NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending October 21, 2026

● Last week, an NCCPR Blog post asked the question: “How often is institutionalizing children, and the foster-care system in general, not the cure for children’s “behavioral problems” – but rather the cause?”

An investigation by Hearst Connecticut Media helps answer the question. It’s the latest in a long, long line of stories across the country exposing hideous conditions in “residential treatment” – this time it’s the Albert J. Solnit Children’s psychiatric center. But consider one case the story examines: 

"Her behaviors are much worse, I would argue, in Solnit than they were when she was not hospitalized," [her attorney, Josh] Michtom said. "She's miserable now, and she wasn't miserable then." 

She is regularly placed on restriction and prevented from going outside when she misbehaves, he said. Her preferred language is Spanish, but Solnit has no Spanish-speaking clinicians, making it difficult for her to communicate, Michtom said. … 

She can't be released from Solnit until her behaviors improve, but Michtom says, her behaviors are unlikely to improve as long as she's there. 

"In this highly restrictive environment, she gets frustrated," he said. "So it's been a cycle of not being able to take her out of this restrictive environment because the restrictive environment itself provokes behaviors in her that lead to more restriction." 

A follow-up story looks further at this case.

Unfortunately, however, the solutions offered all focus on trying to make the institution bigger and better, instead of focusing on the issues raised in this other excellent Hearst Connecticut Media story: the need to stop taking children when their poverty is confused with neglect. 

Speaking of which ...

● NCCPR in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on what really works to reduce child abuse tragedies – and what doesn’t:

Wrongful removal drives everything else. That’s why curbing it should be the first and foremost “way forward.” That requires more than heaving a sigh and saying, if only we made more use of the Family First Act — which, in fact, doesn’t allow funding the kinds of basic, concrete help most families need. It requires more than saying: We wish we had more preventive services but until then we’ll just have to hold children in foster care in a state with one of the worst reunification rates in America.

● Guests on this edition of The F Word podcast, include Prof. Josh Gupta-Kagan discussing the lack of due process in family policing. 

● Last year in New Mexico, the governor issued a child confiscation at birth decree. Even as she was bragging that, supposedly as a result, no child had died, one child was dead – possibly as a consequence of that very approach. I have a blog post about it.

● Georgia Public Broadcasting reports on a judge’s decision to curb, slightly, the practice of the state family police agency of forcing parents to pay ransom to get their children back. But the ruling applies only to the most ludicrous cases. The general practice can continue. 

The lawyer representing the parent in this case points out that which is obvious to everyone except a vindictive family police agency: 

"The children were seized because of poverty in the first place," he said. "So then to turn around and bill those parents hundreds of dollars per month serves no purpose." 

● In The Conversation, Prof. Jennifer L. Brinkley of the University of Dayton writes about the harm done when family police agencies go after parents for letting their children exercise reasonable childhood independence: 

In my scholarship and in my work as a family lawyer, I’ve seen how overly broad child neglect laws can fail families. 

These statutes are being revisited as scholars, psychologists and journalists are increasingly finding fault with “helicopter parenting,” or overprotective parenting that limits children’s independence and autonomy. 

Yet cases like Parkinson’s suggest that when the boundaries of neglect are unclear, the law continues to give parents a powerful incentive to err on the side of constant supervision.