Four years into the campaign to reform Rhode Island’s foster care system, Children’s Rights renews its fight on behalf of vulnerable kids with recent stories of abuse and neglect — along with enduring statistical evidence of systemic dysfunction. States are ranked across endless categories: population totals, educational performance, obesity rates, on and on. In some […]
At their second annual conference this week, Latasha Watts and her advocacy group, the Purple Project, urge current and former youth in foster care to take ownership of their lives and move toward a successful future. This weekend, 200 current and former foster youth will come together in Cleveland for the Purple Project’s 2nd Annual […]
A recent progress report on court-ordered reform shows that New Jersey is just the latest state to shortchange youth aging out of foster care, leaving them vulnerable to and unprepared for adult-sized problems. Even the briefest of stays in foster care is traumatic for children. After being abused or neglected in their own homes, these […]
Texas child welfare officials have long promised an overhaul of the state’s dangerous child welfare system. A new story, spurred by Children’s Rights’ reform campaign, indicates that empty plans won’t be tolerated any further. As our campaign to reform the dysfunctional Texas child welfare system gathers steam, there is mounting evidence that the public is […]
Mother Jones and Salon tackle Gov. Haley Barbour’s inaction in the face of a court order to do right by thousands of abused and neglected kids Since 2004, Children’s Rights has been engaged in a major campaign to reform Mississippi’s badly dysfunctional and highly dangerous child welfare system on behalf of thousands of abused and […]
The collective weight of the horror stories that result when foster care systems fail is enough to make anyone want to give up. But if we stand together, we can bring about massive change. We’ve been writing all week about the stories of Oklahoma children who lost their lives when state child welfare officials failed […]
Child welfare officials chose to ignore a basic, easy-to-enforce rule, and then failed to learn from their deadly mistake. Child welfare systems establish rules to protect the well-being of the kids in their care. Plain and simple. And those rules are as worthless as the paper they’re printed on if child welfare workers aren’t compelled […]
A 20-month-old boy in foster care, run down by a pick-up truck, paid the ultimate price because Oklahoma child welfare officials didn’t ask the obvious questions about a dangerous foster home. The pick-up truck that peeled away from a boozy lakeside gathering left behind more than just a cloud of dust. On the ground lay […]
With little planning and no sense of gravity or urgency, Oklahoma returns a helpless boy to an environment of brutal violence — and he pays for the state’s negligence with his life. D.S. first came to the attention of Oklahoma child welfare officials when he was three years old, not long after his mother moved […]
When foster youth in Oklahoma suffer abuse in state custody, the chances are appallingly high that an investigation will be ineffective and inconsequential. When a 10-year-old boy said he was sexually assaulted by his 13-year-old roommate in their room at an Oklahoma short-term residential treatment center, the staff didn’t rally to protect him or call […]
