The more organizations I found that is trying to take steps to reform the Foster Care System or to prevent children from going into foster care, the more hopeful I get. At least there are real people out there fighting the system. Maybe all the organisations can come together and start working together!
The members of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform have encountered the child welfare system in their professional capacities. Through NCCPR, we work to make that system better serve America’s most vulnerable children by trying to change policies concerning child abuse, foster care and family preservation.
We do not seek this change because the system hurts parents. We seek this change because the system hurts children. Our hope is to turn the public monologue about child abuse into a dialogue.
For decades there has been a public monologue about child abuse. There was a group of self-proclaimed "experts" that have created a false account of child maltreatment and encouraged the public to support the failed system that is in the USA today.
These so-called "child savers" told us we have a choice. Take part in the massive destruction of families or accept deaths of innocent children. The outcome is the system called Child Protection Services who has done both. They are on a path to destroy innocent parents and children and lots of children get abused and die in the system! So what kind of saviours are they?
The professional community has been divided about how to deal with child abuse from the outset. We know that a system can be created which disrupts far fewer families, keeps far more children out of our destructive system of foster care, and protects more children from harm at the hands of their parents.
According to the trade journal Youth Today the NCCPR “might be the most successful youth advocate[s] out there in terms of landing [their] words on editorial pages around the country.”
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform says they think they have produced more real reform per dollar spend than "any other national child advocacy organization in America."
But their ultimate goal is to reduce the number of children needlessly kidnapped from everyone that they love and know.
https://web.facebook.com/scpslkc
When we celebrated our tenth anniversary of full-time advocacy, we published this list of our Top Five accomplishments. There are plenty more, but these five accomplishments alone have kept thousands of children from being needlessly placed in foster homes or institutions. None of this was done by NCCPR alone. All of it required strong partnerships, and in most cases, people of vision and goodwill within child welfare agencies. (Unfortunately, we can’t always name those people and partners publicly.)
The NCCPR first stood alone in Florida but they "released more reports on Florida than any other state." Gradually journalists were won over and then, other key players. By 2007 a significant drop of children going into foster care could be seen for the first time. In 2008 it declined further and in 2009, Florida’s success was featured in The New York Times.
Sadly the opponents of family preservation enlisted a powerful newspaper in a successful campaign to undermine reform. But still, it remains s better system than it was before NCCPR got involved. And had NCCPR had the funding to fight back, the system would be better still.
The Child welfare officials in Utah misread a law and thought it states that lengthy background checks need to be made
on prospective foster parents and even on relatives before children could be placed with them. The result was that hundreds of children were trapped in shelters for days, even weeks which could have gone immediately to relatives. They even got the legislature to write it into state law.
The NCCPR discovered the error and alerted other advocates nationwide. Some key players in Utah child welfare, and the Youth Law Center, which has crusaded against shelters. was alerted and got onboard to fight this. As the result of pressure from everyone in public and behind the scenes the agency was forced to changed course. The law was repealed and a new law was passed in its place that strengthened the preference for kinship care in Utah.
When Mary Jo Copeland known as the mother Theresa of Minneapolis announced that she wants to build an orphanage for 200 children it was expected that she would get that. As she is also an overseer of a personal charity empire, a guest at presidential breakfast prayer meetings and adored by the media she most of the times gets what she wants.
Through the efforts of NCCPR and the North American Council on Adoptable children, the state's largest newspaper and some other key figures oppose this plan. Because of the controversy, it was reported that "donors shied away from the project". Copeland admitted that it is not going to happen and in 2015 she announced that she is selling the land that she purchased for the orphanage.
When a child dies there is usually a big outcry from the media. It is a shame that tragedy first needs to strike to get people involved and into action. If that child dies in foster care there is usually an outcry for stricter background checks and licensing. When Dominic James died in foster care in Springfield, Missouri, the NCCPR managed to persuade the Springfield news leader to take a deeper look at the high rate of removal in Missouri and in the Springfield are in particular.
http://www.kenyaspeaks.com/missouri/dominicjamestimeline.html
Story after story was covered by the paper and they even sent out an investigative team to study the successful reforms in Alabama.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.adoption/ZH3swmASZiw
(I cannot get a link to the story that was covered by the Springfield News Leader without signing up).
The NCCPR, working closely with the Missouri Council for Children at Risk, issued a comprehensive report on Missouri child welfare and testified at a key legislative hearing. Another News Paper The St Louis Post despatch also start to report on the issue. All of the stories in the two papers pressured the legislators and the child welfare agency and entries into foster care was cut sharply with no compromise to children's safety. Unfortunately, while the NCCPR went silent due to lack of funding, entries rose again.
As in Missouri tragedy lead to change with the death of a foster child Logan Marr.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fostercare/marr/
A group of foster parents who were becoming fed-up with taking in children that could have stayed with their parents formed a group the Maine Alliance for DHS Accountability and Reform. Working closely with them, the NCCPR issued two reports and again testified in key hearings, convinced the state's media to look into the rate of the high removals. The NCCPR even persuaded the PBS' frontline to do a documentary on Logan Marr.
The relentless advocacy strengthened the hand of a new governor as he brought in new, reform-minded leadership. By 2012, the number of children in foster care in Maine had declined by nearly 60 percent. Entries into care had been cut nearly in half, the number of children in group homes and institutions was cut by two-thirds, while the proportion of children in kinship care more than doubled. It all was done with no compromise of safety, and Maine’s child welfare reform was a finalist in Harvard’s Innovations in American Government Awards.
Sadly Maine changed governers and on the watch of the new governer many of the gains eroded again, but still, it is a better system than before.
If you can contribute, please start to do that so by clicking on the link below that these people can continue with their work for the children.
They also have a blog with updated news, https://www.nccprblog.org/ and a facebook face where you can follow them,
https://web.facebook.com/National-Coalition-for-Child-Protection-Reform
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Thank you for reading, may God help us!
@hope777