News roundup

....latest in child welfare happenings

As we head into the Labor Day weekend, here’s a bit of what’s going on in the child welfare world.

• Foster care often gets criticized, but a new study suggests that when it’s necessary, it actually improves outcomes for children.

• Following a growing trend in juvenile justice, Louisiana recently lowered the age of adult criminal responsibility to 17 from 18. These initiatives flow from concerns that juvenile crime is spiking, a problem often attributed to pandemic-era decisions to close schools for months and leave youth with idle hands. At the same time, NPR reports that a number of states are increasing procedural protections for children undergoing police interrogation.

• We often come across stories of parents being reported to child protective services for allowing their children to roam free. The latest kerfuffle is from the UK, where a TV personality received a call from social services after revealing that she had allowed her 15 year-old son to spend the summer traveling across Europe with a friend. In case you’re interested in this issue more broadly, here is an interesting research paper on the topic of childhood independence vs. “inadequate supervision.”

• This story provides a good summary of what I think is a real drawback to the practice of placing foster children who are “free for adoption” on a public website. A New York woman sought to adopt a teen from Louisiana’s foster care system who was featured on an adoption website. Louisiana child welfare officials began the process of building a relationship between the two, but they failed to fully explain up front the young woman’s significant history of abuse and trauma that had led to her bouncing among many placements and receiving a number of mental health diagnoses. As a result, the poor child was led down the primrose path of believing she would be adopted, only to later be disappointed and further traumatized when the New York woman backed out. There’s got to be a better way of matching children with families.

• This is a great idea: “A pair of Republican lawmakers has proposed legislation meant to provide a measure of stability to Ohio foster kids by removing income requirements for publicly funded child care for foster caregivers and family members raising a relative’s child.” Inability to afford childcare is one of the main reasons relatives are reluctant to provide voluntary kinship care for children.

• Yet another lawsuit over North Carolina’s inability to provide appropriate behavioral health services for children in foster care.

• Has any good come out of the $200 million that the State of Texas has spent dealing with the class action lawsuit against its child protection system?

• It seems West Virginia’s child welfare agency has finally acknowledged they should be releasing records to the public in cases of child deaths and near fatalities.

Thanks for reading!