NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 18, 2026

● It was bound to happen eventually: Sooner or later, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver would take on some of the enormous harm done by family policing. In Sunday’s program, they took on the enormous damage done by the way many state laws and family police agencies deal with substance use by pregnant women. The part about “child welfare” begins at 8:25 in. 

One footnote: Because the segment was built around so-called “fetal personhood” laws, the examples came from red states. But you don’t need such a statute to persecute pregnant women and do enormous harm to their newborns. One of the worst offenders is deep blue Vermont. 

● I really hope they were watching in New Mexico, where they are at peak foster-care panic in part because the Governor herself has screwed up on this issue, imposing a child-confiscation-at- birth policy whenever a newborn or the child’s mother tests positive for certain substances. Reason reports on the harm similar policies are causing nationwide.

● And the Santa Fe New Mexican reports on a tragedy from years ago that, thanks in part to the Governor’s policy, is even more likely to happen in that state today: 

The New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department paid $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit in which the agency was accused of placing two young siblings with a family where the children were starved, beaten and one was sexually abused. … The children … suffered abuse over a number of years while staying with the Taos family, and CYFD failed to substantiate allegations of abuse against the family and signed off on the children’s adoption, leading to more abuse, the original civil complaint filed in the lawsuit alleges. 

The boy later said he was being starved by his adoptive parents, who were “only giving him one hot dog at noon and one hot dog for dinner,” and would withhold food from him for bad behavior, the lawsuit states. At the time, he hadn’t eaten in two days. 

The boy was also not allowed to leave his room to go to the restroom and was forced to relieve himself in his room. He also reported being brutally abused, including by beatings from older children in the home on the orders of his adoptive parents, the lawsuit states. His sibling, meanwhile, was being physically and sexually abused, it adds. 

Much of this happened ten years ago. But thanks to everyone from the governor to the state attorney general to their allies in advocacy and media, something like this is even more likely to happen today. Here’s why. 

● But, Boston Medical Center reports that, when it comes to substance use, Massachusetts is moving in the opposite direction – and, according to a new study, it’s working – cutting reports to the family police in half with no compromise of safety. From BMC’s press release: 

"As clinicians, we have long recognized that reflexive reporting feels punitive and rarely serves children's or families' best interests. This study helps establish that alternative, discretionary approaches are feasible and that clinical teams can appropriately identify infant safety concerns after birth," said Heather Hsu, MD, MPH, senior author of the study and a pediatric hospitalist at BMC.

"We hope this research encourages hospitals and policymakers across the country to consider what a more compassionate, evidence-based standard of care could mean for families everywhere." 

● New Mexico isn’t the only state where children are paying the price of foster-care panic. The Missouri Independent reports in this story that the number of children trapped in Missouri foster care soared by more than 14% over the past 16 months - in other words, since Sara Smith started running the state’s family police agency, the Children’s Division, bringing her take-the-child-and-run fanaticism to the job. 

The Independent reports that Smith has abolished team decision-making meetings that used to take place before children were removed. And she’s effectively demanded more adherence to a biased “risk assessment” form that includes a classic self-fulfilling prophecy: Any past contact with the Children’s Division, even if the family is innocent, is among the factors that raise the score. (That’s great news for anyone who wants to harass someone with repeated false reports, by the way.) 

Indeed, what may seem like neutral bureaucratic changes often reflect Smith’s take-the-child-and-run agenda: Almost all are geared to making foster care the easier answer for overwhelmed caseworkers, while making anything else harder. 

Oh, and in addition to the enormous harm she’s doing to children in individual cases, she’s plunged her entire agency into chaos. 

● The next item this week doesn’t mention child protective services at all. It doesn’t say a word about foster care. That’s the point. It’s a column by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. He tells the story of a high school teacher who had a student who was falling asleep in class. She found out why her student was falling asleep. She also found out the student was hungry. But she didn’t make everything worse by making the knee-jerk call to the family police. What she did instead is a perfect example of what it means to be, in Joyce McMillan’s words, a mandatory supporter instead of a mandatory reporter. 

● Gene Weingarten has an update to his column about a mother jailed and awaiting trial on second-degree murder charges after she forgot that she’d left her child in a hot car. Here’s his first column about the case. Such charges are, of course, more likely to be brought if the parent is nonwhite. And, as Weingarten points out, for the surviving children, there is an extra element of cruelty here: 

Deja Coleman’s oldest son, Dinero, is profoundly autistic. He articulates mostly in unintelligible sounds. In asking the court to grant Coleman’s release on bond, Ford argued that her continued incarceration was an unconscionable added cruelty to a vulnerable innocent: 

“The only person on the planet that her nonverbal six year old son can communicate with is her.” 

● Yes, again: Another exposé of another institution rife with abuse, where the instructions from the top allegedly were to cover it up and delay seeking outside help. This time the story is from WPLN Public Radio in Tennessee and ProPublica. This time, it’s a juvenile justice institution. But remember, this is Tennessee, where the family police agency wanted a change in law to allow them to throw in jail any foster child who they felt was getting out of line, or even threatening to get out of line.  

● Also yet again: Still another study documenting how providing concrete help reduces not only what agencies call neglect but physical abuse as well.