Triage at the White House -- Are Children at Risk Merely an "Additional Issue"?

Triage at the White House -- Are Children at Risk Merely an "Additional Issue"?

Yet the USA's child protection "system" is a case study in broken bureaucracy. With 2,200 individual jurisdictions, with mountains of inconsistent rules and procedures, this fractured patchwork of purported protection has created barriers that actually prevent children from reaching safe home environments or gaining crucial access to effective judicial remedies.

A 2008 study by the child advocacy organization First Star found that state confidentiality policies regarding child fatalities and near-fatalities often protect agencies and perpetrators over children. When states were graded on this problem, ten flunked, among them Maryland, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Tennessee.

- Another First Star study found that most states do not provide abused and neglected children with adequate legal representation, leaving their voices muffled while decisions are made about their futures. When graded, fifteen states flunked, among them states from which candidates in the last election hailed -- Illinois, Delaware, and Alaska.

Note: Pretty much the rest of the article is bullshit.