NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 25, 2026

● Maine’s highest court has ruled that no, the state family police agency can’t keep a family apart forever just because mom can’t afford housing. But the agency sure did try – and they may yet succeed. As the Maine Monitor put it in their excellent story about the case: 

The ruling highlights the ongoing debate in Augusta about whether Maine’s child welfare system too often conflates lack of financial resources with abuse or neglect, as well as Maine’s recent history of taking children into foster care at higher rates than other states. It also puts into stark relief the consequences of Maine’s affordable housing crisis. 

And if you compare what Maine authorities did here to the remarkable restraint shown by their Ohio counterparts in a case with some striking similarities, it highlights something else, too.  I have a blog post about it.  

● A family police agency chasing a mother all the way to another state and harassing her also was the issue in a major appellate court decision in New York.  As The New York Times reports, the court said New York City’s family police agency is not allowed to do that – something one could kind of see coming given how the oral argument went. 

● Workers in Missouri were desperate to find a placement for Korbin Papadopoulous, a 17-year-old with diabetes and autism. They were desperate because a foster-care panic has sent the number of children torn from their homes skyrocketing – creating an artificial “shortage” of foster homes. 

So they wound up placing the youth in a home that wasn’t licensed to take in nonrelatives and wasn’t equipped to meet his medical needs. The foster parents did their best – and at least twice asked the state family police agency, the Children’s Division, to take the youth back. By the time they finally agreed, it was too late. As the Missouri Independent reports, the boy died of diabetic ketoacidosis. 

The head of the Children’s Division, Sara Smith, responded exactly as anyone familiar with her track record would expect: with a flurry of CYA memos, effectively attempting to shift blame to frontline workers. But, with her foster-care panic and her fanatical demands to take away more children, Smith herself bears more responsibility for this tragedy than any overwhelmed frontline worker. 

Oh, and if you’re thinking: Well, these things happen when abused children have to be removed, here’s the thing: This child was never abused. 

As the Independent story explains: 

Korbin first entered foster care in 2019. His father told The Independent he and Korbin’s mother approached Children’s Division for help after their son was diagnosed with diabetes and autism. They couldn’t afford the treatment their son’s doctors advised, Papadopoulos said, and the division indicated they could provide resources. 

[Korbin’s mother, Natisha Jett] said she and Papadopoulos went to the division because they “just wanted to get (him) the help he needed so he could have the life he deserves.” 

Korbin “didn’t need a family,” Papadopoulos said. “He already had a family.” 

Papadopoulos said Korbin had more than 15 placements in residential facilities and foster homes before his death. 

● In the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Dr. Mical Raz tells the story of Foster Care Youth United, the pioneering publication founded in 1993 that, at long last, let foster youth tell their own stories – unfiltered by the adults who built and maintained the system that enmeshed them. And yet, their voices were shut out when Congress debated a law that would profoundly worsen many of their lives, the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act. 

Dr. Raz writes about how the magazine’s founder Keith Hefner was shocked by  

…[t]he prevalence of sexual abuse endured by young girls while in foster care … He recalled observing that among the magazine’s writers, the vast majority of girls and many of the boys reported experiencing sexual abuse, often in group homes or foster families.35 In one heartbreaking essay, a young woman, who chose to remain anonymous, described how her social worker repeatedly coerced her into sexual relations. She recounted how, the first time he raped her, she “wanted to scream, but I also wanted to go on a weekend pass with my mother.” She knew her assailant was the one who could approve such a visit. 

● Never underestimate how low private foster agencies will sink to rub salt into the wounds of children abused on their watch. The Sacramento Bee reports that once again, in California, they’re trying to curb the right of those survivors to receive compensation for what was done to them. (It’s not just private foster care agencies; school districts also are fine with making things more miserable for those abused on their watch.) 

● So it’s a good thing even more survivors in San Diego are suing now, including residents of a shelter that was once notorious. As the San Diego Union Tribune reports: 

One of the new cases comes from former residents of the Polinsky Children’s Center, the temporary shelter in Kearny Mesa that treats children who are removed from their homes for their own protection. 

In this week’s (further) reminder that the horror stories go in all directions: 

● From KABC-TV, Los Angeles: 

A Riverside foster parent has been charged with multiple felonies after allegedly sexually assaulting at least three girls and one boy who were under his care over a period of nearly 20 years.