In 2021, NPR and its reporting partners exposed two routine, pernicious practices involving child welfare systems and money that should have stayed with children and/or their families. Neither practice was new. Many groups, including my own, had been working to call attention to both of these injustices for years, after first learning about them thanks to the pioneering scholarship of Prof. Daniel Hatcher at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
But NPR’s superb reporting lit a fire under government
officials and others. As a result, there’s been real progress on curbing one of
these awful practices — but not nearly as much on the other.
The difference in response cuts to the heart of what’s wrong with the approach we’ve taken to “child welfare” for decades. …
