Despite announcing plans to resume doing business with faith-based foster care agencies that don’t work with same-sex couples, Michigan recently reiterated its commitment to ensuring LGBTQ families feel welcome and valued as foster and adoptive parents. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services announced late last month that it would fall in line with […]
Children’s Rights chief program officer Ira Lustbader joins Dave Scriven-Young from ABA’s Litigation Radio alongside Anne Geraghty Helms and Julie Gryce of DLA Piper to talk about the incredible need for pro bono legal work and how lawyers and their firms can get involved. Learn more about our work, our case in Ohio, and the importance […]
A couple in Knoxville, Tennessee filed a lawsuit against the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services this week alleging that they were denied services by a state-funded foster care agency because they are Jewish. Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram told TODAY that they first connected with the Holston United Methodist Home for Children in January of 2021, […]
Two court monitors’ latest assessment of Michigan’s child welfare system was described by a federal judge Thursday as “just devastating,” despite a 15-year effort to reform the troubled system. “It was really depressing to read how little the state has accomplished,” said Judge Nancy Edmunds of the U.S. District Court of Michigan’s Eastern District. “If anything, we’ve slipped […]
Despite the ongoing threat of the pandemic, families gathered to celebrate the joys of the season. But many kinship caregivers in Ohio struggled to provide children in their care with basic stability and security – let alone holiday toys and treats. That is why advocates filed a legal brief in support of H.C. v. DeWine, a lawsuit brought […]
The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) shelter system received 122,000 migrant children who were taken into U.S. custody without their parents in fiscal year 2021, an all-time high that shattered previous records, according to new government figures obtained by CBS News. Leecia Welch, a lawyer representing migrant children in a federal court case, said HHS […]
As the Biden administration scrambled to deal with thousands of migrant children at the US-Mexico border this spring, officials were raising concerns that they were ditching “even the most basic safety procedures” and setting up facilities “run like disaster camps.” An internal document obtained by CNN sheds light on a federal agency under stress and […]
It is profoundly disturbing that the Glen Mills School is seeking to reopen under a new name (Nov.11). In 2018, months before it was shut down, Children’s Rights documented 16 incidents of staff physical maltreatment at Glen Mills from March 2014 to January 2017, which equates to one incident of child maltreatment by staff every other month.
The Biden administration has revoked a Trump-era waiver that exempted federally funded foster care providers in three states from following nondiscrimination rules. The federal Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month said it would revert to the Obama-era nondiscrimination policy in the three states — Michigan, South Carolina and Texas — bringing them […]
Pairing families with social worker and parent advocates to help navigate the system has shown promise. But in Philadelphia, problems persist with racial bias and disregard for families. “I think what it comes down to is that it’s a system that doesn’t value families,” says Shereen White, a former attorney in the Philadelphia Public Defender’s […]
