NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending February 3, 2026

● All over the country, new mothers are reported to the family police when a drug test allegedly reveals not drug abuse but medication-assisted treatment for drug abuse. In other words, they’re taking prescribed medications, such as buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone, that reduce the craving for opioids and symptoms of withdrawal. But censorious family police workers and judges (secure in the knowledge that no one will be barging into their homes to check their liquor cabinets or watching them smoke pot during their children’s playdates), investigate them, condemn them, and often tear their children from them. 

Now the federal government is putting its weight behind a change in course. Writing in The Imprint, the new head of the federal Administration for Children and Families, Alex Adams, announced that these medications are now approved for federal reimbursement under the Family First Act. 

Also in that commentary: an encouraging framing of his priorities: 

ACF is aligning its policies to increase the ratio of foster homes to foster children. This gives states two focuses: increasing the numerator of foster homes or, more importantly, safely reducing the denominator of children in the foster care system. 

● Fresh from giving a giant rate increase to a group home provider (and big campaign contributor) with a questionable track record, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is lavishing an even bigger pay raise on foster parents – and effectively making poor people pay for it. I have a blog post about it. 

● amNY and Courthouse News Service report on a decision by a federal appellate court that revives a lawsuit brought by New York foster youth. They were arbitrarily denied the right to live with their own extended families in kinship foster care. 

● The Seattle Times has a story about another approach to high-quality legal representation, helping families before problems reach the point where the family police intervene. 

We have updates on two cases in which states passed “reasonable childhood independence” laws, but caseworkers ignored those laws and traumatized families. 

● ABC News reports on a case in Georgia. 

● Reason has an update on a case in Utah. 

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

● When Honolulu Civil Beat was able to pry loose the records concerning a child who allegedly was, in effect, adopted to death, the records revealed the extent of the willful blindness of a family police agency desperate to get its adoption numbers up.