The sentencing of a former child care worker on federal child pornography charges last week was the occasion for an advocacy group to express concerns about the original investigation. The part that struck me was the claim that the school responded in litigation defense mode rather than full transparency. At this point, it is impossible…

The Rochester Public School Board this week adopted certain controversial slogans as government speech, apparently believing that by adopting some particular statements, it can at the same time prevent opposing speech. The RPS is correct that it has a right to its own speech.  The best I can tell from news reports, however, its proclamation…

Anti-bullying programs get a lot of attention these days, because everyone wants to spare children the trauma of true bullying.  Yet in spite of our best efforts, the problem is not getting better, and some experts worry that we are creating new problems for our kids. One problem is that, contrary to what many parents…

The Secret Service Threat Assessment Center recently issued a report analyzing 67 failed plots by students against their schools. Although there was plenty in the report for the predictable policy groups to tout (restrict access to guns, increase mental health interventions), there are several important points for schools and other youth-serving organizations to consider. Those…

One thing that has become clear during the pandemic is that rates of mental health problems and suicide among our children have skyrocketed. As youth organizations open back up, we are likely to encounter quite a few children whose anxiety and depression reach levels that, in the words of federal nondiscrimination law, “limit one or…

I ran across an outstanding article that describes a common dilemma for lawyers working with child witnesses, which is figuring out much we can rely on the child’s memory.  The problem goes beyond our usual formulation of whether or not a witness is lying.  The dilemma is that children can form actual, real memories of…

Another very contentious area is whether youth programs must accommodate service animals and emotional service animals. Modern media confuses the two, but the law treats them very differently. A service animal (usually a dog or miniature horse) is trained to do a specific task related to the child’s disability. The task can be as simple…

One area that youth organizations must address is how to accommodate children with disabilities. It can be a complicated question, such as when a child’s disability harms other children or when a disability simply cannot be accommodated without completely changing your program. Even programs with the best intentions must balance and care for the needs…

In general, youth programs must make “reasonable modifications” to their programs to accommodate a child’s disability, but there are exceptions. How the rule and exceptions play out depend entirely on the specifics of your program and a child’s disability. You will have to assess each situation individually. Two cases — chronic illness and communicable illness…

A recent study from Sweden raises serious questions about how foster care impacts children. Most studies of the foster system suffer from the problem that children placed in foster care are unlike non-placed children in so many ways that it is impossible to isolate foster care as the only variable. As in many studies of…