NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending October 13, 2026

● The Imprint reports on the child welfare finance reform plan proposed by United Family Advocates, the group that represents true bipartisanship in child welfare. But the most revealing part of the story may be a comment from one of those who has “concerns”: 

Wendy Henderson, the former leader of Wisconsin’s child welfare agency said it was worth discussing reform ideas given the steep decline in foster children’s eligibility for Title IV-E reimbursement. But she questioned setting a baseline for new grants based on recent years, when foster care entries have been at a historic low. As recent changes to welfare cash assistance and food aid take effect, Henderson and others expect to see more families becoming involved with child welfare. 

In other words: More families will be poor – so we have to take their children! 

● See also UFA Executive Director Joanna Lack’s op-ed column in The Hill about the urgent need for this reform.

● Who really has mental health issues? Who has the real “behavioral problem” – the children who respond normally to being forced into hideous institutions and shelters and having to endure horrible conditions or the adults who force the children into these places and then rationalize their actions to themselves and the rest of us? Ella Bat-Ami offers remarkable insights on the first episode of the latest season of a podcast aptly called “The F Word.” As Bat-Ami puts it, “When you’re in foster care, your brain is perpetually on fire.” I have a blog post about her insights, with a link to the full podcast. 

● Bat-Ami said what made the biggest difference for her was 

having non-system-involved adults involved in my life … Most of what went right actually had nothing to do with the system doing the right thing; it was the community of Tennessee and my local community stepping up … 

Former foster youth said something remarkably similar as they spoke to NPR about the enormous harm they suffered as their mental health problems were misdiagnosed – and often worsened – as they were moved from one institution to another. Yes, occasionally they would find a helping adult who understood what they really needed. “But often, that key adult was someone totally outside the foster care system.” 

● Also on The F Word podcast, Lily Colby, another former foster youth who is founder of the National Network for Fostering Sibling Connections, discussed the forced separation of foster children from their siblings, often for mind-bogglingly stupid bureaucratic reasons.  

● You’ve all heard Joyce McMillan’s call for people involved in “child welfare” to become mandatory supporters, not mandatory reporters.  New York City schools have taken an impressive step in that direction. 

Rachel Fee, a housing activist, got an email when her child was out sick. Instead of a threat to call the city’s family police agency, the email was a menu of ways various city agencies can help. Ms. Fee tweeted out the full email here and here’s a screenshot:

● Here’s a good rule of thumb when judging the accuracy of a news story. If someone whose agency has been exposed for allegedly doing awful things says at a community meeting: “The information and the reports that are out in the community are just factually wrong,” but then can’t name a single factual error, odds are the information and the reports that are out in the community are just factually right. Case in point: The Tampa Bay Times expose of hidden foster care, discussed in this follow-up story. 

● The Tampa Bay Times also took a broader look at the alleged reduction in the Florida foster care population  -- alleged because no one really knows how much is real and how much is, yes,  hidden foster care. 

● Imagine a law so manifestly just and necessary that even the current U.S. Supreme Court won’t overturn it, and won’t even hear the latest attempt to overturn it. The Imprint reports on the failure of the latest challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act. See also the statement from the Native American Rights Fund. 

● The Imprint also has another reminder of the ugly history that makes ICWA essential. 

This week’s reminder that the horror stories go in all directions: 

● From West Virginia Watch: 

Child victims in a gruesome abuse case have been awarded $4.4 million in a settlement with the state Department of Human Services due to Child Protective Services failures in the case.  

A white couple living in Sissonville, West Virginia, had kept their adopted Black children in deplorable conditions, treating them as slaves. Some of the children were forced to live in a shed without running water or a bathroom.

● From The Sun in San Bernardino County, California: 

Riverside County has agreed to pay more than $4.2 million to two siblings who alleged in a lawsuit that they were sexually abused in their foster home by a boy with a history of sexually deviant behavior. 

The settlement is just the latest in Riverside County resulting in a multimillion-dollar payout to families who accused county social workers of placing youths with documented histories of sexual abuse and/or sexually violent behavior into foster homes with children they subsequently abused.