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Officials in two states that routinely destroy Native American families make their position clear: We don’t care, we don’t have to.

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, states are supposed to make “active efforts” to keep families together, a higher standard than the “reasonable efforts” required un federal law (but almost universally ignored ) for other families. More substantive legislation already has been defeated.

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NCCPR in WitnessLA: A Good California Supreme Court Decision Curbs The Family Police

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

A decision by the California Supreme Court sheds rare light on how family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies) like the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services behave, and how that behavior hurts children.

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NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 28, 2023

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Have you noticed how the writing of “child welfare” establishment types sounds more frantic lately? Records that have to be “admitted” into the database [but may not have been] include substance abuse records, visitation records and medical records. Josh Gupta-Kagan. I have a blog post about it. ●

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NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending December 14, 2021

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

The real story of COVID-19 and “child welfare” was not a “pandemic of child abuse” -- that never happened. The state’s child welfare “ombuds” investigated and found that KING got it right. Speaking of dangerous delusions about adoption, check out Prof. Shanta Trivedi’s analysis, in Ms. ,

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NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending January 25, 2022

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Family Integrity and Justice Works , the group started by two former top federal child welfare officials, is publishing a quarterly magazine. At long last, it appears America’s racial justice reckoning might be starting to reach child welfare. ? We begin this week not just with one story but with an entire magazine.

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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

Whenever anyone in state government was asked about the problems in the state’s “child welfare” system they’d give the same stock answer: As soon as the new Department of Social Services was up and running, and took over jobs then done by the Department of Public Welfare, everything would be fine!

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How the journalism of child welfare fails

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

I single these stories out not because they are exceptionally awful - there’s far worse out there - but precisely because they are so typical of the journalism of child welfare. The stories blithely attribute West Virginia’s high rate of removal to the fact that “More than half entered the system because of a parent’s substance abuse.”