Law Commons^™

Letting The Kids Run Wild: Free-Range Parenting And The (De)Regulation Of Child Protective Services, Fenja R. Schick-Malone

Washington and Lee Law Review

Families in the United States suffer from a removal epidemic. The child welfare framework allows unnecessary and harmful intervention into family and parenting matters, traditionally left to the discretion of the parent. Many states allow Child Protective Services (“CPS”) to investigate, intervene, and permanently separate a child from their parents for innocuous activities such as letting the child play outside unattended. This especially affects low-income and minority families.

To prevent CPS from unnecessarily intervening in a family’s decision to let their children engage in independent, unsupervised activities, Utah passed a “free-range” parenting act (“Act”) in 2018. The Act explicitly excludes …

Nudging Improvements To The Family Regulation System, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

The Restatement of Children and the Law features a strong endorsement of parents’ rights to the care, custody, and control of their children because parents’ rights are generally good for children. Building on that foundation, the Restatement’s sections on child neglect and abuse law would resolve several jurisdictional splits in favor of greater protections for family integrity, thus protecting more families against the harms that come from state intervention, especially state separation of parents from children.

But a close read of the Restatement shows that it only goes so far. It is not likely to significantly reduce the wide variation …

Crossing Over: A Description Of Dual Status Youth In Taylor County, Texas, Kimberly S. Putnam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores and describes the experiences of ten dual status youth in Taylor County, Texas by examining the factors of race, sex, child welfare allegation, and juvenile justice offense. A review of the literature suggests that this population has unique challenges in and outside the courtroom, including being at increased risk for disparate outcomes in later adolescence and adulthood. This study compared single-system child welfare and juvenile justice data from Texas DFPS Region 2 and Taylor County to raw data provided on a sample of ten dual status youth identified in Taylor County from 2017–2021. Findings included a disproportionately …

Pathology Logics, S. Lisa Washington

Northwestern University Law Review

Every year, thousands of marginalized parents become ensnared in the family regulation system, an apparatus more commonly referred to as the child welfare system. In prior work, I examined how the coercion of domestic violence survivors in the family regulation system perpetuates harmful knowledge production and serves to legitimize family regulation intervention. This Article focuses on another logic deeply embedded in the family regulation system: the pathologizing of impoverished and racialized groups. Scholars have discussed the pathologizing of marginalized groups to describe a host of different phenomena. In this Article, “pathology logic” refers to a logic that produces notions of …

Fostering Faith: Religion In The History Of Family Policing, Elizabeth D. Katz

UF Law Faculty Publications

Each year in the United States, approximately 700,000 children live in foster care. Many of these children are placed in religiously oriented homes recruited and overseen by faith-based agencies (FBAs). This arrangement—as well as the scope and operation of child welfare services more broadly—is at a crucial moment of reckoning. Scholars and advocates focused on children’s rights and family integrity maintain that the child welfare system, increasingly termed the “family policing system,” harms children, families, and communities through unnecessary and racist child removal that is partly motivated by perverse financial incentives. Some call for abolition. Meanwhile, in a largely separate …

The New Orleans Transformation: Foster Care As A Rare, Time-Limited Intervention, Josh Gupta-Kagan, Christopher Church, Melissa Carter, Vivek Sankaran, Andrew Barclay

Articles

This Article offers an initial evaluation of one reformed child protection system— New Orleans, Louisiana—and describes how a system that dramatically reduces the number of children in foster care might look. This system shows how a major metropolitan area can shrink its daily population of children in foster care to the low double digits, which would correspond to a reduction of the national daily foster care population by about 360,000. This reduction was mostly due to sending children home—usually to the homes from which they were removed—within days or weeks of removal, raising questions about the necessity of the original …

The New Orleans Transformation: Foster Care As A Rare, Time-Limited Intervention, Joshua Gupta-Kagan, Christopher Church, Melissa Carter, Vivek S. Sankaran, Andrew Barclay

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers an initial evaluation of one reformed child protection system — New Orleans, Louisiana — and describes how a system that dramatically reduces the number of children in foster care might look. This system shows how a major metropolitan area can shrink its daily population of children in foster care to the low double digits, which would correspond to a reduction of the national daily foster care population by about 360,000. This reduction was mostly due to sending children home — usually to the homes from which they were removed — within days or weeks of removal, raising …

The Restatement Of The Law, Children And The Law: A Blueprint For Reforming The Child Welfare System, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

As part of the special issue on the foster care system, this essay challenges the assumption that all the children who are in foster care should be in foster care. The essay first describes the familiar—and still persuasive—argument that foster care does not serve the interests of most children and families. It then brings a new lens to bear on this argument by describing the work of the American Law Institute's Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law, which provides a blueprint for shrinking the child welfare system and promoting child well-being.

Creating A Strong Legal Preference For Kinship Care, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

One new to our field would be forgiven for thinking that the law must favor placing foster children with kin rather than with strangers. After all, individuals and organizations from across the ideological spectrum endorse kinship care, government publications describe kinship care as “the preferred resource” for placing children who cannot live at home with a parent and, after steady increases over multiple decades, authorities now place more than one-third of all foster children with kin. And decades of evidence establish that kinship care is generally more stable and serves children’s health and well-being better than living with strangers, a …

Keynote: How I Became A Family Policing Abolitionist, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

This piece is a written version of Professor Dorothy Roberts' keynote speech at the Columbia Journal of Race and Law's 11th annual symposium, titled Strengthened Bonds: Abolishing the Child Welfare System and Re-Envisioning Child Well-Being.

A Ringing Endorsement Of Lawyers, And The Most Important Development In Child Protection Law, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Two empirical studies demonstrating the impact of vigorous family defense legal work on child protection cases bookended the 2010s. In 2012, Mark Courtney and Jennifer Hook found that cases in which a specialized interdisciplinary law office (ILO) represented parents had faster reunifications, guardianships, and adoptions than similar cases with different parental representation, though it did not explore how those results were obtained. In 2019, Lucas Gerber, Yuk Pang, Timothy Ross, Martin Guggenheim, Peter Pecora, and Joel Miller found that, compared to solo and small office practitioners, ILOs in New York City hastened reunification and guardianships for their clients, leading to …

Disposition Of Frozen Preembryos In The Case Of Divorce: New York Should Implement A Modified Mutual Contemporaneous Consent Approach, Kasey Bray

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Serving-Up The Ace: Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (“Ace”) In Dependency Adoption Through The Lens Of Social Science, Cynthia G. Hawkins, Taylor Scribner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Almost certainly, every child who enters the foster care system has endured some sort of trauma. It is unrefuted that childhood trauma correlates with mental, physical, and behavioral problems well into adulthood. In 1998, one of the first major studies of the relationship between certain forms of childhood trauma and adult behavior and disease was reported. Collectively, these traumas are called “Adverse Childhood Experiences” (ACE).

Today ACE refers to ten common forms of trauma that individuals may have experienced as children. To put this issue in perspective, it is currently estimated that 34.8 million children in the United States are …

Life Is A Highway: Addressing Legal Obstacles To Foster Youth Driving, Lucy Johnston-Walsh

Faculty Scholarly Works

The simple and relatively mundane act of driving a car, which many of us take for granted, can have a profound impact on many aspects of adulthood. The ability to drive a car can provide a means to pursue education and employment, to earn income, and to ultimately obtain independence. As a young adult, a car is often the first acquired asset, which leads to developing credit history for other major life purchases. Owning a car may also be a significant contributor to a person’s economic wellbeing and future buying power. Yet the simple act of driving a car is …

Children In Foster Care: The Odds Are Against Them, Shawna Doughman

GGU Law Review Blog

Most child welfare reports that lead to removal of children from their homes are filed for neglect rather than abuse. Often, their parents want to take care of them, but are failing for one reason, or for many. Nonetheless, the lion’s share of the $30 billion annual budget of state and federal child welfare funding goes overwhelmingly to foster care and adoption services which remove the children from their parents, instead of to helping those families care for their own children.

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Rethinking Foster Care: Why Our Current Approach To Child Welfare Has Failed, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church

Articles

Over the past decade, the child welfare system has expanded, with vast public and private resources being spent on the system. Despite this investment, there is scant evidence suggesting a meaningful return on investment. This Article argues that without a change in the values held by the system, increased funding will not address the public health problems of child abuse and neglect.

America's Hidden Foster Care System, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

In most states, child protection agencies induce parents to transfer physical custody of their children to kinship caregivers by threatening to place the children in foster care and bring them to family court. Both the frequency of these actions (this Article establishes that they occur tens or even hundreds of thousands of times annually) and their impact (they separate parents and children, sometimes permanently) resemble the formal foster care system. But they are hidden from courts, because agencies file no petition alleging abuse or neglect, and hidden from policymakers, because agencies do not generally report these cases.

While informal custody …

A Cure Worse Than The Disease? The Impact Of Removal On Children And Their Families, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church, Monique Mitchell

Articles

Removing children from their parents is child welfare's most drastic intervention. Research clearly establishes the profound and irreparable damage family separation can inflict on children and their parents. To ensure that this intervention is only used when necessary, a complex web of state and federal constitutional principles, statutes, administrative regulations, judicial decisions, and agency policies govern the removal decision. Central to these authorities is the presumption that a healthy and robust child welfare system keeps families together, protects children from harm, and centers on the needs of children and their parents. Yet, research and practice-supported by administrative data-paint a different …

Keeping It In The Family: Minor Guardianship As Private Child Protection, Deirdre Smith

Faculty Publications

Due to the opioid use epidemic and an overwhelmed public child protection system, minor guardianship is an increasingly important tool for relative caregivers seeking to obtain legal authority regarding the children who come into their care because of a parent’s crisis. Yet minor guardianship originated in colonial law for an entirely different purpose: to protect legal orphans who had inherited property. Today’s guardianship laws are still based on this “orphan model” which does not fit today’s reality. This Article is the first to analyze how these outdated guardianship laws are being used as a form of “private child protection” and …

A Cure Worse Than The Disease? The Impact Of Removal On Children And Their Families, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church, Monique Mitchell

Marquette Law Review

Removing children from their parents is child welfare’s most drastic

intervention. Research clearly establishes the profound and irreparable

damage family separation can inflict on children and their parents. To ensure

that this intervention is only used when necessary, a complex web of state and

federal constitutional principles, statutes, administrative regulations, judicial

decisions, and agency policies govern the removal decision. Central to these

authorities is the presumption that a healthy and robust child welfare system

keeps families together, protects children from harm, and centers on the needs

of children and their parents.

Yet, research and practice—supported by administrative data—paint a

different …

Stories Told And Untold: Confidentiality Laws And The Master Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin

Maine Law Review

In most states, child welfare hearings and records are sealed or confidential. This means that by law, court hearings and records may not be observed. The same laws and court rules also preclude those who are authorized to enter and watch from discussing anything learned or observed in a closed courtroom or from a sealed court record with anyone not involved in the case. It is the restriction on speech—on telling stories about child welfare—with which this Article is concerned. I will argue in this Article that the insights of narrative theory and agenda-setting studies help us understand the damaging …

Timely Permanency Or Unnecessary Removal?: Tips For Advocates For Children Who Spend Less Than 30 Days In Foster Care, Christopher Church, Monique Mitchell, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

Removal and placement in foster care is child welfare’s most severe intervention, contemplated as “a last resort rather than the first.” Federal law, with an overarching goal of preventing unnecessary removals, bolsters this principle by requiring juvenile and family courts to carefully oversee the removal of children to foster care. Expansive research reminds the field that removal, while often necessary, is not a benign intervention. Physically, legally, and emotionally separating children from their parent(s) can traumatize children in lasting ways. Yet review of federal data concerning children in foster care reveal a troubling narrative: each year, tens of thousands of …

“Letting Kids Be Kids”: Youth Voice And Activism To Reform Foster Care And Promote “Normalcy”, Bernard P. Perlmutter

Books and Book Chapters

In this chapter, I examine stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions. The stories told by these children are analogized to victim truth testimony, analyzed as a therapeutic, procedural, and developmental process, and examined as a catalyst for systemic accountability and change. Youth stories take different forms and appear in different media: testimony in legislatures, courts, research surveys or studies; opinion editorials and interviews in newspapers or blog posts; digital stories on YouTube; and artistic expression. Lawyers often serve as conduits for youth storytelling, translating their clients’ stories to the …

Rights Of Incarcerated Parents, Angélica Cházaro

Chapters in Books

This chapter discusses the childcare and custody rights of incarcerated parents. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, an estimated 809,800 state and federal prisoners were parents to children under the age of eighteen in 2007. There are approximately 1,706,600 children under the age of eighteen who have a parent in prison.

As a parent in prison, you may fear that your child will not be cared for, that you will lose your child, or that your relationship with your child will suffer while you are incarcerated. This Chapter focuses on New York state law and describes how the law …

Legal Issues In Child Welfare Cases Involving Children With Disabilities, Joshua B. Kay, Frank E. Vandervort

Book Chapters

This chapter examines the legal framework applicable when child maltreatment and disability intersect. It begins with a brief description of the constitutional foundation forparent-child-state relations. It provides an overview of relevant federal child welfare laws, which today shape each state’s child protection system. It then considers the application of various federal laws governing work with children and families when a child has a disability. In doing so, we consider the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and we touch upon Social Security benefits for children. This chapter does not …

Child Support Collections To Offset Out Of Home Placement Costs: A Study Of Cost Effectiveness, Trish Skophammer

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Families experiencing out-of-home placement (OHP) are in crisis. The fact that a child has been removed from the home means the family has become involved with the child welfare or juvenile justice system. Families that experience OHP are disproportionately poor, and the reasons for OHP often stem from poverty. Because OHP is expensive, and society values parental responsibility, federal and state laws require that parents be referred to the child support system to help offset the cost of OHP through child support collections. This study explores practices around OHP cases in the child support system and adds to the small …

When Children Object: Amplifying An Older Child’S Objection To Termination Of Parental Rights, Brent Pattison

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Each year, thousands of children become wards of the state when a court terminates the legal rights of their parents. Between 2010 and 2014, more than 307,000 children lost their legal relationships to their parents in Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) proceedings. A growing percentage of child welfare cases involve older children. At the same time, too many young people lose their legal relationships with their parents without a family waiting to adopt them. The stakes are high for children in TPR cases; nonetheless, many children—even older children—cannot meaningfully participate in proceedings. Moreover, TPR cases threaten parents’ and children’s rights …

Easy Come, Easy Go: The Plight Of Children Who Spend Less Than 30 Days In Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church

Articles

This article explores the plight of “short stayers” and argues that juvenile courts are failing to use two tools—the federal reasonable efforts requirement and the early appointment of parents’ counsel—to prevent the unnecessary entry of children into foster care. The article also argues that states should give parents and children the right to an expedited appeal of removal decisions to ensure removal standards are properly applied. Finally, this article argues that the federal government must acknowledge the problem of short stayers by utilizing data related to children who may unnecessarily enter foster care in the Child and Family Services Review, …

Federal Legislation Protecting Children And Providing For Their Well-Being, Frank E. Vandervort

Book Chapters

Over the past several decades a national model for child welfare practice has emerged. In Child Welfare Law and Practice, also known as "The Red Book", experienced NACC authors and child welfare advocates have captured and refined that model, offering a comprehensive guide for those who make child welfare advocacy their priority. Designed as a study guide for attorneys preparing to take the NACC Child Welfare Law Certification Exam, the Red Book serves as a day-to-day guide for child welfare advocates across the country, offering in-depth analysis and instruction on wide variety of topics in the field of child welfare …

Reunification Planning For Children In Custody Of Ohio's Children Services Boards: What Does The Law Require?, Norma Blank

Akron Law Review

Ohio law mandates that each of its eighty-eight counties has a county department of welfare or a county children services board with powers and duties to provide appropriate care, protection or services to children whose situations warrant such intervention. This mandate is a reflection of society's recognition that where there is parental incapacity to provide a safe and healthful home environment for the children, the state has an obligation to intervene in the children's behalf. For some families this ultimately results in the termination of parental rights and the permanent placement of the children outside the parental home.