District Of Columbia CPS News Archive

JPMorgan to pay $153.6M to settle fraud charges

WASHINGTON (AP) - JPMorgan Chase & Co. will pay $153.6 million to settle civil fraud charges over misleading investors into purchasing complex mortgage securities just before the housing market collapsed.

The settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday is one of the most significant legal actions targeting Wall Street's role in the 2008 financial crisis. As part of the settlement, investors who were harmed will receive all of their money back.

CNS News

June 21, 2011

Should Child Welfare Hearings Be Public?

by Jason Cherkis

On Feb. 3, Judith Sandalow, the executive director of the Children's Law Center, testified before the D.C. Council on the state of city's child-welfare agency. Her verdict was brutal:

"The District's child abuse and neglect system requires dramatic reform at all stages. On the front end, the government does not adequately prevent abuse and neglect. Nor does CFSA do a good enough job keeping children safely with their birth families. Once CFSA removes children, it does not serve them well in foster care and they stay in foster care too long because CFSA fails to reunify them with their parents or find alternative permanent families." Even more troubling than Sandalow's assessment is the fact that her assessment has been made nearly every year for the past two decades.  It is by now cliche to refer to the District's Child and Family Services Agency as "troubled" or "horrible" or "under court monitor."

washingtoncitypaper.com

March 3, 2011

Group suing DHS says state 'resistant'

by Ginnie Graham

Oklahoma has been as resistant as any state that Children's Rights has sued over child welfare concerns, the group's founder says.

Children's Rights began as a project of the New York Civil Liberties Union and later the American Civil Liberties Union. It became an independent nonprofit in 1995. The group has filed lawsuits against child welfare systems in Connecticut, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C.

Tulsa World

April 28, 2010

Three more lawsuits doomed to fail, three more bad child welfare systems likely to get worse

by Richard Wexlar

The group that so arrogantly calls itself "Children's Rights" has filed another one of its Mclawsuits against a state child welfare agency - this time in Massachusetts. And NCCPR's sources say that another such Mclawsuit, in Texas, is imminent.

Meanwhile a group which is unaffiliated with CR but has the same myopic outlook about how to fix child welfare systems, the National Center for Youth Law, has filed the same kind of suit in Nevada. All of these child welfare systems almost certainly are every bit as bad as CR and NCYL say they are.

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

April 15, 2010

End most secret courts for children

by Matthew I. Fraidin

Your March 26 editorial "A tragedy's questions" asked, "Why are Renee Bowman's adoptions still secret?"

There is an easy fix: D.C. law should be amended to open child welfare proceedings, with judges retaining authority to close some or all of a hearing or record in a child's best interest. This approach, already in place in many states, balances accountability with privacy.

The Washington Post

March 29, 2010

Protecting Children by Empowering Parents

November 20 has been designated "Children's Day" by the internationalists. But what greater way to support children than to protect their families?

We're celebrating Children's Day with a Parental Rights Rally in Washington, D.C. The rally will be held at the U.S. Capitol, on the East Lawn across from the Rayburn House Office building. It is scheduled for 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Parental Rights

November 12, 2009

GOP Must Make School Vouchers a Civil Rights Issue

Parents should have the first and last choice of where their children go to school.

Republicans are supporters of school vouchers as an economic concept. By enhancing parental choice and challenging the unions, they bring competition to the public school monopoly and improve outputs for the parent and child consumers. And Republicans support state reforms and federal reform in the District of Columbia.

Parental Rights

September 3, 2009

Nothing to see here folks, move along

by R.D. Walker

Remember the Duke Rape case? In that case, a group of rowdy jocks from the school's lacrosse team were accused of raping a black prostitute.

Now a new Duke University rape story has arisen. You probably haven't heard much about this one. The associate director of the Center for Health Policy has been arrested and charged with allegedly offering, over the Internet, to have an out-of-state traveler sexually molest his adopted 5-year-old son.

The Real Revo

June 28, 2009

Foster Care Abuse Ruling Goes Against State Workers

by Jamaal Abdul-Alim

Foster care workers can be held liable if the children they place in foster homes are sexually abused by other children in the home who were known perpetrators or victims of sexual abuse, a federal appellate court has ruled.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, involves a case in which three children - who were 8, 5 and 3 at the time - were repeatedly molested in 1999 and 2000 by older children in a Florida foster home. The suit alleged that even after a documented case of child-on-child sexual abuse occurred in the same house in July 1999 nothing was done to protect the younger children.

Youth Today

February 5, 2009

Finally something to take my mind off Palin--Weekly update from Children's Monitor Online

The Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to pick up where it left off in late July when it meets September 10 to mark up a major child welfare bill, the Improvements in Adoption Incentives and Relative Guardianship Support Act (S. 3038).

The Senate Finance Committee bill represents a bipartisan agreement between Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA). That Chairman's mark or substitute bill evolved out of discussions on S. 3038, which Grassley introduced in May.

Prin's Links for Social Work Students

September 20, 2008

Waits Plague Transfers of Children to Relatives' Care

by Erik Eckholm

HYATTSVILLE, Md. -- When child welfare officials in Washington removed five young children from their parents' home in May, relatives in this Washington suburb quickly stepped in, offering to share guardianship.

If the relatives had lived in Washington, they might have gained custody of the children within days, after a quick check on their suitability. Instead, the children were put in a foster home, where they could remain for months while their relatives wait for Washington and Maryland to make formal requests, home inspections and approvals.

The New York Times (MD)

June 27, 2008

Woman works through dark past to succeed in college

by Dave Frank

She thought about it when she got car insurance. She thought about it when she looked for an apartment. She thought about it when she went to college, and she thought about it over summer.

Rachelle Grey, 21, said she's thought many times how it would be easier if she'd had a parent to help her. "The kids (at school) are so impressive, and sometimes I don't feel that I'm nearly as good," said Grey, a junior at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "A lot these kids went to private schools or they're from the Northeast..."

Nevada Appeal

January 14, 2008