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.

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.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending September 30, 2026

● First and foremost this week: A new development involving one of the most crucial issues in child welfare: the perverse financial incentives that encourage foster care and discourage better, safer alternatives.  

I’m proud to be part of United Family Advocates, a group that brings together Left and Right where we have common ground on these issues. This is real bipartisanship, not a group dominated by one ideology with token representation from the other. And it’s not limited to centrists who lean slightly one way or the other. 

UFA has released a comprehensive plan to change the horrible financial incentives that have dominated child welfare for decades; incentives in which foster care is funded through a huge federal entitlement, and alternatives get extremely limited flat funding. UFA’s plan does not increase funding; it realigns funding so every dollar does the most good. You can read UFA’s press release, with a link to the full plan, here.  

● Speaking of bad financial incentives in child welfare: 10 years ago, when it was introduced, I explained why the Family First Act would fail & how child welfare establishment would exploit the failure to push for more foster care. As my latest column for The Imprint illustrates, if Kalshi had been around back then, I’d have made a fortune. 

● Everything bad about foster care is worse for children who are disabled. NPR has a harrowing story about the treatment of disabled foster children. None of the examples involve children who were abused before they were placed. One involves an Arizona family that “relinquished” the child because they couldn’t get enough help to care for him at home. He died in a group home. In another, in California, the parents were accused of drug use, but the child already was living with her grandmother and great parents. She was taken anyway, and died in foster care.

As you read about all the horrible failings of the group home in that first case, don’t overlook this: One month after the child died, the company running the group home “won accreditation from the state and an accreditation agency to operate for another three years.”

● In Washington State, the family was living in squalor, in a park in a tent; the mother was being trafficked. She kept refusing help. The knee-jerk response would be: take the child and run. But as NBC News explains, a police officer saw a better way: Get the trafficker out of the way. From the story: 

The breakthrough came on New Year’s Eve, when the man who had been trafficking the boy’s mother was hospitalized. The mother and son were there with him when a social worker contacted police. An officer who knew The More We Love called [executive director Kristine] Moreland, and around 1 a.m., mother and son arrived at the organization’s crisis center. 

Check out what happened next. 

There are three interesting court cases in Georgia: 

● If the circumstances that prompt a state to want to tear apart a family are not an emergency, that means there’s time to have a court hearing first. But Georgia family police want the right to run to a judge whenever they feel like it and get an order without letting the family defend itself. The Georgia Recorder reports that, in a case in which that action compounded a family tragedy, the State Supreme Court appears skeptical. 

● In another case, The Imprint reports that a federal court has set some limits on Georgia making parents pay ransom to get their kids back from foster care. (Well, no, they don’t call it ransom, but that’s what it is.) The federal court ruled that Georgia can’t do this when the children already are out of foster care because they’ve been adopted or aged out – in other words, in cases including those where the parents have been totally cut out of the child’s life, will never get the child back but still must pay ransom. Unfortunately, the decision goes no further, but the litigation is continuing. 

● And then there’s the case of the man whose children have not spent so much as a minute in foster care – even though their father is charged with driving drunk while the children were in the car, rear-ending another vehicle and then fleeing the scene. Earlier this month, The Imprint reports, he pleaded not guilty. Of course, unlike the parents in the previous two cases, this father not only is a high-powered Georgia political operative; he’s also married to the head of the state child welfare agency. 

● In Maine, a man overseeing a mother’s drug test allegedly forces her to strip and stares at her. Then, it allegedly gets worse. The family police agency, on the other hand, is only too glad to look the other way. I have a blog post about it, with links to two news stories. 

● I also have a blog post about the real “oomph” deficit in Santa Clara County, California. So far, no one will stand up to the bullies driving the nation’s worst foster-care panic and endangering children’s lives. 

● Writing in STAT, Sandy Santa of Children’s Rights and Kristen Weber of the National Center for Youth Law explain why the consequences of cuts in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program “go beyond hunger.” 

Research suggests that when families lose access to food assistance, they may face a greater risk of investigation by child protective services — and, ultimately, being separated. 

That is because poverty and neglect are too often conflated in America’s child welfare systems. When parents cannot afford enough food, stable housing, child care, or other necessities, the conditions created by poverty can bring them to the attention of child protective services. Cutting material support can therefore create a perverse and devastating cycle: The government takes away resources families need to care for their children, and then the child welfare system may intervene because families don’t have the resources to provide for their children. 

● In Tennessee, WSMV-TV reports, families whose children have suffered the trauma of needless removal are beginning to organize. 

● While in Kansas, it sure sounded like the unfortunate influence of one individual kept coming up at a recent legislative hearing, but no one would say the name. We say it in this blog post. 

● It’s great to see Clara Bates and Anne Spoerre win a prestigious state journalism award for their outstanding child welfare reporting at the Missouri Independent. If you want to see why, follow the links in this paragraph from the Independent’s story: 

Bates and Spoerre’s reporting examined persistent problems in Missouri’s child welfare system, including children remaining in foster care longer than federal standards, uneven legal representation that can leave families and children stuck in the system and the experience of a teenager who spent nearly her entire life in foster care and later fought the state to keep her own baby. 

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

● The headline on this story from WLOX-TV in Mississippi sums it up well: “’Held like prisoners’: State spends millions keeping kids in hotels, fails to keep some safe.”

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending September 15, 2026

● The Tampa Bay Times reports that local and state advocates are demanding answers after the Times’ expose of the enormous scope and harm of hidden foster care in the region. From the story: 

[R]epresentatives from The Spring of Tampa Bay — which serves domestic violence survivors — said many of their clients had felt pressured into handing their children over to relatives. The Spring of Tampa Bay attorneys cited “grave concerns” that parents weren’t given a chance to get their own lawyers and struggled to get information about their cases and their rights.

● In The Washington Post, Lenore Skenazy, president of Let Grow, writes about the mother who was arrested – and convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor – for letting her five-year-old walk to a pond alone. She notes that surveys reveal that 

today’s high school freshmen have a fraction of the freedom that used to be given to first-graders. It’s little wonder they’re so anxious. 

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

● WFIE-TV in Evansville, Indiana, has a story about that case in which a mother’s three-year-old with major medical needs was taken from her because she let her 14-year-old babysit another of her children overnight. The foster parents allegedly did not know how to care for the three-year-old, contributing to his death. 

● From The Baltimore Sun concerning a child from Washington, DC placed in neighboring Prince George’s County, Maryland: 

The medical examiner’s office has ruled the death of a 14-month-old foster boy a homicide after a caregiver in Prince George’s County failed to seek medical attention when he fell ill, later dying of dehydration. 

The county’s State’s Attorney’s Office said it continues to investigate the Feb. 9 death of Dereon Kai Booze for possible criminal charges. …

 

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending September 10, 2026

● Two years after one sensation-seeking member of the Board of Supervisors and one Pulitzer-sniffing journalist for the San Jose Mercury News in Santa Clara County set off the worst foster-care panic anywhere in America in decades, the other members of the Board are starting to wonder if they did the right thing. They brought in a panel of state and national experts for a study session. As The Imprint reports, they made clear the answer is no. The Mercury News also eventually published a story. I have a blog post about that one. 

● The Tampa Bay Times follows up on its outstanding expose of the enormous harm of hidden foster care. Among other results, a Florida member of Congress will now cosponsor a bill that would require states to at least keep track of – and disclose – how many children they place in hidden foster care. 

● Also in Florida: I don’t know if the underlying decision to remove the child in the case I write about here was right, though there is strong cause to doubt it. I do know that everything else the Florida Department of Children and Families did was wrong – and probably far more common than the agency will ever admit. See especially the bodycam video revealing the appalling behavior of caseworkers. 

● As the time approaches for Minnesota to implement a law requiring county family police agencies to do more to keep families together, it seems the state and the counties have spent more time whining about the law than preparing for it. The Imprint reports that “an advisory council has issued a report saying the state lacks the ability to assess” whether the law is working. 

“Whether the law fulfills that promise will not be determined by its enactment,’’ its authors wrote. “It will be determined by whether Minnesota builds the standards, services, authority, accountability, and enduring infrastructure necessary to make its protections real in families’ lives.” 

● The Davis Vanguard offers an excellent overview of the confusion of poverty with neglect. From the story:

Consider a family facing eviction because it cannot pay several thousand dollars in back rent. 

One possible government response is to allow the family to lose its housing, investigate the parents because their children no longer have stable shelter, remove the children, pay foster parents or residential providers, assign caseworkers, appoint attorneys and require parents to complete a series of services before reunification. 

Another possibility is to prevent the eviction. 

● And in Georgia, the Albany Herald compares two counties with starkly different rates of taking away children – and starkly different rates of poverty. 

● Also in Georgia: The persecution of a mother who, exhausted and living in a shelter for battered women, accidentally left one of her children in a hot car where he died, continues. Her surviving children suffer most. Former Washington Post reporter and editor Gene Weingarten, who has been following the case on his Substack, has an update.

● And still in Georgia: The state family police agency has an $81 million deficit. Wait ‘till you see where some of the money went, as reported by The Center Square.

● In The Imprint, Ruth White, executive director of the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, and a member of the NCCPR Board of Directors, writes about the “vexing admixture of learned helplessness, paternalism and institutional parochialism among the professional class” that prevents youth aging out of foster care from getting the housing benefits to which they are entitled and which are readily available under a federal program. (It’s an excellent program regardless of who insisted on slapping her name on it.) 

● Virginia has a “reasonable childhood independence” law. But when have mere laws stopped the family police? Lenore Skenazy writes in Reason about what happened to one mother in Virginia who gave her child reasonable childhood independence. See also this story about the case from The Washington Post. 

● Some better news from Virginia: In that state, the law was unclear about whether, if pregnant women were taking prescribed medication to treat opioid use disorder, mandated reporters still had to turn them in to the family police. In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Robert Melvin of the R Street Institute praises lawmakers for passing legislation clarifying that the answer is no. 

For pregnant women receiving medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD), like methadone or buprenorphine, clear health guidance is critical. They need to be able to talk frankly with their doctors about their situation without triggering a mandatory-reporting call to CPS. That fear is the biggest impediment, which is why Virginia’s approach is so important. 

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

● If the allegations in the lawsuit that is the topic of this story from WEHT-TV are true, Indiana’s hair trigger for tearing apart families may have cost a three-year-old boy his life. 

In March, 2022, Leon Morrero was born with medical issues so complex that his mother, Nicole, had to complete three months of medical training before her son could be released from the hospital. More than three years later, his mother brought him to the hospital for more treatment. 

As the story explains: 

Nicole reportedly spent time with Leon daily, while balancing the needs of her other children. 

On September 21, a release says Nicole went to the hospital to visit Leon, leaving her other child in the care of her 14-year-year-old daughter to babysit. Nicole then went to dinner with a friend and fell asleep at the friend’s house. 

The next day, Nicole was reportedly arrested at the hospital and charged with child neglect for allowing the child to babysit her younger sibling. 

The Vanderburgh County Department of Child’s Services removed all of Nicole’s children from her care due to the allegations. Her contact with Leon was also limited by DCS while he stayed in the hospital. 

But, the lawsuit alleges, the foster parents got only a few hours of training. It wasn’t enough. Within days the boy needed emergency medical care. But he was returned to the same foster parents. Four months later, he died. 

● From the Missouri Independent: 

A children’s Christian residential facility whose director has spent three years urging Missouri lawmakers to allow unlicensed religious organizations to care for foster children in state custody is being sued in federal court by former residents who allege they were subjected to forced labor and sexual abuse. 

Three lawsuits filed against Show-Me Christian Youth Home allege that the former residents were forced to perform heavy manual labor under threat of food deprivation, isolation or more work. The lawsuits also allege the three plaintiffs, who each spent time in the same Show-Me household between 2007 and 2012, were touched sexually, beaten while naked, surveilled in the shower by their “house father” and punished when they reported the abuse. … 

Show-Me Christian Youth Home, which is based in La Monte, denies the allegations. In Aug. 24 court filings, the organization also argued it cannot be held liable because any alleged harm was caused by employees acting “outside the course and scope of their employment.” It contends the lawsuits violate the First Amendment by asking the court “to rule on or excessively entangle itself in religious doctrine, policy and administration.” 

● You know all those exposés about group homes and “residential treatment” centers? As The Guardian reports, the problem isn’t just limited to the United States.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending September 1, 2026

● The big news this week includes publication of an outstanding new book. In Making Families, Breaking Families, child welfare’s foremost academic historian, Dr. Mical Raz, brings a scholar’s perspective to the story of the fearmongering and smears that ultimately led Congress to pass the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act. Although the print edition won’t be out until later this month, the electronic edition is available now from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. 

I’m proud that NCCPR and the work of several NCCPR Board Members are cited in discussing the efforts to fight back and set the record straight. The lessons from that time are urgent; there is much to be learned. And while it’s not pleasant to be reminded of how bad things got, it’s encouraging to see how far we’ve come. 

● Reporters for the Tampa Bay Times spent more than a year digging into “hidden foster care” in Florida. Even if you think you know what that term means, and even why it’s so harmful, I guarantee you’ll still be shocked by some of what you’ll read. It is the best – and most horrifying  -- story I’ve seen anywhere in the country on the topic. 

● The Baltimore Banner has a column, and Investigate West has a story that have something in common: Each illustrates the confusion of poverty with neglect. I have a blog post about it with links to both stories. 

● And while both Maryland and Oregon are throwing away money on makeshift placements and/or institutions, The Imprint reports that California is moving in a better direction: bolstering “wraparound” services. The story does an excellent job of answering a question I get all the time: Yes, but what is wraparound anyway? 

● You’d think it’s kind of obvious, but, The Imprint reports, the federal government has sent out guidance to the states reminding them that, when an adoption fails, they are not supposed to keep paying subsidies to adoptive parents who aren’t adoptive parents anymore. And states can require paperwork from those parents documenting that they are, in fact, still the adoptive parents.

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

● From The Marshall Project: 

The chief executive of one of Ohio’s largest residential treatment centers for youth is accused of driving nearly three hours to meet someone for sex whom he believed was a 14-year-old girl. Instead, he met a police officer, according to police and court documents.

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.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, -- John Oliver Edition - week ending August 18, 2026

● It was bound to happen eventually: Sooner or later, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver would take on some of the enormous harm done by family policing. In Sunday’s program, they took on the enormous damage done by the way many state laws and family police agencies deal with substance use by pregnant women. The part about “child welfare” begins at 8:25 in. 

One footnote: Because the segment was built around so-called “fetal personhood” laws, the examples came from red states. But you don’t need such a statute to persecute pregnant women and do enormous harm to their newborns. One of the worst offenders is deep blue Vermont. 

● I really hope they were watching in New Mexico, where they are at peak foster-care panic in part because the Governor herself has screwed up on this issue, imposing a child-confiscation-at- birth policy whenever a newborn or the child’s mother tests positive for certain substances. Reason reports on the harm similar policies are causing nationwide.

● And the Santa Fe New Mexican reports on a tragedy from years ago that, thanks in part to the Governor’s policy, is even more likely to happen in that state today: 

The New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department paid $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit in which the agency was accused of placing two young siblings with a family where the children were starved, beaten and one was sexually abused. … The children … suffered abuse over a number of years while staying with the Taos family, and CYFD failed to substantiate allegations of abuse against the family and signed off on the children’s adoption, leading to more abuse, the original civil complaint filed in the lawsuit alleges. 

The boy later said he was being starved by his adoptive parents, who were “only giving him one hot dog at noon and one hot dog for dinner,” and would withhold food from him for bad behavior, the lawsuit states. At the time, he hadn’t eaten in two days. 

The boy was also not allowed to leave his room to go to the restroom and was forced to relieve himself in his room. He also reported being brutally abused, including by beatings from older children in the home on the orders of his adoptive parents, the lawsuit states. His sibling, meanwhile, was being physically and sexually abused, it adds. 

Much of this happened ten years ago. But thanks to everyone from the governor to the state attorney general to their allies in advocacy and media, something like this is even more likely to happen today. Here’s why. 

● But, Boston Medical Center reports that, when it comes to substance use, Massachusetts is moving in the opposite direction – and, according to a new study, it’s working – cutting reports to the family police in half with no compromise of safety. From BMC’s press release: 

"As clinicians, we have long recognized that reflexive reporting feels punitive and rarely serves children's or families' best interests. This study helps establish that alternative, discretionary approaches are feasible and that clinical teams can appropriately identify infant safety concerns after birth," said Heather Hsu, MD, MPH, senior author of the study and a pediatric hospitalist at BMC.

"We hope this research encourages hospitals and policymakers across the country to consider what a more compassionate, evidence-based standard of care could mean for families everywhere." 

● New Mexico isn’t the only state where children are paying the price of foster-care panic. The Missouri Independent reports in this story that the number of children trapped in Missouri foster care soared by more than 14% over the past 16 months - in other words, since Sara Smith started running the state’s family police agency, the Children’s Division, bringing her take-the-child-and-run fanaticism to the job. 

The Independent reports that Smith has abolished team decision-making meetings that used to take place before children were removed. And she’s effectively demanded more adherence to a biased “risk assessment” form that includes a classic self-fulfilling prophecy: Any past contact with the Children’s Division, even if the family is innocent, is among the factors that raise the score. (That’s great news for anyone who wants to harass someone with repeated false reports, by the way.) 

Indeed, what may seem like neutral bureaucratic changes often reflect Smith’s take-the-child-and-run agenda: Almost all are geared to making foster care the easier answer for overwhelmed caseworkers, while making anything else harder. 

Oh, and in addition to the enormous harm she’s doing to children in individual cases, she’s plunged her entire agency into chaos. 

● The next item this week doesn’t mention child protective services at all. It doesn’t say a word about foster care. That’s the point. It’s a column by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. He tells the story of a high school teacher who had a student who was falling asleep in class. She found out why her student was falling asleep. She also found out the student was hungry. But she didn’t make everything worse by making the knee-jerk call to the family police. What she did instead is a perfect example of what it means to be, in Joyce McMillan’s words, a mandatory supporter instead of a mandatory reporter. 

Yet, for some reason, this never made it into the latest edition of "The Good Stuff in Child Welfare." I guess that would happen only if the children had been taken away - but got free haircuts.

● Gene Weingarten has an update to his column about a mother jailed and awaiting trial on second-degree murder charges after she forgot that she’d left her child in a hot car. Here’s his first column about the case. Such charges are, of course, more likely to be brought if the parent is nonwhite. And, as Weingarten points out, for the surviving children, there is an extra element of cruelty here: 

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.” 

And contrast what happened to this mother to what is happening to the very rich Tesla investor described in a Washington Post story that begins this way:

Tad Park believes in Tesla. He believes in the company so much that he once put his kids in the path of a Tesla running in Full Self-Driving mode, to prove the technology was safe enough to avoid running them over.

What happened to him? Nothing.

● Yes, again: Another exposé of another institution rife with abuse, where the instructions from the top allegedly were to cover it up and delay seeking outside help. This time the story is from WPLN Public Radio in Tennessee and ProPublica. This time, it’s a juvenile justice institution. But remember, this is Tennessee, where the family police agency wanted a change in law to allow them to throw in jail any foster child who they felt was getting out of line, or even threatening to get out of line.  

● Also yet again: Still another study documenting how providing concrete help reduces not only what agencies call neglect but physical abuse as well.

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.

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.

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. …

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.