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The child welfare establishment just got four billion messages: Your system is not safe

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

This $4 billion settlement is the latest illustration of the fact that the entire model of American child welfare was built on a false premise: that child removal equals child safety. So let's apply the rhetoric weve heard from the child welfare establishment decade after decade to these cases.

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Challenging Handmaid’s Tale jurisprudence in child welfare

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

In fact, the control the government demands can predate conception. If anything these decisions go farther depriving children of their mothers and t heir fathers if the fathers exercise insufficient control over their partners pregnancies.

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Just what West Virginia child welfare doesn’t need: A 48.7% INCREASE in “child welfare” investigator caseloads

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

But Burkhammer wants to prohibit West Virginias family police agency (a more accurate term than child welfare agency) from screening out any report from a mandated reporter and they make the overwhelming majority of reports. So once again, a failure of child welfare is worsened by a failure of journalism.

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Maine Child Welfare Advisory Panel charts a better way forward

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

At last: A group involved in oversight of Maine child welfare that shows a real understanding of the problems. The Maine Child Welfare Advisory Panel (MCWAP) Citizen Review Panel has produced a report with six recommendations. Note that often these programs have the full support of state or local child welfare agencies.

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Some good, bad and ugly in new federal “child welfare” data

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

The federal government has released state-by-state data for the number of children taken from their parents in FFY 2021 (yes, they always run about a year late). The big national takeaway is that these data – once again – refute the racist myth about COVID-19 and “child welfare.” And NCCPR has updated our rate-of-removal index.

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The $20 million boondoggle that perfectly illustrates the banality of child welfare thinking

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

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.” There are many such groups. Oh, don’t get me wrong.

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Lessons from two child welfare court decisions

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

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. We wouldn’t even allow a slight deviation from the rules. Lawyers would scream. Appellate courts would intervene.