Child Welfare News

....for January 8, 2025

Greetings from Our Nation’s Capital, where it’s cold and snowy and our nation’s greatest former president, Jimmy Carter, is lying in state. The cover pic this week is a photo that was on the front pages of many US newspapers in 1976 during his presidential campaign, featuring my nephew Joseph Sumner bawling and Jimmy smiling.

I’m here for a week of interesting meetings on child welfare issues including a presentation at the American Enterprise Institute on January 13 featuring some excellent panelists on parental rights issues. Please consider joining us in person or online!

There’s a lot of interesting news in the child welfare world this week.

• In 2021, the Denver Post did a story about a little girl who had died in 2017 after being victimized by what prosecutors later alleged was her mother’s creation of fake illnesses in the child — what used to be called Munchausen by Proxy syndrome. The hospital where the child was treated, Children’s Hospital Colorado, didn’t report any suspicions of child abuse to authorities. The media coverage spurred the legislature to create a task force on mandated reporting, which released its recommendations this past week. Somewhat oddly for a document whose recommendations arose from concerns about failure to report child abuse, the task force report’s 19 suggested reforms mainly address scaling back mandated reporting requirements. Starting with the premise that minority families are more likely to be reported for suspected abuse, the task force recommends legislation to bar reporting of maltreatment that arises “solely” from a parent’s disability or socioeconomic status, including “factors such as inadequate housing, furnishings, income and/or clothing.” As part of its work, the task force did a 50-state review of mandated reporting practices, which you can find here.

• A major reckoning may be about to take place in Britain, where anger is growing as information comes out suggesting governmental complicity in the grooming gang scandal. It appears that organized groups of men, primarily of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent, raped thousands of young girls over the past several decades and were not prosecuted despite strong evidence of their crimes. Critics allege the crimes were ignored due to the ethnicity of the assailants and the need of politicians to curry favor with related voting blocs.

• Since 2014, Oregon has experienced a 32% decline in licensed child residential care agencies and a 48% drop in therapeutic foster-care providers. In the upcoming state legislative session, there will likely be a fight over rolling back prior legislative mandates that critics say have contributed to the decrease in providers, especially for high-acuity youth in care. A lot of the new recommendations are the sorts of practical reforms I’ve discussed many times in this column, but please read them for yourselves.

• Interesting case out of California involving a challenge to the state’s law prohibiting schools from informing parents of a child’s desire to “switch” genders. The court found: “A serious health condition of a child is a matter over which parents have a federal constitutional right and duty to decide how to treat, or whether to treat at all, at any given time. Parents’ rights to make decisions concerning the care, custody, control, and medical care of their children is one of the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests that Americans enjoy.” Some guy wrote about this same concern awhile back.

  

• Congress has reauthorized the IV-B child welfare program via the Supporting America’s Children and Families Act.

• Here’s a new report raising concern over needed reforms to Hawaii’s child welfare system.

• Maine has created a new agency to provide parents’ counsel in dependency proceedings, but there’s a ton of work ahead. The list of families needing an appointed attorney increased by 700 percent in 2024.

• For my journalist friends, the Poynter Institute is offering a course for reporters interested in child welfare issues. You have to apply by the deadline. Of course, you can always call me and I’ll provide you the training for free :).