NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 4, 2026

● Even if you think you know all about the horrors of “residential treatment,” this story from The Marshall Project still shocks. From the story: 

Both teens said they dreamed of escaping the staff members who forcibly held them down hard enough to leave bruises, the blood in the hallways from kids cutting themselves, the girls strangling themselves with bedsheets, the adults who insisted no family wanted to adopt them and who looked through them like they were already gone. … 

Recalling when she was held down by Fox Run workers, Isabella said, “[My skin] was purple. And I could get gasps of air out, saying I could not breathe.” Memories of the younger children at Fox Run, ages 5 to 6, who were held in what she said was called the “Dreams Unit,” still haunt her. 

“Grown men would throw them like ragdolls,” she said of the children. “They’re just so little. They’re scared.” 

See also the sidebar in which The Marshall Project explains to former residents of these places (inmates would be a better term) how to get their own records. 

Now, consider what The Marshall Project found in light of another story: 

● The Imprint reports on the first attempt to add up how many children each state dumps into hotel rooms, offices and other makeshift placements. Two items stand out: 

1. Massachusetts said it never did this during the time under investigation – but local investigative reporting says otherwise. Did the state family police agency lie? 

2. #1 in the nation for doing this to children is Arizona. But Greg McKay, the former head of the Arizona family police agency – along with the rest of the usual take-the-child-and-run-foster-care-at-all-costs fanatics -- says the solution is to build more residential treatment centers! – you know, like the one described in that story from The Marshall Project. Or how about in this story from KNXV-TV Phoenix – the latest in a long line of stories about abuse in Arizona group homes and institutions. This in a state that already institutionalizes children at a rate quadruple the national average. 

● While in Virginia, WTVR-TV reports, this happened: 

Children are being transferred out of a psychiatric residential treatment facility — some returning home — after state regulators stepped in and ordered a sweeping safety overhaul at Hallmark Youthcare in Goochland County. … DBHDS previously said it was investigating Hallmark after more than a dozen juveniles ran away from the facility over two days in July. [Emphasis added.] 

But sure, classic child welfare establishment thinking says: “Let’s solve the problem of warshousing children in offices by warehousing them in RTC’s!” 

● We broke some news on this Blog this week – but it’s awful news. In New Mexico, the number of children torn from those they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care during the second three months of 2026 skyrocketed by nearly 80% over the same period the year before. If that continues, New Mexico may break the record for the worst statewide foster-care panic anywhere in America since 1999. 

● One contributor to the panic is a child-confiscation-at-birth policy, in which newborns born “exposed” to certain substances are automatically taken away instantly and held for at least 72 hours and often far longer. A prominent proponent of the policy loves to claim that, since it took effect, no child has died (a claim that is, at best, incomplete). And, she says, “there is no other metric that matters.” Which raises a question: How would those touting this as the only metric feel if the New Mexico family police agency used it as grounds to take away their children? I have a blog post about it. 

● The foster-care panic also makes it more likely children will be dumped into shelters and other makeshift placements. So, did the New Mexico foster-care panic contribute to what happened to the child at the center of this story? Oh, but I forgot. She allegedly was repeatedly sexually abused, but she didn’t die. So does her suffering even matter? 

● Last week, I noted that The Washington Post has done a lot to advance the story of the trauma inflicted on Pete Buttigieg’s family as a result of a malicious false report of child abuse. So of course, this week I have a blog post about the key lessons. 

● Fort Worth Report has a story about a promising approach to keeping families together. It’s a program similar to Intensive Family Preservation Services, a highly effective evidence-based practice that many in the child welfare establishment hate.  If you want to know why they hate it so, consider this excerpt from the story about the Fort Worth-area variation called Intercept: 

“There’s been times I’m washing dishes with the parent and we’re going over strategies for de-escalation or co-regulation.” 

The worst of the worst in child welfare are the ones who sniff: “I didn’t get a social work degree to help someone do the dishes!” The best of the best are the ones who say: “You do whatever it takes.” 

● WGBH has another story on the likely closing of the nation’s only federally-funded research center for parents with disabilities (because the Trump Administration obviously doesn’t want anyone to know what such families endure and certainly doesn’t want them to get any help). As a member of the center’s advisory board put it: 

“As a Black father with a disability, the history of just being able to have a family has always been one not necessarily possible. We’ve never had a moment to exist without the government specifically targeting the ability to even be a parent.” 

● April Miller spent years in foster care herself, then, as an adult, stepped up to take care of a cousin. But though kinship care is, by far, the least harmful form of foster care, kinship foster parents typically get far less help than those providing what should be called “stranger care.” As Miller writes in The Imprint: 

Kinship care is not a lesser form of care. It is foster care without the safety net. It is permanency without preparation. It is crisis response without compensation. And it is time we stop pretending that gratitude is an adequate substitute for support. 

Which, in a way, brings us back to Arizona, where the state cut aid to kinship foster parents, while lavishing giant rate increases on group homes and a giant pay raise on stranger-care parents. 

● And finally: In Kentucky, a toddler suffered horrible burns when he pulled down a crockpot in the family home. Here’s what happened next – or rather, what didn’t happen: No one has placed a “hold” on the child in the hospital, while child protective services investigates. In fact, CPS doesn’t seem to have even shown up. 

The family has been treated humanely, with the understanding that sometimes terrible accidents happen. In fact, according to this story from WKYT-TV, “if there is a silver lining in the whole ordeal, it’s been the way the community has shown its support for [the child], his parents, and the family.” 

 Why such understanding? Take a look at the video and you’ll have no trouble figuring it out.