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Backers of a bill that tries to legitimize hidden foster care in Virginia say it creates guardrails. On the contrary; it sends the rights of children and families careening off a cliff.

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

There are two very important things to know about the process by which a child welfare agency removes a child from a parent and places that child with some other kinship caregiver. This process, known as kinship foster care, is usually the least harmful form of foster care. But it’s still foster care.

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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. Not anymore.

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Pushing back on a child welfare poll full of loaded questions

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Have a look: The only good news for the family police came from the fact that, apparently, only a minority of respondents agreed with the statement “Overall, the foster care system harms more than helps the children in its care.” There is no mention of seeking to recapture the spirit of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

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PART TWO OF FOUR: Reputation laundering in "child welfare": The Child Welfare League of America

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

As America’s racial justice reckoning finally catches up with “child welfare” – or, as it should be called, family policing – the “child welfare establishment is engaged in its own campaign of reputation laundering. CWLA even opposed legislation that would stop member agencies from swiping foster youth’s social security benefits !

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“Child welfare” and the moral bankruptcy of social work

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

It crops up over and over when there’s any story about what family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies) do to families. There aren’t enough beds for little guys that need this level of care, and the child welfare system has to kind of figure out ‘how can we do the best with what we have?’”

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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.

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PART THREE OF FOUR: Reputation laundering in child welfare: “Social Current”

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

That’s the current name of a child welfare trade association that co-opts the rhetoric of reform to promote the same old family policing agenda The hearings about the Jan. Yet none of the recent trips to the reputation laundry from child welfare establishment groups includes support for any proposal that would reduce their power.