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Child Welfare Podcasts
Investing in Family Legal Representation to Improve Outcomes with Gwen Clegg
Elliott and Tecoria of Community In-Site talk to Gwen Clegg about Oklahoma’s new statewide Office of Family Representation.
A Family's Fight for Parental Rights with Shrounda Selivanoff: Part 1
In part one of this conversation, Shrounda shares her story of fighting for her son’s rights as a parent and for her grandson’s right to know and be connected to his family.
A Family's Fight for Parental Rights with Shrounda Selivanoff: Part 2
In part two of our conversation we’ll dive into the policy she worked in WA and the implications it has in the ongoing conversation about a world without TPR.
National Child Welfare News
Reports, Research, and Data
2024 Family Representation and Advocacy Program Annual Report
At the time of this annual report, the contract for services between LASO and the AOC is approaching its first anniversary. During in the initial year of phased operations, the AOC and LASO are partnering to jointly identify performance measures for the program for current and future periods that are designed to meet the program’s primary objectives. Most of the measures reported in this initial Annual Report will be those of first impression, and they will serve as benchmarks against which future measures will
be evaluated.
Child Welfare Outcomes, an annual Report to Congress published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides information on state performance in seven categories of outcomes that are widely accepted performance objectives for child welfare practice. The Report also includes findings of analyses conducted on performance across states and over time. Users of this data site will be able to explore the outcomes, demographic, and context data contained in the Report and generate customized reports by state and year. See report
Effects of an interdisciplinary approach to parental representation in child welfare
Lucas A. Gerber, Yuk C. Pang, Timothy Ross, Martin Guggenheim, Peter J. Pecora, Joel Miller: This study utilizes a quasi-experimental propensity score matching design to assess the causal impact on child welfare outcomes when parents facing an abuse or neglect case in the New York City Family Court were provided interdisciplinary law office representation as opposed to a standard panel attorney. The interdisciplinary law office approach includes social work staff and parent advocates for the parent, and salaried attorneys working in nonprofit organizations. Subsequent competing risk models show that children whose parents received the interdisciplinary law office model achieved overall permanency, re-unification, and guardianship more quickly. These results provide evidence that interdisciplinary law office parental representation is an effective intervention to promote permanency for children in foster care. Read full study
Lucas A. Gerber, Martin Guggenheim, Yuk C. Pang, Timothy Ross, Yana Mayevskaya, Susan Jacobs, Peter J. Pecora: Prior research demonstrates that the interdisciplinary law office approach to parental representation in child welfare, used in the New York City Family Court, speeds up the time to permanency for children in foster care with no effect on child safety. Interrogating these findings further, this study utilizes a qualitative interview-based design to understand how the model works in practice to impact the outcomes of families’ cases. Read full study
March 2025
Child’s death is a failure of West Virginia foster care, but also West Virginia journalism
By Richard Wexler: A lawsuit alleges that a child taken because he wandered out of his mother’s home was placed – for that reason — in foster care. He wandered out of the foster home and died.
February 2025
True Narratives: Framing Pain, Punishment, and the Lethality of Termination of Parental Rights
By Corey Best and Sarah Katz: This essay is written in the practice of abolitionism, to disentangle controlling myths from reality that overwhelmingly stifle expansive and honest discourse around the devastating practice of terminating parental rights (TPR). This essay seeks to deepen collective political analysis, unpacking structural racism and anti-Blackness which buttress family policing law, policy and practice. The essay adds to family policing abolition discourse through rigorous excavation of framing and narrative patterns of history, and utilizing a story-based strategy amplifying the perspective of those subjected to state violence of policing families. The essay seeks to reveal the death-making nature of TPR through true narratives, arguing sustainable, positive change for families cannot occur if TPR reigns as a mainstay threat and tool for decimating familial connection, and calls for an end to the state’s ability to inflict TPR on families.
January 2025
He Dialed 911 to Save His Baby. Then His Children Were Taken Away.
By Pamela Colloff: The controversial medical diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome can send parents to jail. What if the symptoms are caused by something else?
New federal data shows Maine’s child welfare agency is moving against national trends
By Josh Keefe: “We’re flooding the system,” said one child advocate, arguing that Maine is failing to keep kids safe not because it is investigating too few families but because it is investigating too many.
Parental Redemption at the White House
By Vivek Sankaran: Vance’s life story provides a unique lens through which the nation can reimagine its approach to child welfare policy. His own experiences highlight the sanctity of family relationships and the importance of giving parents the chance to recover and rebuild bonds with their children. These values should form the foundation of the Trump administration’s child welfare agenda.
By Sara Tiano: An unusual bill now before the Texas Legislature would tighten the conditions for CPS workers to pull kids from their parents’ homes, ensure they remain close to kin when they do enter foster care, and make it more difficult to permanently sever family ties.
State and national policy experts called the proposed legislation “transformational” and “a huge step” toward necessary reforms of the child welfare system.
December 2024
‘Leaves a scar on the justice system’: Former Larimer County child welfare caseworker is sentenced
By Stephanie Butzer: A former Larimer County child welfare caseworker was sentenced to two months in a work release program and three years of probation after the department found falsified case reports in 2023.
It was her responsibility to ensure kids were in a safe environment at home. But initial reporting found that she never met with six families, though she made it appear like she had provided services to them. Investigators initially found 20 false claims of face-to-face meetings with families, and then uncovered 12 more, Wills said. Spraker was paid for this time. Those families and children never received help, he said, but were in dangerous enough situations that the government felt it should step in. Read more
New rule for data collection on Indigenous foster children will start next year
By Kirsten Dorman: A new rule will require states to collect and report more detailed data on how the Indian Child Welfare Act is being applied in foster care cases. The move builds on years’ worth of updates to foster care reporting regulations.
The rule’s goals center on responding to concerns about the overrepresentation of American Indian and Alaska Native children in foster care. Officials say they want to achieve a better understanding of those kids’ experiences and ensure culturally appropriate care. Read more
By Sara Tiano: As this country battles yet another drug epidemic, medical authorities and the federal government continue to promote “medication-assisted treatments” like methadone as the most-effective frontline defense against the ravages of opioid addiction. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the bedrock Americans with Disabilities Act protect these patients from being discriminated against for their prescriptions.
Yet too often, parents managing addiction under doctor’s orders with methadone or similar medications are set up for failure in the nation’s foster care courts. Problems exist to some extent across the country, according to recent lawsuits, federal investigations and interviews with more than a dozen court officials, parents, advocates and disability rights activists. Read more
Florida Measure proposes new Child Safety and Custody Compliance Act
By Jim Ash: The measure would require the Department of Children of Families to verify court-ordered custody arrangements and parenting plans and make the department responsible for making sure a child is not “being unlawfully denied access to a parent or guardian.” Read more
Portland Housing Authority has new vouchers for youth exiting foster care
By Grace Benninghoff: For the last four years, the authority has been circulating 17 housing vouchers for young people aging out of foster care. Now they are getting an additional 13. Read more
November 2024
Everyday Heroes: Johns Creek student tries to take mystery out of court for kids
By Nancy Badertscher: A Fulton County teen has found a growing national interest in her efforts to help foster children and other youngsters prepare for their day in court. Sanjana Shah, a senior at Johns Creek High School, recently published two guides to help children in foster care – or other potentially scary situations – navigate their way through the state’s juvenile courts. Read more
A National Nonprofit Urges Better Mental Health and Housing Policies for Older Foster Youth
By Susanti Sarkar and Bria Suggs: Former foster youth in Georgia, New York and California are driving reforms recommended by a leading national nonprofit focused on system reforms, with the goal of improving access to mental health care and affordable housing for one of the nation’s most vulnerable populations. Read more
Keeping families together: Safe Families for Children provides support for those struggling
By Ashley Van Havere: Safe Families for Children is a nationwide movement dedicated to keeping families together and is making a significant impact with their Raleigh location.
The organization offers resources to parents and guardians struggling to navigate crises. Through this program, families facing challenges can find temporary homes for their children while they work through difficult situations. Read more
October 2024
By Alex Perez: Parents accused of harming their children have a right to a court-appointed attorney in Minnesota and most of the country. But legal help is only guaranteed once allegations of abuse or neglect land in court through a formal petition submitted to a judge.
Now, a new program in the state’s largest county offers parents counsel well before this stage, when child welfare workers are still deciding whether drug use, domestic violence or mental illness threatens a child’s health and safety. This “prepetition” representation aims to steer families away from the foster care system whenever possible — a goal aligned with state and federal standards. Read more
‘I was sent away’: Youth Share Firsthand Accounts of Life in Group Homes
By Sara Tiano: A report released today gives a rare, firsthand look inside group homes and lockups for youth, highlighting claims of discrimination and the rawness that lingers after violent incidents with staff, being sent to isolation and subjected to sub-par school and counseling.
“I felt like a prisoner there, and I didn’t feel safe there,” a young person identified as Aniya wrote of her former group home in Broken Bridges: Futures Denied. Read more
September 2024
Let’s Widen The Lens on Lived Experience
By Paul S. DiLorenzo: Sharing the lessons and meaning of a person’s lived experience is a critical form of communication. Those lessons prompt us toward self-reflection and help in building ties that bind. As we strive to level the playing field between professional helpers and the families they serve, we should encourage and account for the lived experiences of all parties. Read more
Minnesota’s Highest Court Sets Out to Better Protect Children
By Alex Perez: Last week, Minnesota’s state Supreme Court announced the launch of its first Council for Child Protection and Maltreatment Prevention. The 26-member group of experts will spend the next year recommending policies and laws to improve outcomes for kids and families in the child welfare system and those at risk of abuse and neglect. Read more
By Stephannie Stokes: Annalinda Martinez lost her oldest children after the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services discovered they were homeless. As the state demands she pay back a portion of the costs from their time in foster care, she’s afraid she could lose more. Read more
August 2024
A Second Chance Offered to Minnesota Moms Who’ve Previously Lost Kids to CPS
By Alex Perez: Hennepin County program reaches out to expectant mothers at a highly sensitive stage of their pregnancies, offering assistance to those who agree to work with the child welfare agency. The aim is to avoid another foster care removal in the family. Read more
April 2024
In Georgia, inadequate housing can mean significantly longer stays in foster care
By Stephannie Stokes: K. thought she was one step closer to regaining custody of her children when she secured her studio apartment.
But she learned in court, following her caseworker’s inspection of her apartment, that there was a problem: She didn’t have individual bedrooms for her kids. DFCS wouldn’t let them stay there unless she had at least one for her daughter and another for her sons, she said. Read more
July 2020
Is Every Foster Care Removal Really an Emergency?
By Vivek Sankaran: Juvenile courts in America routinely grant requests to separate children from their parents without ever giving anyone other than the child protective services (CPS) investigator an opportunity to present evidence. Read more
