This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
But today’s post focuses on one particularly jarring vignette–the story of a mother, her seven children, and a van–and what it means about how child welfare policy is made and discussed today. David Reed, the Deputy Director of Child Welfare Services in Indiana, introduced the story of this family in his testimony.
For example, in Minnesota Black children are twice as likely to be thrown into fostercare as white children. Minnesota’s record of racial disparity in investigations and fostercare is worse than the national average, and the disparities in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties are worse than the state average.
In Oregon, "child welfare" has become a pathetic game of whack-a-mole. They also revealed that Oregons family police agency (a more accurate term than child welfare agency) knew about the abuse for at least 18 months and did nothing. And the reason for that is not because there are too few foster parents.
But it’s hard to imagine anything that more perfectly captures the banality of child welfare thinking than this waste of $20 million: Five organizations will spend this federal grant money to create a “Quality Improvement Center on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency.” Where oh where to begin. Oh, don’t get me wrong.
So the public was primed to scapegoat family preservation when Nixzmary Brown died in January, 2006 – leading to a foster-care panic , a sharp sudden increase in the number of children torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of fostercare. The panic was welcomed by the Times.
This is the model that’s proven so successful in New York City – where a comprehensive evaluation found that it reduced time in fostercare with no compromise of safety. If you’ve followed Massachusetts child welfare at all, you know exactly who: Massachusetts’ Fearmonger-in-Chief, state “child advocate” Maria Mossaides.
She is the state’s “Child Advocate,” and before that ran a prestigious private agency specializing in adoption and fostercare. Like most people in “child welfare” her intentions are good. million – and the state would save more than that in reducing needless investigations and fostercare.
But I should explain at the top why this commentary is on a blog about the “child welfare” system. AFA’s members include some of the most strident supporters of tearing apart more families and some of those deepest in denial about racism in child welfare. She also condemned the Indian Child Welfare Act. They also include Prof.
She had to fight her way through a long, cumbersome appeals process before she could get overturned a determination by a caseworker for the Washington State family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency) that the allegation against her was “founded.” arm of the Foster Parents Association of Washington State.
Vivek Sankaran, director of the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic at the University Michigan Law School summed it up perfectly: In many ways, the decision was unexceptional. Writing in The Imprint , Prof. Appellate courts would intervene. The system would move quickly to protect the powerful.
Christina has been a licensed foster parent in the state of Washington for six years and has adopted one child from the fostercare system. Prior to becoming a foster parent, she was a CASA for three years. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband and daughter.
59 new parents received one-on-one support through our Healthy Families program, 22 “forever families ” were established through our fostercare program, and critical housing and support services were providedfor youth in crisis, youth experiencing homelessness and young adultsaging out of the fostercare system.
What happened to Detlaff is just one example of “child welfare” and the moral bankruptcy of social work. The phrase is an invitation to inflict the whims and prejudices of a white middle-class “child welfare” establishment on families that are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite. That’s why he’s no longer the dean. (He
The study looks at every step of the process, from investigations to how often a caseworker claims a case is “substantiated” to entries into fostercare to termination of children’s rights to their parents (a more accurate term than termination of parental rights). A child abuse investigation is not a benign act. Yes, second highest.
(Note that you need to register for each separately You can register for the first event here and the second event here.) ● The head of the family police agency in Missouri is bragging that they have reduced fostercare. Nora McCarthy discusses this in her column for The Imprint.
Nevertheless, I Persisted: Robin’s Inspiring Success Story When Robin was just three years old, her mother’s substance use led to her and her siblings being placed in fostercare for their safety. Read how Robin took control of her destiny, choosing to defy the statistics about children in fostercare rather than be defined by them.
● “Which would be worse,” asks Jasmine Wali, director of policy & advocacy at JMAC for Families, in this story for The Nation : “being beaten by your partner, or having social services take away your children? And here’s part two , which explains why “creme" is to food what “permanency” is to child welfare: a fake substitute. ●
The harsh reality is not all children are represented equally in the child welfare system, nor do they have equal outcomes. For example, in the American population of children, African Americans make up 15%, but they represent 33% of fostercare children. of children’s national population.
.” -- Ann Haines Holy Eagle on what the Minnesota family police stole from her By now we’re all familiar with one odious practice of most family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies): They steal the Social Security benefits to which some foster children are entitled and keep the money for themselves.
Colorado takes children from their parents at a rate 30% above the national average – and some counties have rates of child removal that are even worse, according to a report released today by a national child advocacy organization. When it comes to child welfare, Colorado trails.”
? Last week, I was asked to list the most important contributions to the field of family advocacy and family defense made by Prof. As Kathleen Creamer put it in this story from The Imprint “No one has done more than Marty to move this field towards justice — even when no one seemed to care about justice.” ? Martin Guggenheim.
But it still fell into some of the traps that characterize much of the journalism of child welfare – including a crucial misunderstanding of poverty and neglect and one inflammatory claim that, as originally published, was flat wrong. ? The exception was the Times’ superb 2017 story about fostercare as the new “Jane Crow.”)
. ● Remember the children who were torn from their parents and thrown into fostercare because the parents committed the crime of Driving While Black? Now, Tennessee Lookout reports , the mother is suing.
As with so much bad child welfare journalism, this false narrative only hurt the children it was intended to help. This very volatility further indicates something discussed in detail below, that fatalities are an unreliable way to draw conclusions of any kind about child welfare systems.) million Black children.
It provides astoundingly small amounts of cash or basic goods so children can stay home or return home because, guess what, they were taken, or are now trapped in fostercare, because of poverty alone. It’s an excellent program – but why is it just a tiny add-on to a system built on family policing and fostercare?
When Honolulu Civil Beat reached out to NCCPR for comment on the findings of a study, done by the state’s own Court Improvement Project, of what really happens in child welfare court hearings, I said: “What this report tells us is that Hawaii doesn’t really have a court system for ‘child welfare’ cases at all.
This is the text of the first of two NCCPR presentations at the 2021 Kempe Center International Virtual Conference: A Call to Action to Change Child Welfare Most Court-Appointed Special Advocates programs call themselves CASA programs – as you’d expect. They can effectively decide if the child stays in fostercare.
With the capable Lead Organizer, Amani Desamours, and her Student Leadership Team handling Thursday’s virtual Student Advocacy Day, I had the privilege of attending the pivotal Children’s Bureau’s National Convening on Kinship Care. Now, more children will get the opportunity to live with relatives.
They said my child would be safer in fostercare than with me," said the mother of Ja'Ceon Terry, "but see the outcome of what happened." And check out this detailed testimony from several New York City family defense and family advocacy organizations. ? This week the Missouri Independent did the same story – and got it right.
? As almost everyone reading this probably knows, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act which The Imprint calls “a bedrock law passed in the 1970s to combat cultural genocide committed against Indigenous families.” ? But things have taken a strange turn in Maine.
. ● As is so often the case, the professor’s comments minimize the harm of one of the worst “adverse childhood experiences” a child can endure – being torn from everyone s/he knows and loves and thrown into fostercare. I have a column about it in CalMatters. It has decimated their lives.
In The Grio, Shereen White, director of advocacy and policy at Children’s Rights, and Prof. In Massachusetts, the Boston Globe reports, former foster youth who were harmed when they were torn from their homes protested at the State Capitol. Instead, she said, she was placed with a foster family.
Capitol Visitor Center, First Street and East Capitol Street, Washington, DC 20515, to explore legislative remedies should the Supreme Court overturn the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The event is being presented in conjunction with the Congressional Social Work Caucus and the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth.
In fact, given that the child welfare establishment has no shame, expect the usual op-eds to have token boilerplate statements about racial justice – even as they propose making a profoundly racist family policing system even bigger and more powerful. But for the past three years it's been especially relevant. And right now it still.
No Black history in America or history of children’s advocacy can be complete without the name of Marian Wright Edelman. Her impact on the welfare of all children has been profound. a child’s advocacy and research center. From the beginning until the present day, the CDF has made significant contributions to children’s welfare.
No Black history in America or history of children’s advocacy can be complete without the name of Marian Wright Edelman. Her impact on the welfare of all children has been profound. a child’s advocacy and research center. From the beginning until the present day, the CDF has made significant contributions to children’s welfare.
If enacted, the bill would expand state fostercare and adoption assistance programs to provide driving preparation assistance to foster youth and related training for foster parents. We will also hear from Duane Price, a young man with experience in fostercare whose life was enhanced by getting a car.
And the head of a trade association for “children’s advocacy centers,” where many such exams are performed, says the real problem is agencies aren’t doing enough of them. ● So they used a blackmail placement – aka hidden fostercare. “They’re using these kids, basically, as pieces of evidence, and you can’t do that.”
It also touches on the sham of “team decision-making,” the harm of forcing parents to pay part of the cost of children’s fostercare (a payment that should properly be called “ransom”) and the evil of a practice known as “concurrent planning. ” Indeed, it can endanger the fetus to suddenly stop using such medication when pregnant.
I have written often about how the entire debate over what to do about child welfare has been poisoned by “health terrorism,” the misrepresentation of the true nature and scope of a problem in the name of “raising awareness.” A bill to replace anonymous reporting with confidential reporting has passed the Texas Legislature.
Back to Blogs Community Blog Adams County Celebrates Kinship Care Month This Kinship Care Month Adams County is recognizing an outstanding kinship caregiver, caseworker and community partner for all they do to support youth in fostercare and kinship caregivers.
Hear an authentic, piercing, and comprehensive conversation about our nation’s child welfare system and its impact on children, especially children. The post A Former Foster Child, Now Child Rights Lawyer, Shares Piercing Insight on the Child Welfare System | Podcast Episode 21 appeared first on Child Advocates.
This bill would reauthorize Title IV-B of the Social Security Act to strengthen child welfare services and expand the availability of prevention services. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means, which held a hearing on the legislation on July 24, following a year-long review of child welfare programs.
We cancelled Student Advocacy Day scheduled for the next day as the House and Senate would go into hiatus until the Covid-19 pandemic abated. Cortez Carey, the recently hired Executive Director of the Foster Youth Caucus, was the evening’s spokesperson, a job he shared with Zahra Marin, NFYI’s National Policy and Organizing Director.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 25,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content