Sadly, stories like Ms. Jones’ will continue until Texas faces up to the heart of the problem. The state tears apart many families needlessly. Many cases have been documented by news media in the past several months. Examples are on our Child Welfare blog: http://bit.ly/pA56AI And there is much more in our report on Texas child welfare on our website here: http://bit.ly/aViRUZ

Not only does taking these children do enormous harm to the children needlessly taken, it also overloads caseworkers, leaving them even less time to find children in real danger – as Ms. Jones was when she was a child. That almost always is the real reason for the horror stories that sometimes make headlines. The take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare makes *all* children less safe.

Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
www.nccpr.org