Remove Domestic Violence Remove Foster Care Remove Interviewing
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“[It] feels like a jail cell has dropped around my family”

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

New York’s family police agency is still harassing survivors of domestic violence and their children. In New York, it’s illegal to tear children from their homes and throw them into foster care just because they “witnessed domestic violence” – typically a husband or boyfriend beating the child’s mother.

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Massachusetts pilots the most promising reform in child welfare. Guess who’s trying to undercut it.

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

This is the model that’s proven so successful in New York City – where a comprehensive evaluation found that it reduced time in foster care with no compromise of safety. Cara, who asked to keep her last name private, said she had already been in touch with a domestic violence organization about her ex.

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“They’re not your children anymore.” Notes on news coverage of a landmark lawsuit

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

That is false and it's actually dangerous for children because it fosters and perpetuates a culture of ACS using these invasive and distressing and degrading tactics. You can listen to the full interview with Shalleck-Klein and one of the plaintiffs, Shalonda Curtis-Hackett here: They also were interviewed on Inside City Hall on NY1.

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NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending September 26, 2023

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Fong will be interviewed at the second of these two events sponsored by the City University of New York School of Law. 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 foster care.

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NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending September 19, 2023

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

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 foster care, 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 foster care?

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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. She issues reports with shamefully shoddy methodology that throw gasoline on the fires of foster-care panic.

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“Maybe we're just too damn intrusive": Tracing the take-the-child-and-run mentality that has endangered Massachusetts children for more than a century

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

While researching my book, I interviewed a group of stewards for the caseworkers’ union in Massachusetts. So in 2021, the most recent year for which data are available, when you compare entries into care to impoverished child population, Massachusetts tore apart families at a rate 60% above the national average. She said no.