NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending June 24, 2026

● I only say “drop everything and read this one” about once or twice a year, so I hope you’ll take my advice concerning this story from Disability Debrief: It’s one of the most compelling, most keenly observed and most beautifully written accounts of being institutionalized as a teenager that I've ever read. 

Here’s how it begins: 

There is a presumed history of institutions closing in the United States through the 1980s. But the reality is that institutions never disappeared. 

I know because I lived in them. When I was thirteen years old, I had my first experience with psychiatric and residential institutionalisation. In these places, horrific abuse was the norm. 

Staff alleged that compliance would help us “get out.” But compliance merely demanded submission to our routine exploitation and acceptance of destructive narratives. We children were seen as the problems needing intervention, rather than the violence that caused our mental distress in the first place. …

● Finally: the full story of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s child confiscation-at-birth policy and the harm it does to children, particularly to Native American children. It is depressing but unsurprising to find that this story did not appear on the site of any New Mexico news organization – it’s in The Guardian 

● Also in New Mexico, all that needless foster care caused by policies like Grisham’s and the behavior of demagogic politicians and their allies, forced more children into the worst form of “care” group homes and institutions.  Here’s how bad it's gotten: The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that 

A state contract for a troubled Albuquerque group home for foster boys will expire without renewal June 30 following two years of high staff turnover, criticism from lawmakers and the death of a teen last year. 

But that’s not what makes this exceptionally awful. This is: The group home is closing not because the New Mexico family police agency refused to renew the contract, it’s closing only because the private firm running it decided to leave! 

But wait, there’s more: The New Mexico family police agency is so poorly run and so lacking in vision that it actually claims: 

congregate care facilities, like the Albuquerque home for boys, offer a middle-of-the road option between housing children in agency offices — a strategy the state announced it ended earlier this year — and the ideal situation of placing foster kids with families. 

One state legislator saw this for the BS it is: 

“What kinds of supports are we providing to families at the front end so that kids don’t end up in care? Because I think that we’ve all seen how traumatic this is for kids,” Chávez said. 

She added, “Doing a contract with [this group home operator] was sort of a reaction to having all these kids in custody, and so it was almost, in some ways, a knee-jerk reaction, and it feels like that’s what they’re doing again, without really taking a step back and thinking about the impact on kids.” 

● In Alaska, which tears apart families, especially Alaska Native families, at one of the highest rates in America, lawmakers passed one of those largely pointless bills trying to “fix” abuse in residential treatment with bold visionary steps like actually requiring unannounced inspections. But, as Mother Jones reports, even that was too much for the governor, who vetoed it. 

But hey, it’s not like the institution that helped inspire the bill, an institution with wat the story calls “a troubling track record of assaults, escapes, and the routine use of seclusion and chemical restraints” took no action at all. As the story notes: 

North Star hired a lobbyist, Dianne Blumer, who was paid $41,000 in each of the past two legislative sessions to advocate on “issues related to mental health, workforce, background checks and State of Alaska budget.” 

Oh, and did I mention that Alaska tears apart families, especially Alaska Native families, at one of the highest rates in America? 

● The Imprint reports on an oral history project led by the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition: 

Hundreds of Indigenous people have testified. They’ve sobbed, cursed and laughed in spite of it all. Many told stories about their time in Indian boarding schools that they’ve kept inside for decades, finally able to begin recovering from childhood trauma. … 

The intent is to document and share with the public the systemic abuse endured by boarding school survivors under the government’s attempts at forced assimilation — policies that began in the 1800s and lasted for over a century. 

● Truthout reports on the failure of New York State to pass “legislation that would require informed consent for drug testing of pregnant people.” As the story explains: 

While drug and alcohol use while pregnant can present complications for a newborn, nonconsensual drug testing of pregnant people doesn’t solve the issue at hand. … This practice has been shown to force pregnant people to delay prenatal care, afraid of the potential criminal consequences of being drug tested against their will. Moreover, nonconsensual drug testing could trap the birthing parent in a web of criminalization that, at best, hinders family bonding, and at worst, irrevocably tears families apart — all because of a disease. 

● Tennessee State Rep. Aftyn Behn has filed 14 federal civil rights complaints involving alleged wrongful removal of children in that state.  WTVC-TV reports that the mother, Michelle Ward, 

alleges DCS removed her daughter from her sister’s home in February 2025 while Ward was at the hospital with her newborn son. She says the removal happened without a court order or petition. 

“My son having surgery, he was having surgery. They went to my sister’s house, and they removed my daughter. They said it was for failure to cooperate with them from a prior case that was already closed,” Ward said. 

The complaint alleges that shortly after entering state custody, Ward’s daughter, who has epilepsy, was denied seizure medication, causing her to suffer a seizure and an injury that required stitches above her eye. 

Her child has been in foster care for more than a year. 

● On the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog: Two examples of performative outrage that backfire and hurt children. From politicians in North Carolina, and from a “journalist” in California. 

In this week’s reminder that The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

● From the Salt Lake Tribune: 

Daily fights that staff allegedly fail to stop. Teenagers with large, open self-harm wounds. Two riots that ended with arrests and hospitalizations. 

Those are examples of the “shocking” conditions Utah’s Disability Law Center says its employees discovered after four days of visits to Provo Canyon School’s Springville and Provo campuses. 

The watchdog group is now calling on state regulators to consider stronger intervention for the embattled teen treatment center — including shutting it down. 

● From WBBM-TV, Chicago: 

"A house of horrors." That's how one former Chicago foster child described Aunt Martha's Integrated Care Center, a facility that's been at the center of a years-long CBS News Chicago investigation. 

On Thursday, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services was added as a defendant in a lawsuit accusing the foster facility of failing to protect a 17-year-old foster child from sexual assault by an Aunt Martha's employee. 

In March, a Cook County jury convicted former Aunt Martha's youth center manager Trulon Henry of sexually assaulting that teen. There were also allegations involving five other girls, as young as 12. … Escamilla alleges that after she reported abuse, DCFS removed her from Aunt Martha's, but then sent her back, where she was isolated in a basement room and repeatedly assaulted by Henry.