen and be confident that you were more likely to help than harm. A widespread concern, though, is that C.P.S. can do a great deal of damage; indeed, some child-welfare experts have concluded that, on net, these programs do more harm than good. 

A big problem is that C.P.S.’s most powerful instrument is family separation, which can be traumatic for both children and parents. Despite efforts to reduce reliance on it, a built-in asymmetry of blame can lead to overuse. Headlines and public outrage can ensue when a caseworker makes a judgment that leaves a child in a dangerous situation; there’s seldom much notice when a caseworker makes a judgment that unnecessarily separates a family. As one social-policy expert has put it, this imbalance of incentives means that those in the child-protection sector aren’t so much “risk averse” as “risk-to-self averse.”[Emphasis added.] 

● One of the reasons attitudes toward the child welfare surveillance state at last are changing is because the evidence of the harm this approach has done keeps piling up. In Youth Today, I discuss two recent landmark studies, the one showing that taking away more children does nothing to curb child abuse deaths, and the one showing that, when compared to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes, the foster children were more than four times more likely to die by age 20.

● The Imprint reports on the failure of still another attempt to overturn the federal Indian Child Welfare Act,this time in state court in Minnesota. In the case at issue, Native children were first placed with white strangers, then moved to the care of relatives. From the story: 

According to the most recent report to the court from guardian ad litem McKenzie Borth, in 2024, “the twins were thriving in their grandmother’s care.” The grandmother is a member of the Red Lake Nation who lives close to their doctors and who also cares for their half-sister. The twins have weekly visits with their biological mother, who lives in the same neighborhood, the children’s guardian reported. 

But the white strangers have been trying to take the children away from their Native family. 

● In Cleveland, an injustice so blatant even a CASA can’t stomach it: accusing parents of educational neglect because they don’t have a way to get their children to school.  In Cleveland.com, the CASA writes: 

Blaming parents is the wrong approach. … The Cleveland mom described above knows the value of education. She knows every missed day is a setback. But without a car, she is stranded by a system that treats transportation as an afterthought rather than the foundation of opportunity.

● WBAL-TV Baltimore reports on how a family Miranda bill, known in Maryland as “Know before They Knock,” would make the state’s most vulnerable children safer.

● The Imprint reports on how some police in Upstate New York are getting around a law barring them from arresting children under age 12 – they’re arresting the mothers.  Well, not all mothers. From the story: 

“It appears that it’s being used, unsurprisingly, to prosecute Black and brown mothers,” said Bernadette Rabuy, senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union. … 

The three upstate cases lay bare the “unconscionable lack of investment in non-punitive community-based services for children and families in New York,” said José Perez, program strategist at Children’s Defense Fund New York. If the response to the 2021 law is to arrest parents, “we have not changed the mindset. We have just changed the target.” 

● Have you noticed all the differences between how Trump talks about immigrants and how those fanatical about throwing more children into #fostercare talk about parents? Yeah, neither have I. I have a blog post about it. 

● WLVT-TV has another story about that obscene Tennessee bill to allow the state family police agency to effectively jail foster children pretty much whenever they damn well feel like it. I have a blog post about the bill. 

● The Imprint’s Youth Voices Rising section features this account from a foster care survivor:  

This is foster care’s quiet failure. It’s not the big scandals that make headlines, but the daily harm that gets ignored because it looks like improvement. Adults get checks to take care of other people’s kids the way they see fit. Kids live with the consequences and are told they’re “lucky.” 

● San Antonio Report has a close look at a new program to help families in Texas facing the family police get legal aid from the moment an investigation begins. Among other things, this might help curb the widespread use of hidden foster care in Texas. 

● We’ve updated our index comparing the propensity of America’s ten largest cities and their surrounding counties to tear apart families. Once again, the worst, by far, is Phoenix, Arizona. I have a blog post about it with a link to the data. 

There are three stories about accountability in the news: 

● Mississippi Today reports that state may become the next to open court hearings in child welfare cases to the media and the public. NCCPR estimates that at least 40% of America’s foster children live in states where these hearings are open. In many cases, they’ve been open for decades, and none of the fears of critics has come to pass. In Mississippi, a lot of opposition is coming from judges who apparently don’t want to see their “informal”, closed little club that passes for a court system. But to her credit, the head of the state child welfare agency favors the change. 

● In The Imprint, Valerie Frost, a longtime advocate in Kentucky, writes about the  harm done in that state and everywhere else when the vast power of family police agencies is accompanied by no real accountability: 

Families, meanwhile, experience life-altering interventions with little recourse when mistakes are made. Internal investigations often prioritize institutional risk management over systemic learning. Families are held to strict standards; agencies are not. … A system designed to protect children cannot function ethically when it resists transparency and shields itself from scrutiny. When agencies face no meaningful consequences for error or misconduct, families become collateral damage. 

● Speaking of issues involving accountability in Kentucky: In 2012, businessman Matt Bevin and his then-wife adopted a five-year-old boy, one of four adopted from Ethiopia. They named him Jonah. I’ll bet he was adorable. Three years later, Bevin would become Governor of Kentucky, prompted to run, he claimed, in part because the adoption process was so hard. In 2019, the Bevins were still promoting adoption and explaining on a podcast that “God called us to Ethiopia.” But once he turned 13, Jonah says, he was sent away to various out-of-state institutions. 

And by 2023 or thereabouts, if the now young adult’s charges are true, the Bevins apparently didn’t seem to find him quite so adorable. As the Kentucky Lantern reports: 

Jonah Bevin alleges his wealthy parents abandoned him at age 17 in a brutally abusive youth facility in Jamaica, closed in 2024 by child welfare officials, leaving him with no resources or education. 

The Bevins deny everything. Again from the Kentucky Lantern: 

Matt Bevin, in a [court] filing … said Jonah’s claims of neglect, abandonment and abuse “are not grounded in fact or law and are, instead, intended to garner media attention and outrage.” 

Now, Jonah is seeking financial assistance from his wealthy adoptive parents. His lawyers are seeking to hold Matt Bevin in contempt for allegedly failing to provide financial information. 

In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions 

● From WRAL-TV in North Carolina: 

Woman worries for sons in foster care after one was murdered, allegedly by adoptive mother 

Felicia Chandler is feeling deep pain because in addition to her son Blake's death, her surviving sons who also lived with him are in foster care, including one about to age out of the system.

Congratulations Phoenix: When it comes to tearing apart families in big cities, you’re still #1!

 

Bipartisanship in action! In Arizona both parties have failed the state's children

(This post is adapted from NCCPR’s press release to Arizona media.) 

NCCPR has updated its Big CityRate-of-Removal Index, comparing the propensity of America’s ten largest cities and their surrounding counties, to tear apart families. Once again, the champion for big-city family destruction, metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. 

Children are at greater risk of being torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care in Phoenix than in any other of America’s largest cities. It’s a long, ugly tradition. 

Year after year, the Department of Child Safety, Arizona’s family police agency (a more accurate term than ‘child welfare’ agency), cuts a swath of destruction through poor families in Phoenix at a vastly higher rate than any other such agency does in any other of America’s ten largest cities and their surrounding counties. 

And while it’s all done in the name of ‘child safety,’ of course, the DCS take-the-child-and-run mentality makes all children less safe. The mentality was revealed to the nation in 2020 when workers in a DCS office thought it would be a laugh riot to wear matching t-shirts emblazoned with the words ‘Professional Kidnapper.’ The workers were fired, but the data show the mentality remains. 

NCCPR’s Big City Rate-of-Removal Index compares the number of children thrown into foster care to the impoverished child population in America’s ten largest cities and their surrounding counties. Maricopa County (metropolitan Phoenix) is an extreme outlier. Children are taken from their parents in Maricopa County at a rate: 

● 50% percent higher than the second-worst region – Santa Clara County.

● More than 60% higher than the third worst, Los Angeles County.

● Nearly two-and-a-half times the national average for big cities.

● More than triple the rate of New York City.

● Nearly six times the rate of Chicago. 

There is no evidence that Phoenix is a cesspool of depravity with vastly more child abuse than any other big city in America. Rather, this is evidence of a take-the-child-and-run mentality, rooted in racial and class bias, that has plagued child welfare in Arizona for decades. 

The problem is compounded by Arizona’s overreliance on the worst, and most dangerous, form of care – group homes and institutions. Arizona institutionalizes 41% of children entering foster care, a rate more than two-and-a-half times the national average. 

You may be sure that DCS will respond to the facts about its abysmal performance with the Big Lie of American child welfare: the false claim that child removal equals child safety. 

But the Big Lie ignores:

● The mass of research showing that, in typical cases, not the horror stories, children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children thrown into foster care. That research includes a stunning recent study showing that, under these circumstances, by age 20, the foster children were more than four times more likely to die.

● The mass of research showing high rates of abuse in foster homes and even higher rates of abuse in group homes and institutions – all those news accounts about the horrors of Arizona group homes and institutions are not aberrations.

● The mass of research showing that poverty is routinely confused with neglect. The research is confirmed by data from Arizona, where, in 87% of cases in which children were thrown into foster care, there was not even an accusation of sexual abuse or any form of physical abuse. In fact, Arizona took away more children because of inadequate housing than for physical and sexual abuse combined. In 62% there was not even an accusation of any form of drug or alcohol abuse – not just no accusation of meth or fentanyl, no accusation of any drug or alcohol abuse of any kind.

All this does enormous harm to the children needlessly taken – and also to those who might be spared foster care but still face the enormous trauma of a child abuse investigation – which involves a traumatic interrogation and, sometimes, a stripsearch. Almost always, this trauma is inflicted as a result of a false report or a poverty case. Nationwide, more than half of all Black children will be forced to endure this trauma at some point in their childhoods. But Arizona is different. In Arizona, it’s two-thirds.

But these aren’t the only children harmed. All the time, money and effort wasted harming children in these cases is, in effect, stolen from finding the relatively few children in real danger. That’s almost always the real reason such children are overlooked, leading to the horror stories that, rightly, make headlines. That’s how the Arizona approach makes all children less safe.

Actions by Gov. Katie Hobbs have compounded the problems. These actions include:

● Giving a giant rate increase to a politically-connected group home operator.

● Giving a giant pay raise to foster parents – and, in effect, making poor people pay for it.

● Taking away support for the least harmful form of foster care, kinship foster care, in which children are placed with extended family.

But the governor’s political opponents have no cause to gloat. In a rare example of bipartisanship, governors and legislators from both parties have been failing Arizona’s vulnerable children for decades, something we documented in a report we released on Arizona child welfare in 2007.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In other states, lawmakers and state leaders have worked across party lines to curb needless removal and make all children safer. In Texas, for example, with strong bipartisan support, lawmakers raised the threshold for coercive intervention into families. In New York and New Jersey, governments bolstered high-quality legal defense for families – not to get “bad parents” off but to craft alternatives to the cookie-cutter ‘service plans’ churned out by agencies like DCS. For more solutions, see NCCPR’s Due Process Agenda and for more examples of strong legislation see the NCCPR Good Bill Bank. Together, these bills and other solutions create a true blueprint for child safety.

They represent ways Arizona could turn its system around and make all children safer. All it needs is the will to finally renounce the take-the-child-and-run mentality that has made all of the state’s children less safe.

Donald Trump and the child savers redux. It’s not a band, but they still sing the same song

 

More than a decade ago, I wrote a column for The Imprint called “Donald Trump and the Child Savers. It’s Not a Band But They Sing the Same Song.” I began it this way: 

Last month, author and political commentator Jeff Greenfield wrote an essay for Politico on the politics of fear – and how Donald Trump exploits it.  He wrote: 

History teaches us lessons of what can happen when genuine public fears are co-opted by the demagogues, fear-mongers and over-reactors. There was a reason to fear crime in the 1960s and 1970s, because violent crime in America was increasing by leaps and bounds, but that didn’t mean the only response [had to be] four decades of over-incarceration, driven by politicians’ fears of looking soft on crime. There was a reason to fear a Soviet espionage network looking for military secrets during a Cold War waged in the shadow of countless nuclear weapons, but that didn’t require McCarthyism as a response. There was a reason to fear where Al Qaeda might strike next after 19 men with box cutters killed 3,000 people in the heart of two great cities, but that didn’t mean we had to invade Iraq. 

Let me add one to Greenfield’s list: There is a reason to fear that a small number of parents are brutally abusive and will do terrible things to innocent children if they are not stopped.  But that doesn’t mean we needed to create a system that puts millions of children through frightening investigations every year, and casts thousands of them into a chaotic system of foster care, traumatizing some of them for life. 

 I was reminded again of how the Trump approach and that of the take-the-child-and-run crowd in child welfare are nearly identical when I read about Trump’s State of the Union address. I spared myself the ordeal of watching it, but you can get an idea of his fixation on exploiting horror stories from this (brief, I promise) excerpt, from Rolling Stone: 

Of course, these horrors have nothing to do with actual rates of crime, nor the actual record of immigrants – who, documented or not, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. 

But Trump wants us so upset by the gruesome details of stories that are as rare as they are horrifying that we’ll lose sight of the facts, lose sight of the context and embrace his phony solutions. (And, of course, he argues that anyone who doesn’t embrace his phony solutions doesn’t care if people die gruesome deaths.) 

Now consider the behavior of the child welfare fearmongers in various statehouses, think tanks and college campuses. Have you noticed how often their behavior is identical? Find a gruesome case of fatal child abuse. Imply that it's common. Scapegoat efforts to keep families together – and accuse anyone who disagrees of not caring if children die and/or wanting to ignore fatalities.

And what has it gotten us over the past 50 years or so? Millions of children needlessly torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care. A child welfare surveillance state so huge that more than one-third of all children and more than half of Black children will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18. And almost always, it will be in response to a false report or a case in which poverty is confused with neglect. 

What it does not get us is an end to the horrific and extremely rare cases that this massive intrusion on families supposedly was going to stop.

On the contrary, the horror stories are needles in a haystack. We’ve spent more than half a century making the haystack bigger, so it’s even harder to find the needles. What should be called the Donald Trump Fearmongering Approach to Child Welfare is making all children less safe. 

Yet all we hear from the fearmongers are cries for more of the same.

But wait, you might say. Don’t you also highlight horror stories? Yes. Often, our weekly news roundup ends with a section called The Horror Stories go in All Directions, followed by one or more examples of terrible things done to children in a foster home, an adoptive home, a group home or an institution. 

The title explains why we do it. Nine years ago, I first offered the other side a mutual moratorium on the use of horror stories. But I’m not going to unilaterally disarm and allow the fearmongers to leave the impression that foster care, adoption, group homes and institutions are free of horrors of their own. 

They haven’t taken me up on the mutual moratorium idea. 

They can’t. Here’s why:

If we stopped pointing out horror stories, here’s what else we would have to make the case for curbing the child welfare surveillance state and ending needless foster care: 

● The mass of research showing that, in typical cases, not the horror stories, children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children thrown into foster care. That research includes the stunning study from Sweden showing that, under these circumstances, by age 20, the foster children were more than four times more likely to die.

● The mass of research showing high rates of abuse in foster homes and even higher rates of abuse in group homes and institutions.

● The mass of research showing that poverty is routinely confused with neglect.

● The mass of research showing even small amounts of additional cash can go a long way toward curbing not only what agencies call “neglect” but even cases of serious abuse. 

If the Trump-style fearmongers in “child welfare” had to stop pointing out horror stories to make the case for doing more of what has failed for decades, here’s what else they would have to make their case:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 10, 2026

● In Tennessee, the head of the state’s family police agency, which has failed for decades, finally is demanding accountability - from the children!  WTVF-TV in Nashville has a story and I have a blog post, about that atrocious bill in Tennessee that would allow the agency to effectively jail any foster child who gets out-of-line – in order to hold them accountable.

● Oh, and speaking of accountability in Tennessee, who is accountable for the poor results from that $4.2 million no-bid contract to recruit more foster parents, as reported in The Tennessean? 

● In New York, family advocates and family defenders have developed an impressive legislative agenda with enormous potential to make all vulnerable children safer. The New York City Family Policy Project has a comprehensive analysis with links to the vast body of research supporting this agenda. And while the legislative ideas come from New York, most are adaptable to any state. 

● Also in New York, Healthbeat New York reports that the city’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, has agreed to take $20 million from its budget and turn it over to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to expand a longstanding voluntary prevention program called the Nurse Family Partnership. But while ACS says that means its hands are off the program, it can’t change the law that makes the nurses mandatory reporters. 

From the story: 

“What they’re doing is buying a doorway for reports,” said Joyce McMillan, founder and executive director of Just Making A Change for Families, a local nonprofit known as JMACforFamilies … “If people are coming in [homes] — because this is for mental health help — they’re going to talk about the things [the parents] struggle with, and then those struggles are going to be turned into cases against the family, separating more kids from their home.” 

● The Imprint adds context to the story of a report that was commissioned, and then suppressed, by Michigan officials concerning the horrors inflicted on Native American children who were institutionalized in so-called “boarding schools” in that state. 

● Children’s Rights has a policy brief on what the Trump Administration is doing to immigrant children, and what can be done about it. It’s available in Spanish and English.    

● In Alaska, which tears apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation, lawmakers are wondering why the reforms they enacted a few years ago aren’t working.  As I write in the Alaska Beacon, it’s because they’re tearing apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation. 

● In Texas, KENS-TV reports, legal aid firms across the state have formed the Family Early Defense Network, with a hotline to provide advice and referrals to lawyers for families facing investigations by the Texas family police. 

● A story in The Imprint about new guidance from the federal Administration for Children and Families is headlined “Feds Warn States: Family Gender Disputes Should Not Lead to Child Welfare Cases.” But is that really what the letter means? As you would expect from the Trump Administration, the letter appears directed at states that interfere when parents reject their children’s choices about their sexual identity. But does that also mean that Texas, for example, has to stop harassing families where parents support their transgender children? 

● There is an interesting nugget in this story from The Imprint about the Georgia Legislature appropriating $81 million to close a gap in the budget of the state’s family police agency: 

The budget document directs the agency to prioritize reunification services, assessments and specialized services. 

NCCPR in the Alaska Beacon: The foster care system is failing Alaska children. So are those trying to fix it.

Last August, the Beacon published a story under the headline “Is Alaska’s foster care system failing children? A federal trial underway now could decide.” 

My answer is: Yes, Alaska’s foster care system is failing children – horrendously. But the current lawsuit won’t fix it. 

Last month, frustrated lawmakers bemoaned the failure of the Office of Children’s Services to implement reforms.

The failure to implement reform and the inevitable failure of the lawsuit have the same fundamental cause. … 

Read the full column in the Alaska Beacon.

Foster care in Tennessee: When the leaders of the “child welfare” agency forgot their disguises

The Tennessee family police agency has a plan for what to do
with foster children who get out of line.

Decades ago, the father of family defense and family advocacy (and also the President of NCCPR), Prof. Martin Guggenheim, cut to the heart of the failure of family policing when he said: “There’s a lot of hate disguised as love in this system.” 

I thought of that when I watched two top “child welfare” officials in Tennessee forget their disguises. I’m not even talking about contempt for parents; they forgot to disguise what they really think of the children – once they get older and are no longer cute little “kiddos.” 

It happened at a legislative hearing in Tennessee concerning a bill supported by the state family police agency, the Department of Children’s Services. The bill would essentially allow DCS to throw foster youth into jail whenever the agency felt they’d gotten out of line - if even threatened to get out of line. 

Oh, wait. I’m sure DCS would want you to know these are not “jails” – rather, they are what news accounts call “jail-like facilities” - detention centers where, under current law, you are not allowed to place a child unless that child is convicted of a crime. But that’s certainly not a jail! 

Tennessee already allows foster youth who committed no crime to be handcuffed. As WTVF-TV in Nashville reports, the cuffs were used on a 12-year-old believed to be autistic, who refused to go to bed. 

But that’s not enough for DCS Legislative Director Jim Layman and DCS Commissioner Margie Quin, who testified in favor of the throw-foster-kids-in-jail bill. 

The leader of the Tennessee "child welfare" agency is demanding
accountability -- from the children. (Still frame from WTVF)

The story was first reported by WPLN Public Radio, then WTVF. They cover much the same ground,  but the video story has one advantage: Even in short soundbites, you can see and practically feel what those DCS officials really think of the children they are supposed to protect.  Watch as Quin says foster youth need to be effectively jailed to be held accountable for “violent” behavior because "that lack of accountability gives rise to additional violent behavior." 

It’s even more striking when the comments of those who would be the victimizers if this bill becomes law are compared to the love and understanding shown by one of those who could have been a victim, former foster youth Ella Bet-Ami.  You can see it all here.

And you can hear WPLN's story here:

 Of course, when foster youth commit violent acts, they already can be criminally charged and placed in “jail-like facilities.” So who does Quin really have in mind? 

Ella Bet-Ami knows what the rhetoric about violent behavior is really all about. Here’s an excerpt from WPLN’s story: 

“We don’t get to make mistakes,” Bet-Ami said. “We don’t get to have temper tantrums. We don’t get to have bad days. We’re not allowed to be children.” … She said that kids like her are living on a knife’s edge — getting into trouble could cost them their home, their foster family, and under a new proposal, their freedom. 

“Foster children are entitled to a childhood in the same way other children are entitled to a childhood,” she said. “It should not be a childhood with the sword of prison dangling over their heads.” 

Don’t believe the usual excuses 

What you heard and saw in these stories is young people like Ms. Bet-Ami described as so incredibly difficult that somehow they’d have to be jailed – and, says Quin, held accountable. Remember that when you hear officials all over the country say that it’s the rest of us who don’t understand when they tell us that the children supposedly are just sooooo much more difficult now, with oh sooooo complex behavioral needs that they simply can’t be placed in a home setting. 

It’s not true of young people like Ms. Bet-Ami. But it’s also not true when it comes to children who really do have serious behavioral problems. Because the research is overwhelming that institutionalization of any kind, let alone a jail, doesn’t work and often does enormous harm. That’s true even when institutions aren’t rife with abuse. But often, of course, abuse is rampant, as with institutions in, among other places, Arizona, Kentucky, Indiana, Utah, Iowa, Oklahoma, Rhode Island,  Washington State, Arkansas, New York, Connecticut, Ohio,  Idaho – and Tennessee. 

In contrast, what has been proven to work is bringing Wraparound programs right into a family home or, when a child really must be removed, into a foster home.  You won’t find many young people more “difficult” than the one the late Karl Dennis, the father of Wraparound, talks about in this video: 

And no, the problem isn’t a “shortage” of foster homes either. Tennessee tears apart families at a rate more than 80% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in. It's an ugly track record that goes back decades.  Tennessee also already uses so-called "congregate care" - group homes and institutions - at a rate well over double the national average, while using the least harmful form of foster care, kinship foster care, at a rate less than one-third the national average. 

Stop taking away children when parents are guilty of nothing more than, say, driving while Black, as happened in a notorious Tennessee case, spend the money you’re spending on institutionalizing kids on Wraparound services instead, and there will be plenty of good, safe family placements for the children who need them. 

But of course that would require an agency led by people with guts, vision and imagination – or at least an agency led by people who are a bit less hostile toward the kids they’re supposed to be protecting. 

Two footnotes 

1. Tennessee is among the first states to sign on to a new federal child welfare initiative. But I wonder if Gov. Bill Lee and Commissioner Margie Quin need to reread the document. The initiative is called a home for every child, not a cell for every child. 

2. On the matter of accountability. Commissioner Quin: 

● You run a system that tears apart families at a rate more than 80% above the national average.

● You run a system that allows an autistic 12-year-old to be handcuffed for refusing to go to bed.

● You run a system willing to tear apart a family for driving while Black.

● You oversee facilities rife with abuse. 

So by all means, Commissioner Quin. Tell us again why it’s the children who need to be held accountable.