BOOKS:

· Nina Bernstein, The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care (Pantheon: 2001).

 

· Malcolm Bush, Families in Distress: Public, Private and Civic Responses (University of California Press, 1988).

 

· Mary Callahan, Memoirs of a Baby Stealer: Lessons I’ve Learned as a Foster Mother (Pinewoods Press: 2003).

 

· Martin Guggenheim, What’s Wrong with Children’s Rights? (Harvard University Press, 2005)

 

· E.P. Jones, Where is Home? Living Through Foster Care (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990).

 

· Leroy Pelton, For Reasons of Poverty: A Critical Analysis of the Public Child Welfare System in the United States (Praeger: 1989).

 

· Dorothy Roberts, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Civitas Books: 2002).

 

· Lizbeth B. Schorr, Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage (Anchor Press/Doubleday: 1988).

 

· Lizbeth B. Schorr, Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America (Anchor Press/Doubleday: 1997).

 

· Richard Wexler, Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War Against Child Abuse (Prometheus Books: 1990).

 

NEWSPAPER AND ONLINE STORIES AND SERIES:

Where no link is available, the story usually is available from NCCPR.

 

●  Did the Philadelphia Inquirer’s coverage of child welfare in that city start a foster-care panic?  Philadelphia’s alternative weekly, Citypaper, examines the issue in this cover story.

 

●  For those concerned about the hype over methamphetamine and child welfare, a reality check can be found in the excellent trade journal, Youth Today in a story called The Meth Epidemic: Hype vs. Reality (October, 2005).  See also two stories from the website stats.org, The Media’s Meth Mania and The Media Go Into “Crack Baby” Mode Over Meth.  Also, see Prof. Barry Lester’s commentary on the jointogether.org website, One Hit of Meth Enough to Cause ‘News Defects’.

· After a child died in foster care in Springfield, Missouri, the Springfield News-Leader began looking for solutions. The newspaper produced an extensive package of news stories and commentary about the successful transformation of child welfare in Alabama. Stories include: Work to keep families together, Alabama workers: To get it right, work from ground up, and Panel of everyday people looks for trends, keeps watch on work. The entire series, including portions that may not be on the News-Leader website, is available from NCCPR.

 

· The New York Times also examined the Alabama reforms in this excellent story.

 

· Former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Barbara White Stack was been given rare access to court hearings in child abuse and neglect cases that normally are closed to press and public. The result has been several important stories from Allegheny County, Pa., including Family values: Court, CYF show preference for reuniting families over foster care (November 17, 2002) and Caseworkers can Make or Break a Family (October 13, 2002)

 

· Things are very different in neighboring Beaver County, Pa.  See Barbara White Stack, When the Bough Breaks, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 12 - 15, 1999.

 

· Some of the finest journalism ever done on child welfare is by Nina Bernstein of The New York Times.  Stories include: Daily Choice Turned Deadly: Children Left on Their Own, October 19, 2003, When the Foster Care System Forgets Fathers, May 4, 2000, Family Needs Far Exceed The Official Poverty Line, September 13, 2000.

· An outstanding examination of a typical “in-between” case is a three-part Boston Globe series by Patricia Wen in 2003.  Barbara’s Story was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

 

· In 2002, The Westchester County, N.Y. Journal News did three excellent multi-part series about problems at the county’s “Residential Treatment Centers.”  The series looked not only at specific incidents but also at whether RTCs really are needed, and at better alternatives.  This excellent series no longer is available on the Journal News website.  Some of the articles are available from NCCPR. See also the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law Fact Sheet about residential treatment centers.

 

· The people who run RTCs and similar institutions almost always insist that every child in them really needs to be there and there are no alternatives.  An institution that proves those claims are wrong is the subject of a story in Youth Today.  See The Gift of Wrapping in the June, 2003 issue.

 

· The Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program has largely escaped critical media scrutiny.  A rare and important exception, again from Youth Today is An evaluation of Volunteers Courts Controversy, from the July/August 2004 issue, available at an affiliated website.

 

· One of the finest examples of a story documenting the price of foster-car panic is D.C. Social Workers Remove More Kids by Petula Dvorak of The Washington Post, June 3, 2008, available for a fee from the Post archive.

 

· Michael Gougis, "Protected to Death: L.A. County's child-protective agency said Debra Reid was a bad mother, so it took away her 9-year-old son Jonathan. Six weeks later, he was dead." New Times, Los Angeles, October 8, 1998. This newspaper is no longer in business. A copy of the article is available from NCCPR.

 

· Sally Kestin, "Throwaway Kids", a series on the horrors of Florida's orphanages, a.k.a. "Residential Treatment Centers," Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Nov. 7 - 10, 1999.

 

· Julie Jargon, "Baby Formula: Take one Mexican father, one drug-addicted mother, and a pair of foster parents. Take away one baby." Westword, Denver, Colorado, September 7, 2000. Also, see the follow-up story.

 

· Dara Colwell, "Adorable and Adoptable: a spate of new laws and financial incentives has made it easier (and more profitable) for Child Protective Services to take ostensibly abused kids away from their parents. But has the new system for fast-tracking adoptions gone too far, too fast?" Metro, San Jose, California, July 13, 2000.

 

· Tracy Weber, "Caretakers Routinely Drug Foster Children," and "Prescription for Tragedy," Los Angeles Times, May 17, 1998.

 

· Debra Jasper and Elliot Jaspin, "Foster Care's Castoff Children," Dayton Daily News, Sept. 26-29, 1999.

 

●      Jim Okerblom and John Wilkens, "In the Best Interest of the Child?" San Diego Union, Dec. 9, 1991.

●    Lisa Demer, "Nobody's Child," Tampa Tribune, August 15 - 18, 1993.

●    Kent Pollock, "The Child Protectors," Sacramento Bee, Aug. 4, 1986.

●        William Heffernan and Stewart Ain, "Big Money, Little Victims" (Title of first story in untitled six-part series on New York City foster care system) New York Daily News, May 13-18 1975. Though this series is over 30 years old, it was only in 2007 that the New York City child welfare agency began to address the issues of financial incentives which it highlights.

MAGAZINE ARTICLES:

· Analysis of ASFA: NCCPR Executive Director Richard Wexler's analysis of the so- called Adoption and Safe Families Act was published in the New England Law Review and is available in pdf format, here.

 

· Akka Gordon, "Taking Liberties," City Limits, December, 2000. A former caseworker for the child protection agency in New York City describes how the agency really worked.  In the years since this article and the one below were published, there have been significant improvements in the New York City system.

 

· Alyssa Katz, "Impaired Judgment," City Limits, February 1999.

 

 REPORTS:

 

 ●       At the suggestion of NCCPR, the New Jersey Office of Child  Advocate examined Families Under Supervision of the New Jersey child welfare agency, and found families who could have safely remained together had the agency provided the right kinds of help.

 

●      Making Child Welfare Work: How the R.C. Lawsuit Forged New Partnerships to Protect Children and Sustain Families, (Washington, DC: Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, 1998).  An excerpt from the publication is available here.  Bazelon also has an excellent fact sheet about residential treatment centers.

·          Office of the New York City Public Advocate, Justice Denied: The Crisis in Legal Representation of Birth Parents in Child Welfare Proceedings. May 12, 2000.

·          Martin Guggenheim, "The Effects of Recent Trends to Accelerate the Termination of Parental Rights of Children in Foster Care -- An Empirical Analysis in Two States," Family Law Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1, Spring 1995.

 

    ●          The 1991-92 San Diego County Grand Jury spent a year investigating that county's child protective system with extraordinary thoroughness. The portrait painted by their reports is frightening. Though they focused on only one county, the system in San Diego is typical of the operations of child protective services throughout the United States. Reports include: Report No.2, Families in Crisis, Feb. 6, 1992; Report No.6, The Case of Alicia W., June 23, 1992 ; Report No.7, The Crisis in Foster Care, June 29, 1992; Report No.8, Child Sexual Abuse, Assault, and Molest Issues, June 29, 1992; and Families in Crisis -- Supplement, June 29, 1992. This last report documents what the Grand Jury viewed as a remarkable willingness by authorities in San Diego to respond to the Grand Jury's findings and try to change the system.

Reports are available from the Grand Jury, County of San Diego, 1420 Kettner Blvd., Suite 310, San Diego CA 92101-2432. (619) 236-2675.

 

· Karen Benker and James Rempel, Inexcusable Harm: The Effect of Institutionalization on Young Foster Children in New York City (May, 1989). Public Interest Health Consortium for New York City. This report is out of print, but available through the coalition.

 

WEBSITES:

●    The National Center for Housing and Child Welfare provides information on one   of the key reasons children are needlessly taken from their families: lack of affordable housing.

· The Annie E. Casey Foundation has an extensive website devoted to its comprehensive child welfare reform initiative Family to Family. The initiative is based on the principle that "the first and best resource for partners in the difficult work of child welfare are the communities and neighborhoods from which children are coming into care."

· The website for the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law includes a detailed discussion of the center's pioneering reform litigation in Alabama.

· Child Welfare Watch tracks child welfare in New York City. It is available online or by subscription from the Center for an Urban Future, 120 Wall Street (20th Floor) New York, NY 10005 (212) 479-3344.

 

Updated, October 23, 2008

 

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