EPPiC Broadcast

Latest Episodes:

New York’s ACS and Disproportionality with Joyce McMillan Oct 10, 2023

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This week, we talk with Joyce McMillian. Joyce is a thought leader, advocate, community organizer, educator, and the Founder and Executive Director of Just Making A Change for Families (JMACforFamilies).

Joyce walks us through her work advocating for families that find themselves caught up in New York’s child welfare system, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). Black, low income families are targeted by the ACS at a disproportionate rate. Joyce explains what factors play into this disproportionality and how New York could do better.

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Giving the Choice to Parents, with Melissa Moschella Oct 03, 2023

Show notes

This week, we talk with Melissa Moschella, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, where her teaching focuses on bioethics and the moral and political status of the family. Melissa is also the author of To Whom Do Children Belong? Parental Rights, Civic Education, and Children's Autonomy.

Melissa explains her argument that parental rights are pre-governmental and rely on the natural rights of parents, rather than being conferred by the government, and why the family is the most important, basic building block of society. She explains why schools keeping secrets from parents, even with the best interest of children in mind, ultimately harms both children and parents.

This episode contains discussion of controversial subject matter. The EPPiC Broadcast welcomes discussion on a variety of viewpoints regarding parental rights issues; however, the views and opinions expressed by guests are solely their own.

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Family Court and the Fourth Amendment, with Anna Arons Sep 26, 2023

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This week, we talk with Anna Arons. Anna is the Impact Project Director at the New York University Defense Clinic and formerly the acting assistant professor of lawyering at the New York University School of Law. She’s also an assistant professor of law at the Saint John’s University School of Law.

In this episode, Anna discusses her law review article, The Empty Promise of the Fourth Amendment in the Family Regulation System. In her article, she explains how the child welfare system unfairly targets and polices poor and minority families and denies them the constitutional protections they are promised under the Fourth Amendment.

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Meet the Vice President, with William Wagner Sep 19, 2023

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This week, Michael talks with William Wagner, vice president of the Parental Rights Foundation. William is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of Law at the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, and founder of Salt and Light Global. William has served as a federal magistrate judge in the U.S. Courts, as Legal Counsel in the U.S Senate, and as Senior Assistant United States Attorney in the Department of Justice.

William tells us about his background in constitutional law and how he came to care passionately about parental rights, plus the work he’s been doing recently on parental rights cases.

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Advocating for Parents’ Rights with Erin Phillips Sep 12, 2023

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This week, we talk with Erin Phillips, president of Power2Parent, an organization uniting parents who want to advocate for their children’s education. Power2Parent is based in Nevada, but maintains chapters in many states. Erin tells us about recent challenges to parents rights in Nevada that her organization has faced, plus victories in Nevada and across the country.

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Preserving Family Connections, with Vivek Sankaren Sep 05, 2023

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Vivek Sankaren is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, and director of their Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic. He’s authored over three dozen journal and law review articles, including “The Ties That Bind Us: an Empirical, Clinical, and Constitutional Argument Against Terminating Parental Rights”. In this episode, Vivek discusses the arguments he makes in his law review article that children are best cared for and protected when they maintain an attachment and connection to their families of origin.

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Reforming the Child Welfare System from the Inside, with Jerry Milner Aug 29, 2023

Show notes

This week, we talk with Jerry Milner, former Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau in the US Department of Health and Human Services. Far too often, the US child welfare system creates incentives to unnecessarily separate families, harming the children it tries to protect. During his tenure with the Children’s Bureau, Jerry worked to create reforms that prioritize family preservation and reunification instead. Now, Jerry serves as the Director of the Family Justice Group.

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The World of Hidden Foster Care, with Josh Gupta-Kagan Aug 22, 2023

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This week, we talk with Dr. Josh Gupta-Kagan, Professor at Columbia University School of Law and author of “The Hidden Foster Care System.” Josh explains how many parents in child welfare investigations find their children placed with relatives, completely off the official record. While placing children with relatives, sometimes called kinship care, is not an inherently bad thing and can result in good outcomes for families, the severe lack of oversight and documentation in these placements is a glaring problem. Josh tells us what happens during an off-the-record placement, why the child welfare system doesn’t keep track of these cases, and how he’s fighting for reform and better oversight.

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What Medical Child Abuse Is - and Isn’t, with Maxine Eichner Aug 15, 2023

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This week, we talk with Maxine Eichner. Maxine is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina, and she writes on legal issues surrounding families and social welfare law and policy. In this episode, Eichner explains the history of a concept called “medical child abuse” and how innocent parents of medically complex children can easily find themselves caught up in allegations of child abuse - all because some doctors don’t understand the medical issues their children face.

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Reforming the Texas Foster Care System, with Andrew Brown Aug 08, 2023

Show notes

Welcome back to the EPPiC Broadcast! We’re kicking off season 7 with Andrew Brown, Associate Vice President of Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. As an attorney, Andrew has represented children in the child welfare system, advocated for the rights of parents, and helped build families through domestic and international adoption.

Andrew breaks down some recent major wins for Texas families in the child welfare system. Texas recently passed into law five bills that help families, which will take effect very soon. These new laws guarantee that parents under investigation in child welfare cases have access to legal representation, replace anonymous child abuse reporting with confidential reporting, and more. Andrew explains these recent reforms in more detail, plus how they will affect families who find themselves involved in child welfare investigations.

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