Founded by Marcia Robinson Lowry, a leading voice on civil rights and child welfare issues nationally for more than 35 years, Children’s Rights began as a project of the New York Civil Liberties Union and, later, the American Civil Liberties Union. It became an independent nonprofit organization in 1995.

Most people know that there are state-run systems set up to respond to reports of child abuse and neglect — and, if necessary, to remove children from unsafe homes and arrange for their care and protection until they can either be reunified safely with their families or placed in adoptive homes.

But what most people don’t realize is how badly broken many of America’s child welfare systems are — and how many children suffer serious harm as a result.

Reports of abuse go uninvestigated. Some children get removed from their homes unnecessarily. Those who are taken into foster care often get separated from their siblings and bounced around to too many different foster placements. Some endure further abuse in the child welfare systems that are supposed to protect them. Instead of being safely reunified with their families — or moved quickly into adoptive homes when reunification proves impossible — many languish for years in “temporary” foster care placements or institutions.

And many children emerge from the systems that are supposed to be protecting them much worse for the experience.

Children’s Rights takes a comprehensive approach to addressing these problems. We launch comprehensive reform campaigns designed to secure federal court orders mandating top-to-bottom reform of failing child welfare systems. And we complement our legal efforts with research and policy advocacy at the state and national level to improve the public policy that guides child welfare systems — and produce better results for the abused and neglected children in their care.

Source: www.childrensrights.org