Parents abandon teens under a Nebraska law passed to save babies.

By Toni Hoy, for Rise Magazine

In July, Nebraska instituted a "safe haven" law that allows parents to leave a child at a hospital without fear of prosecution. The law was intended to allow parents to safely abandon infants they could not take care of, and many states have similar laws. However, the Nebraska law did not specify that it applied only to babies, and in September and October, as many as 25 parents dropped off older children at hospitals, saying that because of problems and financial woes, they could no longer care for their children. Click here to visit Rise's website and read the full story.

Parents sue DCFS over removal of toddler from family

By Ofelia Casillas | Chicago Tribune reporter

October 3, 2008

By Mary Kelly Broderick, for Rise Magazine

Family Defense Center President Mary Kelly Broderick describes how parents in Illinois took their case againt the child welfare system all the way to the Supreme Court. Click Here to visit Rise's website for the full story.

By Erica Green and Sandi Villareal, Medill Reports, Medill School of Journalism

In protecting children from abuse, the state has implemented “safety plans” that were challenged up to the U.S. Supreme Court. With the Court deciding not to take the case, Erica L. Green and Sandi Villarreal look into how families who have lived under the plans deal with the emotional and financial strain of a system they say is forcing them to do greater injury to their children.

Please visit the Medill School of Journalism page for the full coverage.

Dad's oversight at Tigers game lands son in foster care

A number of people have sent us this story and we wanted to share it with our readers. If the case that child protective services needs oversight hasn't been persuasive enough so far, maybe reading this story will be convincing.

By Melissa Staas, Staff Attorney
May 27, 2008

Six weeks after the Eldorado, Texas raid in which child-protection officials ripped more than 450 children-one-half of whom were under the age of five-years-old-from their parents, the Texas Court of Appeals affirmed that even when political issues of religion, polygamy, and the alleged sexual abuse of minors are at stake, our society is to be a government of laws, and not of men.

by Diane L. Redleaf
May 16th, 2006

The Redleaf Law Firm won a case in which a mother had been “indicated” for “lack of supervision” and “risk of harm,” the Redleaf Law Firm won a significant ruling on due process grounds. S. F. v. Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, No. 05 CH 14532 (Cir. Ct. Cook. Cty. Jan. 20, 2006) (attached hereto). The facts in Ms. F.’s favor were quite strong; she was found to have suffered an “accidental” injury, but at the same time DCFS ruled that her own unconsciousness for a period of time put her daughter at risk. The ruling in her case, however, had nothing to do with the merits because Ms. F. prevailed on a preliminary motion raising an important due process issue. That ruling has widespread ramifications for other families who might be pursuing appeals of DCFS findings against them.

by Diane Redleaf
Editorial from the Chicago Tribune
July 13, 2006

Just as Hurricane Katrina gave middle-class Americans a view of poverty they were not accustomed to seeing, the recent case of the six-year old boy left by his mother gives happy-go-lucky Taste of Chicago goers a small taste for the fundamental failures of our state's child welfare system. That system continues to fail to address homelessness, abuse, and the basic needs of children for stability in their care. It failed the boy's mother by placing her in an abusive adoptive home. It has failed to do more than put bandages over the underlying problems of poverty and neglect that leave single-parent families and especially parents raised by the child welfare system itself-- at high risk for permanently unstable lives. Now the State s immediate solution prosecuting the mother for child endangerment and potentially locking her for a good while in a jail cell promises to turn a heartbreaking story into another longer-term child welfare system failure.

May 2006

“Your obligation to your clients extends to saving their lives.” So said my professor Tony Amsterdam in an interview published in the Stanford Lawyer that I would read and reread from time to time after I graduated from law school. I don’t represent people on death row, though my clients’ cases involve life and death struggles. I’m a family defense lawyer, a strange and nearly unique kind of lawyer who tries to stop the State from seizing children from innocent parents. I’m also a vanishing form of a lawyer–a social policy litigator and legal services refugee, still working to compel state agencies to live up to their constitutional and statutory obligations.