Greetings from the Georgia Capitol, where I’m working with Fostering Impact on legislation to improve the way the state supports our foster parents, fictive kin, and relative caregivers.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed what the street is telling us: serious juvenile crime is surging. “Police, prosecutors and community groups attribute much of the youth violence to broad disruptions that started with the pandemic and lockdowns,” the paper reports. That makes sense, as gangs and other malevolent adults took advantage of bored teens out of school during the pandemic to recruit them to commit crimes. Cue the backlash: “Some prosecutors and law enforcement leaders argue that the shift away from a more punitive approach for juveniles toward intervention programs and rehabilitation has gone too far and corrections are needed.”
I’ve written before about predictive analytics in child protection. One of the early adopters of using algorithms to predict which children reported to the child protection agency are at highest risk is Allegheny County, Pennsylvania — i.e., Pittsburgh. In the past, the use of predictive analytics to determine child risk has come under fire — unfairly, in my opinion. Now, the US Justice Department is apparently investigating Allegheny County’s system to determine whether it discriminates against families with disabilities.
Georgia’s Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program has achieved a goal it’s been pursuing for years — a CASA program in every judicial circuit in the State.
Judge Janis Jack is once again threatening to hold Texas’ Department of Child Safety in contempt because it’s not making sufficient progress on reforms. Interestingly:
“Jack also blasted the state for continuing to have children without placement, when the state cannot find a suitable placement for that child, requiring the Department of Family and Protective Services to provide temporary emergency care until a placement can be secured. Children without placement are more likely to have complex behavioral and mental health needs. The average number of children without placement went from 80 children per night in 2021 to 60 children per night in 2022.”
Addressing this problem is not, in my opinion, one that can be solved simply through litigation against the child welfare agency. It’s a systemic issue that must be addressed by joint action of a state’s mental health, juvenile justice, child welfare, Medicaid, and public health systems. If you’re interested, I took part in a panel this past Monday at the American Enterprise Institute to discuss this issue. You can view the conversation here.
Speaking of kinship care, here’s an interesting op-ed out of Kentucky.