National CPS News Archive

Adult arrested in foster care homicide

by Peter Boer

The RCMP have arrested an adult whom they expect to charge in the March homicide of a Morinville-area toddler who was in foster care.

The Friday arrest comes almost three months after the toddler was taken to hospital with serious injuries then died two days later on March 3. An autopsy conducted the following day concluded the 21-month-old girl had been a victim of homicide.

St. Albert Gazette

May 28, 2010

Russia may soon formally end U.S. adoptions - child ombudsman

Russia will formally end adoptions of Russian children by foreigners if the U.S. shelves a bilateral child adoption agreement, a Russian child ombudsman has said.

Russia is one of the largest sources of adoptions for U.S. families, accounting for about 10% of foreign adoptions, but the issue has become controversial in recent years following several incidents involving the mistreatment of Russian children in the United States.

RIA Novosti Newswire

May 21, 2010

ADHD in kids tied to organophosphate pesticides

Researchers tracked the pesticides' breakdown products in kids' urine and found those with high levels were almost twice as likely to develop ADHD as those with undetectable levels.

The findings are based on data from the general U.S. population, meaning that exposure to the pesticides could be harmful even at levels commonly found in children's environment. Organophosphates were originally developed for chemical warfare, and they are known to be toxic to the nervous system.

Reuters

May 17, 2010

Mother's Day: Abraham Lincoln Has Something Shocking to Tell You This Mother's Day

by Katharine Whittemore

It was October 5, 1818. Dennis Hanks, Nancy's cousin, paints the death scene: Nancy called Abraham and his sister Sarah to her bedside and asked them "to be good and kind to their father, to each other, and to the world."

"God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her." So said Abraham Lincoln of his beloved mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, whom he lost to milk sickness - she drank milk from a cow who'd grazed on white snakeroot, it's poisonous - when she was 34 and her son age nine, old enough to help his father plane pine boards and carve wooden pegs to make the coffin they buried her in.

The Faster Times: Parenting Ethics

May 7, 2010

Another foster child found dead

by Richard Liebrecht

Alberta -- A 14-year-old boy has died while in foster care west of Edmonton - the third foster child to die in about a year.

Opposition parties, which found out about the foster death before Premier Ed Stelmach, cited it in repeating calls for a public inquiry into the foster care system.

Edmonton Sun

April 30, 2010

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

Out of the Mouths of Babes

by Robin Steinberg

When you peel back the rhetoric, and peer past the politics, in the South Bronx, as in other poor communities, the bulk of family court cases are really about poverty.

In recent years, New York has taken tentative steps to investigate and reform its failing family court system. And while any effort to reshape a broken system is welcome, real reform is long overdue. Though a myriad of studies have shown that the incidence of child abuse and neglect is about equal across racial and economic lines, poor families of color are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system. The simple truth is that when you are poor, caseworkers, prosecutors and judges are far less likely to defer to what, in a wealthy white neighborhood, would simply be described as a reasonable parenting decision.

The Huffington Post

April 26, 2010

Is Fluoride causing Alzheimer's, Birth Defects, Mental Retardation?

Are you being poisoned by Flouride in your water? For years there have been snippets of information coming out about the dangers of Fluoride in our water supply. The authorities dismiss these claims every time and insist "everything is perfectly safe."

The latest information however refutes all this and is of vital importance to every one - particularly every mother of a growing child, because it has now been proven by years and years of research that Fluoride is highly dangerous and the missing link in birth defects and mental retardation in young children, as well as the epidemic of Alzheimer's.

Ask Dr Garland

April 20, 2010

Video: Time to legalize marijuana?

by Ed Morrissey

Nick Gillespie at Reason TV gives three reasons for the US to legalize and regulate marijuana on the same basis as alcohol.

It's going to happen anyway, so why delay the inevitable? Increasing numbers of Americans realize that pot prohibition is an ineffective and costly policy. A 2009 poll by Zogby found that 52 percent of Americans agreed that marijuana should be taxed and regulated like booze. A Field Poll last year of California residents, who will vote on a legalization ballot initiative in the fall, found that 56 percent wanted legalization.

Hot Air

April 19, 2010

The Drug War: A War on Women and Their Families

by Jasmine Tyler

The newest victims of the war on drugs are women and if Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske was sincere when he said that the war on drugs is not a war on the people then it is time to evaluate how our policies affect the women of this country.

Since 1977, the rate of female imprisonment has increased by nearly 800% and is still rising. Much of this increase can be attributed to the war on drugs since, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 40% of criminal convictions leading to incarceration of women at the turn of this century were for drug-related crimes.

Prison Movement

April 18, 2010

Experts: Orphanages can lead to kids' problems

by Ted Czech

Mental and physical problems in children adopted from Russia are not because of the country itself but because of the damaging environment orphanages present, according to several national experts.

Children adopted from Russia have made headlines recently, from York County parents charged in their son's death to a Tennessee woman who sent her son back to Russia on a plane. Torry Hansen of Tennessee called her son, Justin, "mentally unstable" and said he had threatened to burn the family home down.

The York Daily Record

April 18, 2010

Study Finds More Woes Following Foster Care

by Erik Eckholm

Only half the youths who had turned 18 and 'aged out' of foster care were employed by their mid-20s.

6 in 10 men had been convicted of a crime, and 3 in 4 women, many of them with children of their own, were receiving some form of public assistance. Only 6 in 100 had completed a community college degree. The dismal outlook for youths who are thrust into a shaky adulthood from the foster care system - now numbering some 30,000 annually - has been documented with new precision by a long-term study...

The New York Times

April 15, 2010

Crisis in Family Court

Dr. Phil shines a light on the American family court system, and how often it fails its citizens. From restraining orders to custody battles, hear heartbreaking stories that many say prove the system needs a major overhaul.

Dr. Phil addresses his audience, which is filled with families who have struggled in family court. Many of them have heartbreaking stories. Amy says, "No other parent can feel this pain, because there are no words for this pain. It is unbelievable. There's not a second, there's not a minute that goes by that I don't think about them," she says.

Dr. Phil

April 14, 2010