They Took the Kids Last Night: How the Child Protection System Puts Families at Risk, by Diane L. Redleaf is an account of six families whose children were wrongly seized by child protection services vividly illustrates the constitutional balancing act where medicine, family interests, and child safety can clash.
It illustrates how the mantra “best interests of the child” masks errors, assumptions, and stereotypes that hide the real harm child protection policies are doing to children and families
Revealing how families are wrongly separated when overworked and under-skilled case workers jump to conclusions of guilt, ignoring evidence of innocence, They Too the Kids Last Night focuses on the child protection system from the moment of intervention―starting with the child abuse hotline call that targets a specific child as a victim and his or her parents as suspects
Highlighting the many decision points, attitudes, policies, and practices that operate to make even innocent parents vulnerable to having their children taken from them
Redleaf explains why basic due process principles ordered by federal and state courts would go a long way to help families but cautions that just results depend on effective family defense counsel.
ABOUT DIANE L. REDLEAF
Diane L. Redleaf is legal director of the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare in College Park, MD, where she heads the Redleaf Family Advocacy Institute and cochairs United Family Advocates, a national bipartisan child protection policy advocacy network. She graduated from Stanford Law School in 1979 and has led dozens of class action suits and appeals.
