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.