THE NCCPR EVIDENCE BASE: Brief Analyses and Commentaries

The NCCPR QUICK READ Almost everything on this site boiled down to two pages.

The Evidence is in: Foster Care vs. Keeping Families Together: The Definitive Studies. NCCPR’s analysis of studies comparing outcomes for more than 15,000 children, with links to the full studies.  Children left in their own homes typically fared far better than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care.

80 Percent Failure: A Brief Analysis of the Casey Family Programs Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study

UPDATED: BIG DATA IS WATCHING YOU. Our report on a dangerous new fad in child welfare: “Predictive Analytics.”

THE CASE AGAINST CASA:  How the Most Sacred Cow in Child Welfare Hurts the Children it is Meant to Help 

CHILD WELFARE’S PANDEMIC OF FEAR: How the false, racially-biased “master narrative” about COVID-19 and child abuse hurts children. 

NEW: “Child Welfare” heads to the reputation laundry: The child welfare establishment co-opts the rhetoric of reform to promote the same old family policing agenda

Epidemic of Hype: How hysteria over methamphetamine heroin has become the latest excuse to “take the child and run.”

A Foster Parent Speaks Out. A foster parent shares her observations about the child welfare system in her state.  

Residential Treatment: What the Research Tells Us (and all-purpose foster care-industrial complex excuse check-list)

WHY MANDATORY REPORTING SHOULD BE ABOLISHED: The research is clear, it discourages families from seeking help and overloads systems with false reports, leaving less time to find children in real danger.  See also what a mandated reporter “training course” is really like. 

THE ASFA FILES:

•Our full analysis of the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act and why it has failed.

•The myth that ASFA is needed to shorten time in foster care.

•How ASFA’s worst feature is getting the least attention.

•ASFA, “Aging out” and the Growth in Legal Orphans. How the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act increased the number of young people who leave foster care with no ties to their birth parents and no adoptive home either.

•And from the archives: An Analysis of ASFA: From the New England Law Review, NCCPR Executive Director Richard Wexler’s analysis of the law. 

A Child Welfare Timeline: Setting the Record Straight on Recent Child Welfare History  

SOLUTIONS: Doing Child Welfare Right

SOLUTIONS: Civil Liberties Without Exception: NCCPR’s Due Process Agenda for Children and Families

When Children Witness Domestic Violence: Expert Opinion

“Children’s Rights” Should Include the Fourth Amendment: Our special website about Camreta v. Greene, the first major child protective services case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court in 21 years.

MINORITY REPORT. Our analysis of the dreadful recommendations from a federal advisory commission on child abuse fatalities. Full analysis, press release, Updates on the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Curbing child abuse fatalities: What works – and what doesn’t: From the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog, our analysis of a key study, and a link to the full study.

THE CHILDREN WRONGED BY “CHILDREN’S RIGHTS” How the 800 pound gorilla of child welfare litigation sometimes harms the children it wants to help. 

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.  NCCPR’s briefing paper and recommendations on how the federal government pays for family preservation and foster care.

The children who don’t matter to “Every Child Matters” From the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog, a series of posts analyzing ECM’s grossly misleading report on child abuse. And see also our 2010 update. 

The Trouble With CFSRs. NCCPR’s analysis of the federal government’s Child and Family Services Reviews.