NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending May 5, 2026

● Cruddy journalism by the San Jose Mercury News and grandstanding by a prominent politician have been so effective that it appears that some people in Santa Clara County, Calif. think there were no child abuse deaths back when the county was taking away far more children. It shouldn’t be necessary, but we set the record straight in this post. 

● The Boston Globe has an excellent story about abuse in Massachusetts group homes and institutions – in a state that tears apart families at a rate well above the national average. The Anchorage Daily News has a follow-up to a similar expose in that state, which tears apart families at an even higher rate. But, as noted in this post to the blog, neither story mentions that salient fact, and lawmakers in neither state seem prepared to face up to it. That means nothing is going to change. 

● Ashley Cross, executive director of HOPE585 in Rochester, New York, writes in The Imprint about how child abuse prevention is not about pinwheels and fearmongering. She writes: 

When families lack stable housing, enough food or access to child care, the margin for error disappears. One missed shift, one unexpected expense, one sick day can spiral into a situation that brings them to the attention of the system. … 

Families living in poverty are far more likely to come to the attention of child protective services. Not because they care less about their children, but because they are navigating impossible trade-offs every day. Do you go to work and risk leaving your child home sick, or stay home and risk losing the job that pays your rent? Those are not parenting failures. They are resource failures. 

● Even as the Trump Administration pushes the use of what amounts to computerized racial profiling (a.k.a. “predictive analytics”) in child welfare, the title of this British study says it all: “Beware the algorithm: a scoping review of predictive analytics in children’s social care.” 

● And you read it here first: The latest data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting system are now public. There seems to be little change on average nationally in the number of children taken from their homes or the number in foster care on any given day, but there’s bad news in several states, particularly Missouri and Maryland. 

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

● Former foster youth are suing the Washington State family police agency seeking compensation for what one lawyer describes as “some of the worst abuse. Just absolute horrific conditions, and unfortunately an all-too-common textbook example of a house of horrors.” The family police agency has been trying to hide the evidence by withholding records. The Center Square reports that the State Supreme Court has ruled that the agency is going to have to come clean. 

● From WTVJ Miami: 

A Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue lieutenant and his wife were arrested for allegedly locking their 12-year-old adopted daughter for years inside a room at their Coral Springs home, authorities said. … According to arrest reports, the couple is accused of subjecting the child to "ongoing mental and physical abuse" over a period of about three years.