Christy Johnson’s heart dropped in February when she first stepped into a facility for children with serious mental and behavioral health issues in Courtland, a few miles from the Tennessee River in northern Alabama, run by Sequel Youth & Family Services. “There was a particular room,” said Johnson, investigations supervisor for the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy […]

As 2020 draws to a close, our nation’s children—despite strides made over the last year to keep them safe—are still being harmed in the very child welfare systems meant to protect them. We keep relearning the same lesson: the state is not a good parent, and it cannot effectively substitute a parent-child bond with a […]

A lawsuit seeking to boost support payments for Ohio children in the custody of adult relatives was necessary because of the state’s inaction in addressing a disparity in those payments, an advocate for foster children said. At issue in the federal lawsuit filed Nov. 19 are payments to relatives who aren’t licensed caregivers but are approved to […]

A new federal lawsuit filed this month by foster families who take in relative children is claiming that the state of Ohio is withholding financial assistance that these families are owed under federal law. The same financial assistance monies that flow to licensed foster families are not being paid to relative foster families, despite an […]

People in Ohio who have taken custody of children they’re related to are being illegally denied state foster care payments to help cover their child-raising costs, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday. At issue are payments to relatives who aren’t licensed caregivers but are approved to care for children taken from their parents. The […]

For more than a decade, hundreds of disabled students locked up in a large Georgia jail have not been getting the special education services they’re entitled to under federal law, but that may soon start to change. As a result of the settlement, announced by the children’s attorneys Monday, the school district will begin to put […]

Christina Wilson Remlin, lead counsel of the New York City-based pro bono law firm Children’s Rights — which represents foster youth nationwide — said the Children’s Services survey “confirms the risks and the dangers that we expect to see and do see all over the country.” Children’s Rights, along with other advocacy groups, including Lambda […]

Michigan has made progress toward fixing its troubled child welfare system but problems with data tracking and poor oversight still endanger foster children, court monitors told a federal judge on Tuesday. Some of those shortcomings, primarily the state’s failure to say how many foster children were abused or neglected, show serious issues with the state’s ability to keep children […]

A 14-year legal battle over child welfare reform in Michigan still isn’t done. A monitoring report released Tuesday in federal court found the state only met 13 of the 52 performance standards it needs to meet before the child welfare system can be released from court oversight. “We know that a lot of work is […]

Erin McGuinness, senior policy analyst for Children’s Rights, was interviewed by the Troubled Podcast. Erin dives deep—covering what it means for children to have rights in the U.S., the overrepresentation of Black and LGBTQ youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, poverty removals, adverse childhood experiences (ACES), the overuse and misuse of psychotropic […]