Skip to content

Child Welfare

Landmark Study Reveals Gas Stove Emissions Boost Childhood Asthma

May 6, 2024 Diane Bernard, DeSmog. , , , , , , , ,
People who use gas or propane stoves in their homes are regularly exposed to harmful levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a new study shows. The household appliances emit pollutants that can be linked to approximately 200,000 current cases of childhood asthma, with 25 percent of those cases tied to nitrogen dioxide alone. The study, published Friday in Science Advances, represents the first time researchers have quantified the link between gas stoves and asthma from NO2 exposures inside homes. “I didn’t expect to see pollutant concentrations breach health benchmarks in bedrooms within an hour of gas stove use, and stay there for hours after the stove is turned off,” Rob Jackson, a professor at Stanford University and the lead scientist on the study, said in a statement.

Georgia Pays For Foster Care Rather Than Providing Housing Assistance

January 19, 2024 Stephannie Stokes, ProPublica. , , ,
Between fiscal years 2018 and 2022, DFCS reported “inadequate housing” as the sole reason for removing a child in more than 700 cases, according to an analysis by WABE and ProPublica. The analysis, using data from the federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, which tracks child removal cases in each state, also shows that in thousands of additional cases — about 20% of Georgia’s nearly 31,000 child removals during the five-year period — DFCS reported housing as one of multiple reasons. Housing was the third most reported reason after substance use and neglect.

The Case For Child Welfare Abolition

October 4, 2023 Roxanna Asgarian, In These Times. , , , , ,
Early last December, CBS Sunday Morning ran a 12-minute segment about the harms of the child welfare system. The report led with the story of Vanessa Peoples, a Colorado nursing student and mother of three who became the subject of an abuse investigation after her two-year-old briefly wandered away from a family picnic. A stranger saw the child and called the police, despite the fact that Peoples, who is Black, caught up with her son shortly afterward. The call initiated an investigation from child protective services (CPS). A month later, a social worker made an unannounced visit to Peoples’ home.

Disabled Mothers Are Fighting Back Against Social Services

July 9, 2023 Steve Topple, The Canary. , , ,
We have come together to make the situation of disabled mothers and our children visible. We are launching a Charter of Rights which will spell out what support we are entitled to, and what councils and the family courts must do to end the discrimination and abuse of power we face at their hands, especially if we’re also single, of colour, immigrant, working-class, a victim of domestic violence, a sex worker and/or were in care as children. The universal bond between mother and child must be respected and supported, financially and in every way, not the privatised child removal industry where disabled children/of colour are placed disproportionately. The state of social services and family courts in the UK is dire.

A Looming Court Case Threatens Native Sovereignty

February 24, 2023 Carly Graf, In These Times. , ,
In mid-January, Montana state Senator Keith Regier floated the idea of a bill that would call on federal lawmakers to investigate alternatives to the tribal reservation system, created by federal legislation in 1851 in an effort to silo Native American people, remove them from their traditional way of life and create space for white settlers. Regier claimed he was motivated by genuine concern for the ​“lives and well-being” of Native Americans and all Montanans, asserting the system was built on race and that reservations are not ​“in the best interests of either the Indians inside our borders or for our common Montana citizen.”

How Cuba Is Eradicating Child Mortality And Banishing Diseases

July 16, 2022 Vijay Prashad and Manolo de los Santos, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Palpite, Cuba, is just a few miles away from Playa Girón, along the Bay of Pigs, where the United States attempted to overthrow the Cuban Revolution in 1961. Down a modest street in a small building with a Cuban flag and a large picture of Fidel Castro near the front door, Dr. Dayamis Gómez La Rosa sees patients from 8 AM to 5 PM. In fact, that is an inaccurate sentence. Dr. Dayamis, like most primary care doctors in Cuba, lives above the clinic that she runs. “I became a doctor,” she told us as we sat in the clinic’s waiting room, “because I wanted to make the world a better place.” Her father was a bartender, and her mother was a housecleaner, but “thanks to the Revolution,” she says, she is a primary care doctor, and her brother is a dentist. Patients come when they need care, even in the middle of the night.

Abolishing The Family Policing System

July 9, 2022 Roberto Sirvent, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
My passion for the fight to abolish oppressive policing systems – especially the family policing system (also known as the “child welfare system”) – is fueled by my personal experience of having my two children ripped from me in 1999. The two and a half year fight to regain custody, the many additional investigations after my children were returned to me and my learning through research what communities were being impacted by the family police and outcome of the children they claim to protect. The family policing system can completely destroy people’s lives. After I reunited with my children, I knew other parents and families were experiencing the same harm I had experienced, and I knew I had to do something to change that.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.