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Seven children and all she needed was a van: large families and the blindness of the child welfare establishment

Child Welfare Monitor

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.

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Reposting: Torn apart: A skewed portrait of child welfare in America

Child Welfare Monitor

As an illustration, I am reposting my 2022 review of Roberts’ most recent book, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families–and How Abolition Can Build a Safer Worl d. child welfare system. ” Those who liked Shattered Bonds will likely love Torn Apart.

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Torn Apart: How the Abolition Movement Destroys Foster Youth – And How Listening To Us Can Build A Safer World

Child Welfare Monitor

by Patty Flores I am grateful to be publishing this essay by a gifted and needed young voice in the child welfare space. I then found myself in foster care and having to navigate the complicated child welfare system, speaking little English and knowing nothing about how the child protection system (CPS) works in this country.

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“Child welfare” and racism: Children’s Rights steps up

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Minnesota’s use of these factors to support a child’s removal and/or ongoing separation due to alleged neglect discriminately and disproportionately impacts Black families who are overrepresented in Minnesota’s child welfare system for neglect-related allegations.

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The failure of the child welfare McLawsuits, Part Two

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

To read the account on CR’s website you’d think their suit turned a dreadful, failing “child welfare” system into a shining success story. But just four years later, the Tennessee Department of Child Services, their family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency) has opened a bunch of new ones.

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Another child welfare scholar with an agenda

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

The same scholar who claims predictive analytics in child welfare isn’t biased also signs on to an extremist agenda calling for an automatic, mandatory extra level of family police surveillance of thousands of impoverished families. She also misunderstands abolition and mocks the words of a Black child welfare activist.

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Maine’s child welfare ombudsman is dangerously wrong

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Maine's first child welfare ombudsman, Dean Crocker, understood the lessons from the tragic death of Logan Marr, who was taken when her family poverty was confused with "neglect" and killed in foster care. For starters, Maine should join the many states in which child welfare court hearings are open.