NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 12, 2026

● The Marshall Project and CBS News Sunday Morning produced a stunning in-depth report on how the family police persecute pregnant women if their newborns allegedly test positive for even trace amounts of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Was the child unharmed? It doesn’t matter. Was the marijuana prescribed by a doctor? It doesn’t matter. The vengeance of the system takes precedence over anything, including the harm to children whose parents can’t make a living because they’re on a “central registry” or the newborns separated from their mothers at birth while the mothers who can’t make bail are thrown into jail. You can watch the story here or below and read the Marshall Project series here. 

See also this CBS News Sunday Morning interview with Dr. Stephen Patrick, a doctor in neonatal ICUs and a researcher on how the opioid crisis affects pregnant women and infants. Dr. Patrick … 

… talks with CBS News' Erin Moriarty about what happens after a mother tests positive for a substance during pregnancy. Patrick argues that automatically referring mothers to child welfare or law enforcement over a single drug test - even for substances like marijuana, which are legal in much of the country - can create more harm than it prevents: driving women away from prenatal care, disproportionately affecting Black and Native American families, and separating moms from newborns without evidence of harm. 

● For years, New York City’s family police agency claimed its use of “predictive analytics” – or, as it should be called, computerized racial profiling - was confined to one itty bitty algorithm far from affecting frontline practice decisions. If that ever was true, it sure isn’t now.  Defector has just exposed the full extent of the profiling. It’s the kind of scheme the Trump Administration wants to see come to your state, too. 

● Seventeen years ago, Gene Weingarten, then a reporter and editor for The Washington Post, won a Pulitzer Prize for a story about children who die when their parents forget they’ve left them in hot cars. Now, on his Substack, he reports on another case, from Georgia.  

Among many other points, Weingarten notes that “statistically, prosecutors are significantly more likely to seek criminal penalties in these cases when the defendant is dark-skinned.” Indeed, the one study I know of concerning the issue, which used occupation as a surrogate measure for race and class found: 

One particularly important and disturbing finding was the disparate treatment of parents from different socioeconomic groups. Parents working in blue-collar professions or who were unemployed were four times more likely to be prosecuted than parents from wealthier socioeconomic groups. 

As you read Weingarten’s story, please be sure to compare how this mother is being treated to the treatment afforded this Georgia father, who, unambiguously, was at fault in endangering his children.  

And consider as well: while the authorities gleefully take their swing at the mother, the blow is landing hardest on the surviving children. Her network of friends has rallied around to cushion the blow as much as possible, but they are still suffering because of this separation, suffering that may well endure even if the family is reunited. 

That cruelty is brought home in an update Weingarten posted today (Aug. 12) which concludes this way:

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.”

● A case from Georgia also is the focus of this excellent New York Times story about families harassed by the family police for allowing their children to exercise reasonable childhood independence – and the laws some states have passed to try to put a stop to such harassment. 

● In the years since the federal Indian Child Welfare Act became law, 17 states have strengthened protection for Native American children by passing their own versions of ICWA. Now, The Imprint reports, a nonprofit known as the Uniform Law Commission has drafted a model law for the remaining states to consider. From the story: 

If enacted by state legislatures, the proposed rules would strengthen requirements that social workers make “active efforts” to prevent family separation, such as prioritizing tribal kin for out-of-home placements and providing Indigenous parents more opportunities to reunite with children before their parental rights are terminated. It would also ensure that parental abuse or neglect findings are not solely based on “community or family poverty.” 

… [T]he model law, the uniform state ICWA proposal is more expansive and detailed than the federal law. It offers clearer guidance on cultural competency, including addressing language barriers in child welfare proceedings. It also clarifies that tribal law should carry the same weight as state law. 

● And there’s this, from Medscape: 

Children with complex chronic conditions are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system and their caregivers are significantly more likely to be investigated for medical neglect, according to a new analysis published in Pediatrics.

The findings underscore the need for primary care clinicians to distinguish between caregivers who are unwilling to provide necessary medical care to their children or are unable because of transportation, finances, and inadequate social support, and to exhaust efforts to aid caregivers in fulfilling those needs before reporting. 

In this week’s reminder that the horror stories go in all directions 

● From NewsNation An example of the horrors going in all directions for the same children: 

Julissa Turpin thought that she was safe after being rescued in 2018 from the California “house of horrors” she shared with 12 siblings and their abusive parents, Louise and David Turpin. 

With Louise and David behind bars, Julissa and several of her siblings rejoiced in their freedom and looked forward to moving into a foster home. Caseworkers assured them they’d be safe, and they believed it. “I was so vulnerable and (it was) easy to believe anything that people were telling me,” Julissa Turpin, 20, tells NewsNation. 

But she ended up being re-abused in the foster home where she and several of her siblings were sent. ...

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.

New Mexico gets its foster-care panic

The number of children torn from their families so far in 2026 soars 40% over 2025. In the second quarter, the increase is nearly 80%

Congratulations, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and your take-the-child-and-run allies: You got your foster care panic. 

With everyone from the Governor to the Attorney General to the usual take-the-child-and-run extremists attacking efforts to keep families together, New Mexico has just what they apparently want: a foster-care panic sweeping vast numbers of additional children away from everyone they know and love and into the chaos of New Mexico foster care. 

Data just released by the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department and being reported here for the first time show that the number of children torn from their homes during the first half of 2026 soared 40% over the same period in 2025. (To see the data, click on “removals” in the left-hand column.) And the panic seems to be accelerating. When you look only at the second quarter of 2026, CYFD caseworkers stormed into homes (or sometimes hospital rooms) and walked out with the children at a rate nearly 80% above the rate during the same period in 2025.

 

 The second quarter of 2026 coincides with the release of a highly publicized report by Torrez in which he used Trump-style tactics to falsely scapegoat family preservation for the very real failings of CYFD. There was a similar spike in child removal in the third quarter of 2025 – when the governor announced her child-confiscation-at-birth policy for newborns exposed to certain drugs. 

Just yesterday, a news account revealed one of those who may have been a victim of this take-the-child-and-run mentality: a 13-year-old girl allegedly sexually abused repeatedly while parked in a “shelter” known as New Day. According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the child, not only did the shelter do nothing to help the child, they tried to cover up the abuse. 

If that’s what happened, then rather than being kept safe by the take-the-child-and-run mentality, she paid the price of New Mexico’s foster care panic. Because even if this particular child really needed to be taken from her home (and we don’t know that), the place in a good, safe foster home that should have been hers was taken by someone else, someone who didn’t need to be taken, someone who may have been taken because family poverty was confused with neglect, or someone taken for some other reason – but a problem that could have been solved without resorting to the trauma of foster care placement. 

The extent of the harm 

She is not alone. Because here is what we know about foster care and foster care panics: 

● We know there is abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes, and the rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is worse. 

● We know that the inherent trauma of foster care is so great that study after study finds that children left in their own homes typically fare better in later life even than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care. That’s because the typical cases are nothing like the horror stories in which advocates like Torrez revel. They exploit these tragedies the way Donald Trump exploits horror stories about immigrants, leaving a gross misimpression of who is in the system and why. 

● We know that the harm is so great, the trauma so inherent, that one study found that by age 20, children placed in foster care are four times more likely to die than comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. 

● All this trauma is so great that now it’s even possible to estimate how many more children will die because they were placed in foster care. So when, in speaking of the governor’s child-confiscation-at-birth policy, another New Mexico take-the-child-and-run advocate says no child has died and “there is no other metric that matters” – keep in mind: She should have said: No child has died yet. And if you say no other metric matters, does that mean what was allegedly done to that 13-year-old in the shelter, and all the other children harmed by foster care, doesn’t matter? 

A foster-care panic makes it all worse 

A foster-care panic worsens all of it: It increases the temptation to lower standards for foster parents and look the other way when there is abuse in group homes, shelters and institutions. 

The lawsuit against New Day alleges that “management’s initial reaction was fear that New Day would be shut down if the public learned what had happened.” But they probably have nothing to worry about. In a foster-care panic, agencies like CYFD are begging for beds, and beggars can’t be choosers. 

A foster-care panic also further overloads workers, leaving them less time to find those few cases of children in real danger for whom foster care really is the only safe option. 

So congratulations, Governor Grisham. Congratulations, Attorney General Torrez. Congratulations, take-the-child-and-run advocates. And Congratulations to all who have cheered them on. All of you almost certainly had the best of intentions. I assume you really thought this was the best way to protect children. But instead, you have managed to make all the vulnerable children of New Mexico less safe.

Three million children endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation every year, almost always because of a false report. Now we know more about how the children of Pete Buttigieg became two of them.

Pete Buttigieg (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

TheWashington Post has done excellent work advancing the story of the malicious, false allegation of child abuse against Pete Buttigieg. A few points stand out: 

● What the Attorney General doesn’t seem to know 

The story notes that the Michigan Attorney General’s office is investigating the handling of the false allegation against the family – in other words, they’re investigating the investigation. That’s because, a spokesperson says, “Common sense would have shown that this targeted report plainly lacked credibility on its face. Before children are separated from their families, due diligence should be exercised to ensure some nexus exists between the source and the family, or that the complaint comes from a reputable, reliable, or verifiable source.” 

There’s just one problem. Michigan law prohibits the exercise of common sense. If an allegation even “minimally” meets the definition of child abuse or neglect in state law, it must be investigated. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t “some nexus … between the source and the family.” It doesn’t matter if the complaint doesn’t come “from a reputable, reliable, or verifiable source.” 

That is not unusual. It’s one reason that of the two million reports alleging child abuse that are investigated each year, more than 80% turn out to be false reports. That’s true even though in most states a report is “substantiated” if a caseworker simply checks a box on a form guessing that it is at least slightly more likely than not that the abuse or neglect occurred.  Among “substantiated” reports, the overwhelming majority allege neglect – which, of course, often means poverty. 

Because screening for credibility is not allowed, and for many other reasons, the process about which the Attorney General now claims to be upset - the process the Post story aptly describes as stemming from “a vague and unsubstantiated allegation …” is not unusual. It is the norm. 

It happens to nearly three million children every year, more than 145,000 in Michigan alone. That’s an average of more than 8,000 children’s families investigated nationwide every day. But those families are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite.  In fact, by the time they turn 18, more than one-third of all children and more than half of all Black children will endure what the Buttigieg children endured – and for many, if not most, it will be far worse. 

The only thing unusual about the Buttigieg case is that the children victimized by the police and by what should be called the family police were the children of a prominent public figure. 

● The only families the attorney general seems to care about are celebrities 

Although those most often affected almost always are unknown, almost always are poor and are disproportionately nonwhite, the Attorney General seems to have no interest in them. 

According to the Post story, the goal of the Attorney General’s office is to 

reduce the risk of false allegations of child abuse “against other well-known residents and elected officials as the newest form of threat or intimidation,” the spokesperson said. 

The rest of you – the other 397 children whose families are investigated on an average day in Michigan based on reports that are overwhelmingly false, don’t seem to count for much. 

● To make everything worse, just add Indiana 

When I first read about what happened to the Buttigieg children, I thought to myself: At least they don’t still live in Indiana. Because while the Michigan system is bad, the Indiana system is among the nation’s worst – investigating families and tearing them apart with a hair trigger. Details are here. 

But it turns out Indiana’s police and child welfare agency were involved – and, sure enough, they managed to make things worse. For starters … 

● It wasn’t an anonymous report after all – well, not at first 

(A note about the appearance of “appears": Though the Post has done superb work trying to trace how all this came about, because of the number of agencies involved and their ability to keep so much secret, some things remain uncertain – hence the frequent appearance of the word “appears” in this section.)

Up to now, everyone, myself included, has been writing that the initial call accusing  Buttigieg was anonymous. Apparently not. It appears that the first place the caller phoned was Indiana’s child welfare agency (or as it should be called, the family police agency), the Department of Child Services.  At that point, it appears, she did indeed identify herself. The Post even was able to track her down. 

It further appears that, as in Michigan, hotline screeners in Indiana are not allowed to screen out a 
report based on the credibility of the reporter. If the allegations meet the statutory definition of abuse and neglect, and if there’s enough information to find the family, it must be screened in. 

We don’t know how Indiana police got involved, but odds are it's because the allegations were heinous and lurid – involving allegations so severe that regulations may advise or even require law enforcement involvement. 

It appears that both Indiana DCS and Indiana police passed on the information to their Michigan counterparts, who then rushed to the Buttigieg home. None of these four agencies did any checking beforehand. In the case of the CPS agencies, they probably were not allowed to, and the police likely followed their leads. But that doesn’t explain why it was days before anyone from Michigan even bothered to try to get more information from Indiana. 

● How did it become an anonymous report? 

In Indiana, according to DCS, “State law requires DCS to protect the identity of those reporting abuse or neglect allegations. DCS keeps the name and contact information of all report sources confidential.” 

According to the Post: 

Ron Green, a spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Child Services, said the agency followed “established procedures,” including not sharing information about callers. After this article first published, Green said the agency’s policy does allow for caller information to be shared with other child welfare agencies and law enforcement. [Emphasis added.] 

So why didn’t that happen? 

If the agency’s own flack could make that mistake in a newspaper interview, is it possible that whoever sent the report from Indiana to Michigan made the same mistake? 

What is clear is that none of these four agencies seemed to have much interest in tracking down the reporter or checking her credibility. It’s one more indication of the extent to which these agencies are inured to the harm their investigations do to the children they’re supposedly protecting and to their families, and the extent to which they treat those families with contempt. 

Except now, maybe, when they’re famous.

Child welfare in New Mexico: Which metrics matter when it’s YOUR child?

 

New Mexico has a child-confiscation-at-birth policy, in which newborns who test positive for 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. And, she says, “there is no other metric that matters.” 

The first thing to know about the claim is that it needs a huge qualifier: No child has died yet. Because the research is overwhelming that, between the high rates of abuse in foster care and the emotional trauma that will lead to all sorts of rotten outcomes, in typical cases placement in foster care actually increases the odds that a child will die.  It’s even possible to calculate the odds. It won’t necessarily be right away; it may be years from now. That will make it easy for those advocating for policies like confiscation-at-birth to avoid accountability. But it won’t make the children any less dead. 

And yet some New Mexico media love that “only metric that matters” line. But then, journalists in New Mexico, like everywhere else, are overwhelmingly middle-class and disproportionately white. That makes them largely immune from intervention by agencies that should be called the family police. 

But what if that were not the case? Suppose, hypothetically, you’re a New Mexico journalist, or lawmaker, or other prominent public figure and you’ve found yourself in the position of, say, Pete Buttigieg. Suppose someone who didn’t like one of your bills, or one of your stories, decided to file a false, malicious child abuse report accusing you of the most vile crimes against children. And now, suppose New Mexico had an analogous policy for these kinds of cases: Suppose that policy said: If the allegation is sufficiently heinous, we take the child first and investigate later. 

So now, it’s happening to you, and the caseworker is at your door. The dialogue might go like this: 

YOU: But I’m innocent. You can see the children are unharmed!

CASEWORKER: It doesn’t matter. We don’t evaluate case-by-case; it’s a blanket policy. The allegations are heinous, so we take the children. That way, no child will die, and that’s the only metric that matters.

YOU: But there’s abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes; the rate in group homes and institutions is even worse. And this is New Mexico, where children get moved from home to home at one of the highest rates in the nation. Think of the chances they’ll be abused.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: But if it drags on long enough, they’ll fall behind on their education.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: They’ll be more likely to wind up in the juvenile justice system.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: They’re more likely to be unemployed.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: They’re more likely to wind up in jail than to graduate from college.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: They’re more than four times more likely to die before age 20 than even comparably maltreated children left in their own homes!

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter. 

So what do you say then? Do you say: Oh, well, you’re right. Whether children die – right away – is the only metric that matters, so of course I’ll sacrifice my child to this policy and let my children suffer all those other consequences. Or do you fight like hell? And do you start to wonder how many scores, maybe hundreds of other children have been taken needlessly and subjected to the harm from all those other metrics – because those metrics – and those harms – don’t matter? 

When you ignore people who already are stereotyped and stigmatized (using the same tactics Trump uses to stereotype and stigmatize immigrants, by the way), it’s easy to dehumanize them. When you dehumanize them, it's easy to convince yourself that they don’t love their children the way you love yours, and to convince yourself those children don’t love their parents the way your children love you. So it’s easy to convince yourself that all those other metrics – about all the harm done by separation – don’t really matter for them. You can even wrap yourself in the self-righteous conviction that you’re saving the children instead of putting them at greater risk. 

Perhaps the New Mexico journalists and lawmakers most keen on confiscation-at-birth and the whole take-the-child-and-run mentality should try speaking to families who’ve gone through needless removal (families with all perspectives, not just one parent put forward by proponents to confess her sins and express her gratitude for having her child taken). Then they might reconsider their love for an approach that only applies to people like them and not to people like us. They might even find out that the people like them are full-fledged human beings who typically love their children as much as people like us love ours. 

And then they might even ask those who say fatalities are “the only metric that matters” why they support approaches that, in addition to all that other harm, actually make it more likely that children will die.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending July 28, 2026

● 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.  Among other things, the Michigan Attorney General’s office has announced it will be investigating the investigation. That’s because, a spokesperson says, “Common sense would have shown that this targeted report plainly lacked credibility on its face.” 

Well, yes. But apparently the Attorney General doesn’t know that Michigan law prohibits the exercise of common sense. If an allegation even “minimally” meets the definition of child abuse or neglect in state law, it must be investigated – something we pointed out in this commentary for Bridge Michigan 

● There’s another excellent commentary on the Buttigieg case from Viviana Bonilla López of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project in The 74. Bonilla López points out: 

What set Buttigieg apart was not that his family was treated unjustly, but that he had the money, legal representation and public support that families with fewer resources will never have. 

● People often ask for a formula for successfully reducing needless foster care, as though there is a checklist of interventions that fits every case. But the places that succeed know that the actual formula is: “whatever it takes.” Case in point: this story from The Imprint on how the Osage Nation dramatically reduced foster care, at one point even going six months without a single child being taken. 

● There is fury, as there should be, over the New Mexico family police agency effectively abandoning a 15-year-old at the Mexican border. But some of those screaming loudest may have helped create conditions that set the crisis in motion. I have a blog post about it. 

● The Imprint reports on some good news from Santa Clara County. In that county, children have been ripped from their families at a pace so frantic it’s been the worst foster-care panic anywhere in America in decades. The new cases so overloaded the agency providing family defense that they said they’d have to shut down. But the County is stepping in with additional funding to save most of the work. Most, but not all. One of their strongest programs, providing defense counsel before a case ever reaches court, won’t be funded unless someone else steps up. 

● The news is uglier in San Bernardino County. There, two lawsuits filed by victims of horrific abuse are a reminder of why private agencies should not get virtual immunity from such suits. Nor should they get a bailout to help pay their insurance premiums. I have a blog post about it. 

● One of the children allegedly abused in these cases, in her case fatally, was disabled. The Imprint reports on efforts by the Trump Administration to make sure we all know less about how disabled children and parents fare at the hands of the family police. Mother Jones also has a story. 

In this week’s reminder that The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

From WSOC-TV: 

The family of a 13-year-old Chester boy is demanding answers after investigators said he was stabbed and held underwater by two older teens at a South Carolina lake. Daryl Lowry, who was in foster care at the time of his death, was killed during a confrontation near a boat dock in McCormick County, according to state authorities.

UPDATED: Child abandonment in New Mexico: Was a crucial opportunity missed?

This is the Bridge of the Americas border crossing - where the New Mexico 
family police agency reportedly told a 15-year-old to cross the border alone
to reunite with his mother. 

Did the New Mexico child welfare agency fail to offer help when extended family (or maybe it was godparents) couldn’t cope with a child’s behavioral problems? Or were the godparents willing, but blocked by a hospital and the child welfare agency? Did that set off an awful chain of events? These are not rhetorical questions. Maybe it didn’t happen that way. But New Mexico media should be asking. 

UPDATE, AUGUST 1, 2026: The New Mexico Attorney General is suing the state family police agency, the Children, Youth and Families Department, demanding that the agency return the child from Mexico. The Complaint the agency has filed may shed new light on what happened. This Associated Press story does a good job of summarizing the Complaint. But, like CYFD itself, the Attorney General’s office is an unreliable source, resorting to Trump-style tactics to demonize families. That’s why we call our analysis of the Attorney General’s April report about CYFD Two Epic Fails.

So, for example, the Complaint alleges that, at one point, CYFD workers yelled at the child for returning from Mexico. At another point, CYFD workers allegedly told the Border Patrol that the child was now “Texas’ problem.” Indeed, if the Complaint is to be believed, the Border Patrol treated this child more humanely than CYFD. But is this Complaint to be believed?

Further complicating the matter: At key points the Complaint is redacted. Is that legally required? Is it done to protect the child’s privacy? Or would an unredacted version call into question some of the claims? Given how much the Attorney General postures about others’ failure to be transparent, at a minimum there should be an explanation.

So with those caveats, the post below (and the headline above) have been amended to add the new information where it appears to be reliable. In these places, new information is in red, the original version is crossed out.

There is fury in New Mexico, as there should be, over how the state family police agency, the Children, Youth and Families Department, handled the case of a 15-year-old boy. They got a court to award custody to his mother, whom the child had not lived with for at least nine years and who had just been deported to Mexico. Then they took him to a border crossing and said: Go cross the bridge – alone – and meet your mother. 

The 15-year-old didn’t want to go. But he went into Mexico, and when he couldn't find his mother, Instead, he crossed several lanes of traffic, went back to the United States. When CYFD refused to take him back, the Border Patrol took him to fled to Texas, was held in a shelter in Texas. The Texas child welfare agency ultimately reunited him  there and then, ultimately, reunited with his mother in Mexico. 

In short, CYFD committed child abuse and child abandonment.  

There were three crucial blunders here; the third of which, perhaps the most important, has gotten no attention. 

1.     1. It shouldn’t be necessary to even say this one: You don’t abandon children at an international border and, in effect, throw them away. Whether placement with the mother is right or wrong, this is inexcusable. 

2.     2. The child did not want to return to his mother in Mexico. The return to the mother apparently was approved by a court. But where was the child’s lawyer? In New Mexico, children age 14 and over are entitled to their own lawyers. Those lawyers are supposed to tell the judge what the child wants. It’s not clear how vigorously they are required to advocate for the child’s wishes. 

What should have happened is that the child’s lawyer should have fought tooth and nail for the child’s wishes, making the best possible case on the child’s behalf. That’s not because the child was necessarily right. It’s because deciding what’s best is what judges are for, and they are most likely to make the right decision if all sides are allowed to make the strongest possible case for their positions. 

Did that happen here? We don’t know. In New Mexico, these court hearings are supposed to be open, but this one reportedly was closed. 

Is there a vital failure no one is talking about? 

There are two versions of what happened here, each of which reflects a failure by CYFD. Version 1, as originally published here: 

3.     3. The most important failure may have happened a month or two earlier. News accounts vary, but it appears that this child was living either with relatives or family friends acting as godparents. According to one story: 

The boy was hospitalized in May because of behavioral health issues. When he was discharged in June, however, no one was able to take him in.

According to another account, which refers to the caretakers as godparents, those godparents were willing to keep the boy’s siblings, but not him.

Why?

We don’t know. But there are many cases in which caretakers, whether parents, extended family, foster parents or adoptive parents, simply find a child’s behavioral problems so difficult, they feel they have no choice but to surrender the child. That’s what happened, for example, to a child in Baltimore, Kanaiyah Ward. Her mother was desperate to get her help. Instead, Maryland’s family police agency dumped her in a hotel where she committed suicide. In the New Mexico case, the child also has a heart condition. 

If, in fact, this was the case here, if this was another case of overwhelmed family/guardians who felt they could no longer care for the child, CYFD might have avoided this entire crisis by offering Wraparound services – intensive help in which the family is provided whatever it needs to cope with any behavioral and medical conditions. Yes, sometimes caretakers are so overwhelmed, and so rightly distrustful of family police agencies, that it takes some convincing. Once again, I give you my favorite example. 

But did CYFD even try? 

It doesn’t look that way. And no wonder: CYFD is deluged by false reports, trivial cases, and cases in which poverty is confused with neglect, so the agency lurches from crisis to crisis. That, in turn, is caused by advocates of a take-the-child-and-run approach who use Trump-style smear tactics to encourage the needless separation of more and more families. 

In other words, by so deluging the agency, some of the very people screaming most loudly about what happened to this 15-year-old, such as the state Attorney General, may have worsened the conditions that set this latest crisis in motion in the first place. 

But the Attorney General’s Complaint offers a different version. In this version, the godparents themselves sent the boy to live with relatives in Mexico, but he ran away, back to New Mexico.

That’s when he was hospitalized. When he was ready for discharge the godparents did want him – but, according to the Attorney General’s Complaint, the hospital refused to discharge him because the godparents weren’t his formal legal custodians. Even after the godmother got a signed letter from the mother authorizing her to take the child, the hospital allegedly refused.

Then, the Attorney General says, the hospital filed a child abuse report – claiming there was no one legally allowed to take him!

So what did CYFD do? They, too, apparently wouldn’t give him back to his godparents, and placed him with strangers in foster care instead.

So not only is there no indication CYFD helped the godparents, if this version is correct (and again, we have only the Attorney General’s word for it) they actively thwarted the godparents.

The only thing we know CYFD actually did was to ship the boy off to a foster home, after which the mother expressed interest in custody, after which CYFD got a court to award custody, after which they dumped the child at the border. 

Should the child live with his mother? 

Most New Mexico media certainly don’t seem to think so. They point out that the mother had two “substantiated” allegations of child abuse against her, most recently in 2021. But substantiated means only that a caseworker checked a box on a form. There were many more allegations, but those were unfounded, meaning they couldn’t even meet that minimal standard. So, what did the mother allegedly do in those two “substantiated” cases? Did the mother allegedly beat and torture her children? Was her poverty confused with neglect? Or did her behavior fall somewhere in between? 

It’s easy to miss in the news accounts, but the mother actually was living in the United States until June, when she was deported to Mexico on “drug-related charges.” What charges? Was she convicted? Did she have a meth lab in the basement? Was she dealing fentanyl? Or was she smoking pot – which, though legal in New Mexico, is still grounds for deportation. Or, again, was it something in between? 

The one thing we do know is that CYFD is guilty of at least one unconscionable failure – abandoning a child at the border. It may be guilty of much more. And some of those pointing their fingers at CYFD may share responsibility.

Foster care in California: Your tax dollars at work

 

Private foster care agencies in California want nearly total immunity from 
lawsuits by survivors of abuse in placements they oversee. But they'll settle
for a taxpayer bailout.

Private foster care agencies in California and elsewhere have been trying to get near-total immunity from lawsuits by survivors of abuse in homes or institutions they oversee – or at least a taxpayer bailout for their insurance costs. Here’s an example of who could be shut out. 

This is what allegedly happened to six children in a foster home in San Bernardino County, California, according to a story in the San Bernardino Sun: 

The children, according to the lawsuit, were routinely beaten with belts, cords, wooden sticks and other objects; bound with duct tape; and punched, kicked and choked until the point of unconsciousness. Socks were stuffed into their mouths to prevent anyone from hearing their screams, the suit alleged. And the children were deprived of food and water, forced to stand for hours holding books or lie in dark rooms, and sexually abused and coerced into sexual acts under threats of violence, it further alleged. 

The suit also alleges that county social workers, the foster family agency and school district employees repeatedly missed or ignored warning signs, including visible injuries, disclosures of abuse, missed welfare visits and complaints from the children. [Emphasis added for reasons discussed below.] 

This is what allegedly happened in another San Bernardino County home where a four-year-old autistic child died: 

The lawsuit filed July 7 by the family of 4-year-old Avery Habelitz alleges San Bernardino County Children and Family Services, two foster family agencies and multiple social workers ignored repeated warnings that Avery, who was autistic and nonverbal, required specialized care unavailable in her foster placements. 

The lawsuit alleges Avery was removed from her parents’ home and placed in foster care in Apple Valley, despite an individualized behavioral treatment plan calling for 32 hours a month of one-on-one behavioral therapy, 50 hours of social skills training, 20 hours of supervision and 15 hours of oversight by a board certified behavior analyst. 

Those services ceased after she entered foster care and were never resumed despite repeated warnings that interrupting treatment could worsen her self-injurious behaviors and other developmental challenges, according to the lawsuit. [Emphasis added.] 

Why the emphasis on the fact that those sued include a total of three “Foster Family Agencies” (FFAs)? Because these private agencies, which oversee many group homes and institutions and some family foster homes, have been waging a campaign to slam the courthouse door in the faces of survivors of abuse and their families. The same is true in several other states. Too many news organizations have bought the snake oil that the FFAs have been selling. 

At the heart of the issue is the fact that insurance companies have realized there is so much abuse in foster care that it’s a high risk – for them. So they’ve raised premiums. 

So the FFAs went running to the California Legislature seeking either or both of two things: near-total immunity from lawsuits by those who say they were victimized on their watch or a bailout in which taxpayers would chip in a whole lot of money to help them pay their insurance premiums. 

They did not get the immunity. They did get a bailout – to the tune of $31 million that could have been spent actually helping families. And now they’re after another. Private foster care agencies are seeking much the same in New York, Illinois and elsewhere. 

What is most shameful in all this is the credulous complicity of many news organizations. In story after story, private foster care agencies have been portrayed as God’s gift to children, and their closing supposedly would be some sort of catastrophe. That’s the agencies’ party line. One expects them to make such claims. But one news organization after another has accepted those claims without question. 

But, for reasons discussed in detail in the columns to which I’ve linked above, none of it is true. On the contrary, the closing of such agencies should be seen as an opportunity to rethink a system over reliant on their group homes and institutions and the foster families they supervise. 

So please, California journalists, and those dealing with this issue in other states: Before you write your next OMG-the-sky-will-fall-if-the-FFAs-don’t-get-relief story, take a moment to think about those six former foster youth who survived and the family of Avery Habelitz who did not. Then think about the thousands of others across the country who have been abused while under the “care” of FFAs and their counterparts in other states. Who really deserves our attention, our sympathy and our compensation, the children or the agencies?

Illustration by ChatGPT

NCCPR in Bridge Michigan: Can Michigan learn the right lessons from two child welfare cases?

Two cases involving Michigan’s child welfare system have been in the news lately. So far, Michigan lawmakers are ignoring one and learning the wrong lessons from the other.

Read the full commentary in Bridge Michigan.

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

● The child welfare establishment loves to tell us that there is no racial bias in the system and children are never taken because of poverty alone – they claim there must have been something like drug abuse. This story from The Marshall Project exposes both those lies. And see also their story about one state – New Jersey – that has reformed its practices. 

● NCCPR’s commentary in Bridge Michigan: Two cases involving Michigan’s child welfare system have been in the news lately. (You’ve heard about one of them.) So far, Michigan lawmakers are ignoring one and learning the wrong lessons from the other. 

● In Arizona, where foster children are institutionalized at a rate more than quadruple the national average, there’s been another expose of widespread problems at two of the institutions. But the only solutions authorities can think of are to blame the kids and make the places more like jails. I have a blog post about it. 

● Meanwhile, The Imprint reports that Utah finally is shutting down one of the state’s notorious “troubled teen industry” institutions. 

● There’s still another study out showing the transformative power of cash. This one concludes: 

We find that a $1000 annual increase in total expected state safety net support is associated with a 4% decline in state-year CPS investigations among children of all ages and those under age 5, with similar associations for neglect and physical abuse investigations.

● And ABC News reports that 

A new bill in Washington, D.C., would allow foster youth to help define their own families — and it's crafted by the very young people it seeks to serve. 

Former and current foster youth helped create the Support, Opportunity, Unity and Legal Relationships Act, known as the SOUL Act. It's a Washington, D.C., bill that would allow teens -- ages 16 and up -- to legally enlist multiple guardians, blood relatives or other trusted adults for support without having to completely cut legal ties to their birth parents. …

Trouble at an Arizona residential treatment center? It must be the kids’ fault! Send in the drone!

Between January 2022 and September 2025, youth institutionalized at Canyon State Academy for boys or Desert Lily Academy for girls, adjoining residential treatment centers in Queen Creek, Arizona, ran away an average of at least once every two-and-a-half days – more than 600 runaway incidents in all, according to Phoenix television station KNXV. 

And runaways aren’t the only reason police keep showing up. In 2022 another Phoenix television station, KSAZ reported that police were at Canyon State Academy almost daily: 

From Jan. 12 to Oct. 4, officers responded to CSA 239 times. The leading type of call is a missing person, making up about 22% of the calls.  

18% of calls went for unknown trouble. 10% for follow-ups and 9% for assaults. 

The rest of the calls are scattered among several categories, including welfare checks, sexual assault and molesting. 

They were at Desert Lily Academy another 118 times. 

But the only things the state of Arizona and local authorities can think of to do about it are: 

● Blame the kids.

● Make the places more like jails. 

At no point, it seems, has anyone in power asked the obvious question: Why are so many children so desperate to leave these places? But then, given Arizona’s fondness for tearing apart families in general and institutionalizing children in particular, those are questions no one in power in the state seems to want to face. 

The two institutions are run by a nationwide chain known as “Rite of Passage.” They run an assortment of services including residential treatment facilities and juvenile prisons. In addition to Arizona, news accounts over many years have raised questions about Rite of Passage facilities in Nevada, Florida, Colorado, Arkansas and Maryland. 

Yet when asked about all those runaways, the Arizona family police agency, the Department of Child Safety, said, in effect: Well, what do you expect from such troubled kids? Or as the agency put it: 

Call-for-service data does not necessarily indicate wrongdoing by the facility or staff. Many reported incidents reflect the significant behavioral and emotional challenges presented by the population the facility serves. 

That echoes the standard party line of the residential treatment industry: These kids are sooooo difficult that there is simply no alternative except to institutionalize them. As we have documented repeatedly, that’s BS. There’s nothing residential treatment can do that can’t be done better, and at lower cost, with Wraparound programs. And the residential treatment model itself is inherently harmful to children. 

The two Rite of Passage facilities said that the high number of runaway reports is because they are such careful, responsible facilities that they make sure to report any incident that even might involve running away immediately! They said much the same in response to the 2022 story. 

They also brag about being a so-called Qualified Residential Treatment Program. That is a new category of institution created by the federal Family First Prevention Services Act.  That law was supposed to strictly limit federal reimbursement for institutionalizing children. But the institutions lobby carved out a great big loophole: so-called QRTPs are exempt from the limits. Supposedly, that’s because they have to meet rigorous standards. But the standards are a joke. 

And, of course, all this evades the question: Why do all those young people keep running? 

That 2022 story offers some clues: 

"I remember, like the staff saying, ‘It's our goal to like, make you hate it here, so you never want to come back,'" former student, Christopher Nixon, said. … "It's just not a safe environment, and they're just tired of being there. At that point, they want to go home." 

Keith Plummer was in ... Desert Lily Academy. … Plummer says the students just wanted their independence. "They want their freedom. We’re kids. I want to go ride my bike around the neighborhood, I want to take my scooter and just go to a park," she said. 

Ignoring those answers, or not even posing the question, allows one to view solutions only in terms of making the facilities more like jails. The local police chief, Randy Brice, sure sounds like he’s talking about escaped prisoners. According to KNXV: 

Brice said there are still ways to improve security, including expanding camera coverage and better tracking kids as they move from place to place. 

Brice says he’s also worked to speed up response times to missing child calls. 

“As soon as a call comes out there, the drone is en route. We have cameras all around the facility on our street cameras,” Brice said. “We're seeing about 90% of the runaways -- we're catching within minutes to maybe an hour or two.” 

If it never occurs to anyone to ask if residential treatment is necessary, and if you stigmatize and stereotype all the institutionalized kids, no wonder the only solutions you can think of are cameras and drones. 

And sadly, that kind of thinking is deeply embedded in the culture of Arizona family policing – the kind of culture in which some workers thought it would be funny to come to work wearing  t-shirts that said “professional kidnapper.” 

● Though Arizona has improved, it still tears apart families at a rate 15% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in.

● Maricopa County (metropolitan Phoenix) tears apart families at the highest rate among America’s ten largest cities and their surrounding counties.

● Arizona takes a huge proportion of its federal funds under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF) money that is supposed to help poor families become self-sufficient and diverts it to running the family policing system. Some of the money went to a huge rate increase for foster parents.

● Arizona institutionalizes 45% of the children it takes – a rate more than quadruple the national average.

● The state gave a 30% rate increase to a group home operator that donated generously to the campaign of Gov. Katie Hobbs.

● The first person Hobbs named to run the family police agency opposed the rate increase. He was fired after only weeks on the job. 

No wonder the Arizona family police agency doesn’t seem to want to even look into whether there might be problems at the two residential treatment centers from which all those children keep running away. 

And no wonder the only answer from local authorities is: Send in the drone!

Illustration by ChatGPT

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending July 14, 2026

There’s more about the trauma inflicted on the children of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as a result of a malicious, false anonymous child abuse report:

● In Medium, Kristen Weber, senior director of child welfare at the National Center for Youth Law, writes:

Pete Buttigieg’s story captured national attention because it happened to someone many Americans know. Our response should be to remember the millions of families whose stories never make the news. 

● On LinkedIn, Shereen A. White, director of advocacy & policy at Children’s Rights, and Kelley Fong, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Investigating Families, write: 

If we take the rights and dignity of children seriously, then we must examine not only whether suspicions of harm are addressed, but how our response itself affects the very children we are trying to protect. … A child welfare system worthy of its name should be just as careful about the harms it creates as the harms it seeks to prevent. 

● The problems with reporting laws extend beyond the need to replace anonymous reporting with confidential reporting. Mandatory reporting also is a huge problem. Also from Children’s Rights, in the New York Daily News:

One solution before the [New York] State Legislature is the Supporting Families Together Act. Today, mandated reporters can face criminal and civil penalties for not reporting — a threat that drives over-reporting. Professionals across the state have told us that fear of penalties compels them to report even when a child’s safety isn’t at stake. This bill would remove those penalties, letting professionals use their judgment to connect families with help while still allowing any genuine safety concerns to be reported.

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

From WSB-TV, Atlanta:

Law enforcement officials have arrested a former Ridgeview Institute employee accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl while she was receiving treatment at the facility. … Records obtained by Channel 2 Action News from the Smyrna Police Department show detectives have investigated 40 alleged sex crime cases since 2021. Six of those investigations were opened this year. Three remain active, and four have been cleared by arrests.