Posts by Sheila Roberts
Reforming the Child Welfare System from the Inside, with Jerry Milner
This week, we talk with Jerry Milner, former Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau in the US Department of Health and Human Services. Far too often, the US child welfare system creates incentives to unnecessarily separate families, harming the children it tries to protect. During his tenure with the Children’s Bureau, Jerry worked to create…
Read MoreParental Rights Veto Override in North Carolina
It took a special session and a veto override vote in both houses of the legislature, but on August 16 North Carolina passed Senate Bill 49 (SB 49), the Parents’ Bill of Rights. The Senate voted 27-18 in favor of the override and the House voted 72-47 just 26 minutes later. In North Carolina, a…
Read MoreThe World of Hidden Foster Care, with Josh Gupta-Kagan
This week, we talk with Dr. Josh Gupta-Kagan, Professor at Columbia University School of Law and author of “The Hidden Foster Care System.” Josh explains how many parents in child welfare investigations find their children placed with relatives, completely off the official record. While placing children with relatives, sometimes called kinship care, is not an…
Read MoreWhat Medical Child Abuse Is – and Isn’t, with Maxine Eichner
This week, we talk with Maxine Eichner. Maxine is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina, and she writes on legal issues surrounding families and social welfare law and policy. In this episode, Eichner explains the history of a concept called “medical child abuse” and how innocent parents of medically complex…
Read MoreEPPiC Broadcast Launches Seventh Season, Highlights Texas Parental Rights Law
Tuesday, August 8, the Parental Rights Foundation launched the seventh season of our EPPiC Broadcast with an episode featuring Andrew Brown of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. And I couldn’t be more excited. Texas, as you may have heard, passed some spectacular parental rights legislation this year. And I’m not just talking about one good…
Read MoreReforming the Texas Foster Care System, with Andrew Brown
Welcome back to the EPPiC Broadcast! We’re kicking off season 7 with Andrew Brown, Associate Vice President of Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. As an attorney, Andrew has represented children in the child welfare system, advocated for the rights of parents, and helped build families through domestic and international adoption. Andrew breaks down…
Read MoreFoundation President Testifies before Colorado Study Committee
On July 18, I was honored to testify before the Colorado legislature’s Child Welfare System Interim Study Committee. The committee, made up of 7 representatives and 4 senators, was formed to gather information on the problems in the state’s child protection scheme and on the potential for reforms to improve outcomes. July 18 was the…
Read MoreParental Rights’ Terrific Day in Congress
What an exciting day! You know those mornings when you just roll out of bed, the coffee is perfect, the weather is beautiful, the birds are singing, the traffic is light, you catch every light green…? Generally, me neither. But for the cause of parental rights, July 19 in Washington, DC, was that kind of…
Read MoreNorth Carolina Parents’ Bill of Rights Vetoed
On Wednesday, July 5, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” for North Carolina schools and families. That’s the bad news. The good news is that, in order for him to veto it, the legislature had to pass it, which they did on June 29. (Sadly, both the vote and the…
Read MoreTexas-Sized Wins for Families
This legislative season, while we were supporting and encouraging fundamental parental rights legislation in more than a dozen states, including the ones passed in North Dakota, Iowa, and Alabama, allies were at work promoting some of our other models in the big state of Texas. And they came away with some real Texas-sized wins for…
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