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April 3, 2025
Why does child abuse happen? A new public service announcement says most people think it’s a “bad parent problem,” but the ad suggests “the root causes may be different than you think.” This message from Prevent Child Abuse America goes on to explain that child abuse is the result of families’ lack of financial resources — a…
April 1, 2025
Socialist state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has made a splash in the race for New York City mayor. A relentless social media campaign has helped him raise big dollars, despite his long-shot odds against incumbent mayor Eric Adams and former governor Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani has also adopted a platform of terrible ideas. His campaign materials portray him as a Robin…
April 1, 2025
A drop in the number of children entering foster care and fatalities due to abuse in Texas is, on its face, welcome news, and some stakeholders in the well-being of children are heartened. “There have been more net positives than any negatives that show up,” Brandon Logan, executive director of the Texas nonprofit One Accord…
March 31, 2025
Event Summary On March 31, AEI hosted a discussion on child welfare priorities, moderated by AEI’s Naomi Schaefer Riley. Experts Jedd Medefind of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, Rachel N. Morrison of the Ethics & Public Policy Center, Darcy Olsen of the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, and Tom Rawlings of Child Welfare…
December 14, 2024
Between 2020 and 2023, there were 2,154 cases of substantiated abuse and/or neglect of foster children in New York City. When New Yorkers read that statistic — taken from a recent City Comptroller’s audit of the Administration for Children’s Services — they might be shocked. Indeed, it might confirm their prior assumptions about how terrible foster care…
October 14, 2024
The only thing surprising about Dorothy Roberts winning a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” earlier this month is that it took the organization so long to do it. Roberts, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has long been a darling of the critical-theory Left for her writings advocating the abolition of the child welfare…
September 27, 2024
“Almost 9,000 children in California foster care could soon be taken from homes over insurance crisis,” reads one among a dozen similar headlines that have appeared in West Coast media over recent weeks. The stories all suggest a situation that snuck up on the child-welfare establishment and political leaders. Yet this problem has simmered for…
September 21, 2024
“I know you really want to be parents, and I can tell that you would love and dote on the child,” Angela Tucker, a consultant for an adoption agency, told Todd and Tammy. “But adopting a Black child requires more than love. I will not be recommending that you proceed with adopting a Black child.”…
August 27, 2024
“I think about the families separated in Missouri over the years, not because of abuse or neglect, but because they could not afford to pay a bill or new clothes for their kids.” That was House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) last month, announcing the Protecting America’s Children by Strengthening Families Act. This idea that children are removed…
June 26, 2024
To what lengths should we go to reduce racial disparities in the child welfare system? In 2021 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to require the Department of Children and Family Services to pilot a program of “blind removals.” The program, which had been tried to great fanfare in a couple of other jurisdictions, essentially…