NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending April 14, 2026

● A depressing number of journalists fall for the fearmongering of private foster care agencies when they say the sky will fall if they can't get insurance. Honolulu Civil Beat took a closer look, including NCCPR’s perspective. 

● In California, The Imprint reports, abuse survivors are rallying against legislation that would make it much harder to sue the agencies.

From the story: 

Angela Arroyo, 20, spoke at the rally outside the county’s Hall of Administration and called the effort “a direct attack on survivors.” 

“Don’t take away our voice and our chance at justice,” Arroyo told the crowd of about 40 people. 

Another speaker at the rally, La Defensa Executive Director Ivette Alé-Ferlito said a yes vote on proposed immunity legislation is "choosing to protect institutions over survivors.” 

In addition to proposals to curb survivor access to justice, private foster care agencies in California already have received one taxpayer bailout, and as I discussed in Cal Matters, they’re trying for another.

● There’s been some improvement in Maine. The number of children trapped in foster care has declined – from obscene to merely outrageous. I have a blog post about it. 

● The New York Daily News has an excellent story about how … 

After Mayor Mamdani passed over their top choice to lead the city’s child welfare system, New York parents whose lives were upended by foster care want answers on how he plans to help keep Black families together. 

● Also in the New York Daily News: Joyce McMillan of JMAC For Families is co-author of an oped column that begins this way: 

In creating a new mayoral Office of Community Safety, Mayor Mamdani has taken a major step toward reshaping policing. The office will respond to certain non-violent emergencies and strengthen the social safety net to prevent crises before they happen. 

That same approach is exactly what we and many other advocates have called for in “family policing” — how the city intervenes in families with the intention of keeping children safe. 

That’s why McMillan and other advocates want to see New York 

create an Office of Family Well-Being to help enhance family safety and security, improve children’s health and wellness across their life span, close gaps that lead to family crises and reduce ACS intervention, and contribute to community safety. The office would focus on neighborhood-based supports that keep children safe by preventing family challenges from becoming crises. 

But perhaps most interesting is McMillan’s Co-author: Kimberly Watson, president and CEO of Graham – formerly Graham Windham – a 220-year-old private child welfare agency. For at least 200 of those years, they were part of the problem. Now they’re becoming part of the solution. That’s one more for my mental list of “I never thought I would see it in my lifetime” moments. 

● In New Jersey, a task force has issued a series of recommendations to curb mandatory child abuse reporting.  As Advocates for Children of New Jersey explains: 

The report examines how current reporting and response practices can unintentionally harm children and families by confusing poverty with neglect. Using national research, data, and lived experience, it provides a roadmap for aligning child welfare policy with evidence-based approaches that support family stability, child wellbeing, and community strength. 

The recommendations are far too modest, but there was a time when ACNJ was the biggest cheerleader for a take-the-child-and-run approach in that state. So the fact that ACNJ is behind this makes for still another one of those “I never thought I’d see it in my lifetime” moments. 

And speaking of such moments: 

● Fifty years ago this month, I turned in to my professors my final project for the “Broadcast Workshop” at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism – a radio documentary about foster care. I didn’t know it would set the course for most of my professional life. Some reflections, 50 years later.