NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending January 20, 2026

● We begin with the news we broke on this blog yesterday afternoon: The federal government’s annual Child Maltreatment report is out. It shows a significant decline in child abuse fatalities, even as foster care entries fell. 

● And on the same topic, from Rutgers University: More about the blockbuster study finding that taking away more children does nothing to reduce the number of child abuse fatalities. 

● In New York City, you can always count on Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post to demand that the city’s family police agency get ever more power to tear apart ever more families. Last week, the Post reported on the horrific tragedy that followed when the agency performed exactly as the Post’s editors and opinion columnists demand. They won’t learn anything from it, but the rest of us might. 

● Last year, Minnesota passed landmark legislation that, when it takes effect, will make all of the state’s children safer.  The Imprint reports on a committee’s recommendations concerning what needs to happen next: 

The 22-member advisory panel that released its report this month included community members, state and county leaders and nonprofit directors. In 111 pages, they detailed what the Department of Children, Youth and Families, the state Legislature and counties need to do to fully enact the Minnesota African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act. 

● Next time you hear that family police agencies never intrude on families because of poverty “alone” consider what happens in Washoe County, Nev. For homeless families in that county, the act of accepting help – and nothing else – can lead to an automatic referral to the family police. I have a blog post about it. 

● You often hear that in the family policing system families are guilty until proven innocent. But for Toia Potts, even being proven innocent wasn’t enough. Two of her children had their right to live with her terminated. She tells her story in Inquest magazine.

● Georgia recently passed a Reasonable Childhood Independence law. But, as Lenore Skenazy writes in Reason, that wasn’t enough to stop an Unreasonably Paranoid Caseworker from traumatizing a family. Now their child is afraid to go out of the house alone, not because of any supposed danger from strangers, but because of fear of another traumatic investigation by the family police. The family must operate under a so-called safety plan. In contrast, there is no indication anything like that has happened in this other Georgia case, where the alleged offense is vastly more serious. 

● Five years ago, Arizona signed a consent decree promising to reduce the proportion of children placed in the worst form of “care” – group homes and institutions. But now, KNXV-TV reports, a mediator has found that the proportion actually has gone up. But then, given Gov. Katie Hobbs’ willingness to lavish state funds on such places, that shouldn’t come as any surprise. 

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

● From The Imprint: 

After a 25-year fight for accountability, a former foster youth has been awarded $5.5 million to settle his case against the county that placed him with his adoptive father — a man who was once the chief pediatrician for foster kids in Silicon Valley. 

Dozens of children in foster care and multiple boys who lived in Dr. Patrick Clyne’s home when he was a licensed foster parent have accused him of sexual abuse, and he has been the subject of criminal investigations dating back to 2001. To date, he denies wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime related to the allegations. …