NCCPR news and commentary round-up, weeks ending January 2, 2026

● This first item made it into our “Year-in-Review” last week, but in case nobody read that far down: 

Just as the year was ending, families in New York won a huge victory when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill that replaces anonymous reporting with confidential reporting. The accused still doesn’t get to know who called the child abuse hotline, but the hotline and local caseworkers need to know – in order to discourage false reports by ex-spouses, angry neighbors, landlords or anyone else abusing the process to carry out a grudge. 

amNY has a particularly good story about the law. The Imprint also has a story about the signing. So does the New York Daily News. And before it passed: ProPublica published a good story on the bill. Also: there was an excellent editorial from the Syracuse Post-Standard, a superb commentary in The Imprint, from Prof. Dale Margolin Cecka, Director of the Family Violence Litigation Clinic at Albany Law School, and another outstanding commentary from the lawyers who regularly represent children in these cases, concerning why this law is needed – and why 48 states and D.C. should follow New York and Texas in enacting such laws. 

● The Reason Foundation is the latest to explore the harm done when families are needlessly torn apart because of housing.  From their analysis: 

To improve child safety outcomes, eviction and homelessness should not be treated as proxies for parental failure. Stable housing is not a secondary concern but a foundational condition for family stability and child well-being. When families secure stable housing, children are more likely to remain safely in their homes, child welfare systems avoid unnecessary interventions, and communities reduce the fiscal and social costs associated with family separation. If the core objective is child safety, policy should prioritize measures that establish stability upstream rather than escalating surveillance or interventions that increase the risk of removal. 

● New Hampshire Public Radio reports that under a new law children in child welfare hearings in that state will get a lawyer charged with advocating for what the child actually wants. That’s not because a child necessarily should get that outcome. But the only way to know what’s best is if all parties have someone making the best possible case for their preferred outcome.  Until now, children in New Hampshire have gotten only a guardian ad litem or, worse, a CASA. They advocate for what they think is best for the child. If the child disagrees s/he is effectively silenced. 

● The Imprint reports on a hearing during which the head of Georgia’s family police agency was questioned about the severe cuts to services to help families stay together. 

Multiple providers testified about the immediate impacts of the restrictions: Children are no longer visiting their parents. Parents are not getting needed assessments required by their court-approved case plan. Working foster parents are losing resources they were promised to help them care for the highest-need children. 

● The Imprint also reports on how, for the usual despicable reasons, the Trump Administration has terminated a series of grants to agencies that help families, including Rise, which gives voice, and provides help, to families caught in the family policing net. From the story: 

“The saddest part is letting staff go during the holiday season with no advance notice,” said Jeanette Vega, executive director of Rise, which received a $1.5 million grant for a peer care initiative. “And we have to turn away families who need our support as we do not have the finances to purchase family basic needs after we promised supporting them before the holidays.” 

● NBC News has two stories on the harm done to families by misdiagnoses of so-called shaken baby syndrome. 

● CT Mirror reports on the progress Connecticut has made in increasing the use of the least harmful form of foster care, kinship foster care. Much of that progress was a result of the work of a former director of the state child welfare agency, Joette Katz. 

● In The Imprint, Mike Leach, former head of South Carolina’s child welfare agency writes about still another little-known way the system hurts the children it was meant to help. Federal law mandates volunteer citizen review boards review individual cases and make recommendations. Here’s how it works in practice: 

[B]ias and misunderstanding manifest in board recommendations. Families, especially those navigating poverty, are often judged harshly for missed visits or slow progress on case plans. A parent working double shifts at Waffle House to keep the lights on might be labeled “uninvolved.” A grandmother caring for multiple grandchildren on a fixed income may be called “unstable.” 

Volunteers who serve on these boards are, in my experience,  often from a higher socioeconomic level than the families whose cases they oversee and, as a result, may lack an understanding of the barriers to case plan compliance those families face. Poverty is not neglect, but when oversight lacks context, the system treats it that way. 

Youth who have attended these reviews have described them to me as cold and humiliating: strangers reading files aloud, offering opinions without real conversation or relational understanding. That is not accountability. It is surveillance without compassion. 

● Also in The Imprint, Sarah Winograd of Together With Families, offers lessons on how to keep families together by giving them what they really need, instead of what makes the helpers feel good: 

People often ask how to build a program that helps families experiencing a crisis. They usually want a model, a toolkit or a checklist. We learned quickly that the work does not function that way. 

Families do not fail programs. Programs fail families when they cannot adapt.

What helps one family stabilize today may be irrelevant six months from now. Effective prevention work is not a fixed model that can be copied and pasted. It is a living approach that must remain responsive to the people it serves. 

Flexibility is not optional. It is foundational. 

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

From County 10, Wyoming: 

Governor Mark Gordon announced today, December 29, his support for rescinding a 2014 National Adoption Excellence Award granted to Steve and Kristine Marler of Casper. Steve Marler was convicted in 2025 of 11 counts of child abuse of minors, five counts of misdemeanor battery, and one count of child endangerment. 

He was also sentenced to a minimum of 128 years on eight felony counts for sexually abusing two girls under his foster or adoptive care and for sexual abuse and battery of foster children. 

● A story from Honolulu Civil Beat includes this chilling reminder: 

In at least five recent cases, children died in homes where they were placed by the state and Family Court and at some point subject to supervision by CWS caseworkers. In two of these, CWS either admits or relatives allege there had been earlier reports of maltreatment.

 And finally …

 ● If you missed it over the holidays, here’s our Year-in-Review for 2025

 ● And NCCPR starts the new year with an updated website. Check it out!