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 in Bridge Michigan: Judges can — and must — solve Michigan’s child placement crisis

Amid all the concern over children in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems forced to endure makeshift placements — some even shipped more than a thousand miles away — Michigan has lost sight of the real causes of the problem. As a result, everyone from the state’s probate judges to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services pursue solutions that will make things worse.

At the root of the placement crisis is the fact that Michigan tears apart so many families needlessly. The typical cases seen by DHHS caseworkers are nothing like the horror stories. Far more common are cases in which poverty is confused with neglect. In Michigan, 17 percent of children were thrown into foster care because their parents lacked adequate housing — that’s more than were taken because of physical abuse. … 

Read the full column in Bridge Michigan

NCCPR in Bridge Michigan: COVID-19 breeds a pandemic of fear, not a pandemic of child abuse

The impulse is understandable.  For generations, we’ve read horror stories about parents beating, raping and murdering their children. The stories often are followed with statistics leaving the impression that there’s a child abuser under every bed.  No wonder people would assume that a decline in child abuse reports due to COVID-19 is cause for alarm.

But the claim is built on a foundation of myth. Accepting it risks scaring vulnerable families away from seeking assistance, it risks deluging caseworkers with false reports, stealing time from finding children in real danger. It even risks increasing the spread of COVID-19.

Read the full column here.