Preserving Family Connections, with Vivek Sankaren

Vivek Sankaren is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, and director of their Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic. He’s authored over three dozen journal and law review articles, including “The Ties That Bind Us: an Empirical, Clinical, and Constitutional Argument Against Terminating Parental Rights”.…

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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…

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The 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…

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What 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…

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Reforming 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…

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Adoption and Foster Family Advocacy with Laura Adams

This week, we talk with Laura Adams, founder of FACTS4safefamilies.com, which provides education, support, and advocacy to improve understanding of adoptive and foster children and complex trauma. Laura explains how through her work with international adoption and parenting her own adopted children with special needs, she saw firsthand the challenges that exist in getting the proper…

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Advocating for Parents with Erin Phillips

This week, we talk with Erin Phillips, president of Power2Parent, an organization uniting parents who want to advocate for their children’s education. Erin discusses her journey in advocating for her parental rights in her own children’s education and how Power2Parent was formed to give parents in her home state of Nevada and across the country…

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Challenging CPS Overreach with Peter Kamakawiwoole

This week, Homeschool Legal Defense Association staff attorney Peter Kamakawiwoole returns to the Eppic Broadcast. Peter tells us about a case that he litigated on behalf of a mom who found herself dealing with an invasive CPS investigation including strip searches of her young children – all because she left her children in the car…

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Fighting for Reasonable Childhood Independence, with Diane Redleaf

This week, we welcome Diane Redleaf back to the Eppic Broadcast. Diane is the author of They Took the Kids Last Night and founder of the Family Defense Center. Diane is working with Let Grow to pass legislation in Virginia and Utah that protects reasonable childhood independence, the idea that children should be able to pursue age-appropriate activities on their…

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Parental Rights and Strict Scrutiny with Hugh Phillips

This week, we talk with Hugh Phillips, a constitutional litigator at Liberty Counsel. Hugh has also served as a judicial law clerk for the Supreme Court of Alabama and he’s the author of a law review article entitled “Liberating Liberty: How the Glucksberg Test Can Solve the Supreme Court’s Confusing Jurisprudence on Parental Rights”. Hugh…

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