Medical Child Abuse: Baby Richard’s Story

Imagine finding yourself accused of child abuse because you can’t explain how your four-week-old baby fractured his leg. That’s exactly what happened in the case of baby Richard. The parents simply took their 4-week-old baby boy to the hospital for a swollen leg, and then found themselves accused of abuse. To prevent losing custody, they…

Read More

Missing Children

Missing and Forgotten

“Since 2000, federal records show child welfare agencies across the country closed the cases of more than 53,000 foster kids listed as ‘runaway’ and at least another 61,000 children listed as ‘missing.’” https://www.fox25boston.com/…/missing-and-forgott…/755376482 Sadly, many children are being thrown into this system temporarily even though they have parents who have done nothing wrong. Check out…

Read More

Arizona’s New Law

Arizona recently passed a law that limits the situations in which children can be removed from their parents without a court order. https://www.azcentral.com/…/new-law-defines-when…/509555002/ It remains to be seen, though, if the law will indeed help limit needless removals, as this article from last fall explains. https://www.azcentral.com/…/arizona-department-c…/705733001/ Now is the time to continue pushing for parental…

Read More

Is Foster Care Better?

While we recognize that foster care is necessary for some children in the case of true abuse, let’s make sure children who have loving homes don’t get lost in a system that studies show often hurts rather than helps children. “Children on the margin of placement are found to be two to three times more…

Read More

Troubling Trends in Foster Care

Foster Care Trends

The Parental Rights Foundation this week reviewed the five latest AFCARS reports and uncovered some disturbing trends. According to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) summary of 2016 data released in October of last year and the four previous reports, the number of children in foster care nationwide has been trending…

Read More

Prepare to Be Shocked

Prepare to be shocked, or even angry. Imagine you are driving your young daughter home from preschool. You’ve just endured a child welfare investigation stemming from allegations that someone else physically abused your daughter, allegations which have thankfully been deemed unfounded. The intrusion was mercifully brief compared to many, and the investigator is now out…

Read More

The Law Versus Judge Lyris Younge

PA Court

Photo from Google.Room 5A of the Philadelphia Family Court is one of those places parental rights go to die. Or it would be, if presiding judge Lyris Younge had her way. “She has the capacity to be a good judge,” one lawyer who has served before her told The Legal Intelligencer for a recent article,…

Read More

Disproportionality of Minority Children in Child Welfare Cases

Disproportionality

New Report Highlights Disproportionality in Child Welfare April 25, 2018 The Parental Rights Foundation has released a new report on disproportionality in the child welfare system. The report highlights data from 2016 (the most recent available) showing that nationally the rate of African American children in cases “substantiated” for abuse or neglect is 1.51 times…

Read More

Strip Searches Harm Children

Three-Year-Old Girl Strip Searched Without Parental Knowledge Parental Rights Foundation & Friends File Vital Court Brief This morning the Parental Rights Foundation filed a friend of the court brief (“amicus brief”) with the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in the case of Doe v. Woodard. Our brief provides the court scholarship…

Read More

Ninth Circuit Court Gets It Right

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last week ruled in Demaree v. Pederson that there is no “qualified immunity” for investigators who remove children from a home without a warrant or exigent threat of serious physical harm to the child.This is a welcome decision from a court that had not always been…

Read More