domestic violence

Maryland may be the first state to protect domestic abuse survivors from being charged with neglect for their child’s exposure to the abuse.

The United Nations Secretary-General pleaded with nations around the world to make domestic violence a priority for coronavirus pandemic response last week. But for victims in New York, avenues for relief remain narrow, especially in the courts.

In response to a large influx of children into state care in the late 1990s resulting from tragedies that spawned fear within the agency, Connecticut developed a sprawling system of institutional settings to have enough “placements.”

Beverly Hills doctor Susan Spell has filed a new $750 million lawsuit against the county of Los Angeles and individual social workers as she continues the battle to regain custody of her children who were removed from her care in 2013 without a warrant or court order.

The overlap between domestic violence and child maltreatment is profound. Research suggests that crossover may include between 30 and 60 percent of families involved with the child welfare system. However, when the media writes about child welfare — the system that is charged with taking care of abused and neglected children — that connection is seldom featured in stories, according to a new study from the Berkeley Media Studies Group.

One of the busiest family courts in the nation occupies a hulking 32-story administrative tower in downtown Brooklyn. On a recent Thursday, I visited to observe the child abuse and neglect hearings on the eighth floor.

For New York’s Administration of Children Services (ACS), retired law enforcement officers have been working in-house since 2007 to advise their roughly 1,700 caseworkers. Today, the ACS will announce that these former cops are getting a broader child welfare beat that includes assessing the risk brought on by new adults moving into households served by the agency.

As the sounds of an abusive husband interrogating his partner intensify off-screen, a camera pans up a flight of stairs. A young boy, maybe 3, sits in knitted pajamas at the top of the staircase, cradling a plastic yellow truck. 

By Beth Cortez-Neavel Texas is taking serious steps toward using predictive data analytics, or “big data,” to prevent child deaths due to abuse and neglect. Not only are state officials finally catching on that child maltreatment is a public health issue, there are three new state-led efforts to curtail child deaths and maltreatment by using data to pinpoint specific warning signs at different community levels.