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DCF Commissioner Jodi Hill-Lilly speaks to the gathering at an adoption ceremony in Torrington.
Laura Tillman / CT Mirror
What’s Behind the Smiles on National Adoption Day
Dec 12, 2025
In the past 21 years, I’ve fostered and adopted children with complex medical and developmental needs. Last year, after a grueling 2,205 days navigating the DCF system, we adopted our 7yo daughter. This year, we were the last family on the docket for National Adoption Day after 589 days of suspense. While my 2 yo daughter’s adoption was a moment of triumph, the cold, empty courtroom symbolized the system’s detachment from the lived experiences of marginalized families.
National Adoption Day often serves as a time to highlight stories of joy and family unification. Yet, behind the scenes, the obstacles faced by children in foster care and the families that support them tell a more complex story—one that demands attention and action. For those of us who have navigated the foster care system as caregivers, the systemic indifference and disparities experienced by marginalized children and families, particularly within BIPOC and disability communities, remain glaringly unresolved.
The recent report from the state’s Office of the Child Advocate was no surprise at the lack of progress state agencies have made since the high-profile deaths of 2-year-old Liam Rivera and 10-month-old Marcello Meadows. My own journey—as a parent, disability advocate, guardian ad litem, and foster parent for over two decades—exemplifies the enduring challenges within Connecticut’s Child Protective Services accountability and similar systems nationwide.
The presiding judge in our case advised us to consider walking away from our daughter after DCF reversed her medical complexity diagnosis to a “normal/typical” one.
Walk away? To that, I offered a response that not many of us endeavor or are allowed to make. Here’s just part of what I told the judge.
My 2 year old has been a little sister for 589 days and we’re so happy she wasn’t relocated to another stranger with preadoptive pedigree as was adversely intended by CPS.
Your honor, I need to make you aware of who we are because we are not unicorns, but we have been a marginalized Latino family for years. We’ve been berated by CPS, chastised and told that we’ve overstepped our role by seeking out specialists for medically complex children in our care.
We’ve had our commitment questioned constantly by DCF supervisors. DCF has unnecessarily moved infants to pre=adoptive privileged families when we’ve been a pre-adoptive family for decades.
If we are all here under the premise of what is in the best interest of the child, when did this administration decide that the best interest was to become the burden of the child?
To suggest that it may perhaps be best for us, as the foster parents, to walk away from her when we’re the only family she’s known since she was 2 days old, because we questioned DCF’s decision when overriding her pediatrician and 14 other providers, regarding her medical complexities is absolutely not in her best interest.
Our family has endured three administrations, commissioners and federal oversight, yet our children in care remain the marginalized of the marginalized.
Thank you for your time and integrity. We will remain committed and a family ever after despite and in spite of systemic indifference.”
As a Latino family, we have faced constant scrutiny and dismissal of our expertise as caregivers — a certified educator and licensed nurse. The system’s bias often prioritizes privileged, pre-adoptive families over long-term, committed foster families from marginalized communities. BIPOC and disability communities receive inadequate resources and training, perpetuating cycles of neglect and systemic inequality.
In addition, judges and caseworkers lack consistency and accountability, and there is insufficient oversight of decisions that profoundly impact children’s lives. My daughter had more than eight caseworkers, several supervising workers, a handful of judges, three court systems and multiple assigned attorneys and a surrogate parent.
In Connecticut, at least five children enter foster care every day, contributing to a system that has consistently housed over 4,000 children annually for more than two decades. Despite these persistent numbers, there is a lack of compelling data and reporting to address a host of challenges, including the needs of children with developmental, physical and invisible disabilities, disproportionate institutionalization, the housing insecurities faced by youth aging out of the system, and the dangers posed by undetected predators enabled by plea deals and inadequate judicial communication.
To truly serve the best interests of children, the child welfare system must adopt a proactive, equity-driven approach. It must strengthen accountability and oversight by establishing independent oversight committees to review and monitor the decisions of DCF caseworkers, judges, and attorneys. It must ensure transparency in case handling and outcomes, and provide comprehensive, culturally competent training for foster and adoptive families, particularly those from BIPOC and disability communities. It should equip families with the tools needed to advocate effectively for their children.
DCF should also enhance collaboration with the medical and educational systems, integrating wrap-around medical and educational experts into decision-making processes to ensure that children’s developmental and healthcare needs are met by providers that actually know and treat the child.
The system should also promote community-centered support: Foster parent and kinship care networks should be prioritized, with resources allocated to support mentorship, education, and collaboration among all caregivers.
Lastly we must address inequities head-on and commit to eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in foster care outcomes through targeted interventions, lived experiences experts and equitable resource distribution.
The DCF’s stated mission to “partner with communities and empower families” must move beyond rhetoric to actionable, measurable outcomes. As caregivers, leaders, and advocates, we must demand a system that values children not as burdens, but as individuals deserving of love, protection, and opportunity.
On National Adoption Day, and every day thereafter, honor the resilience of foster and adoptive families by challenging systemic inequities and working collectively toward an accountable child welfare system that truly serves all children—especially the most vulnerable among us. From the foundation, we must build a child centered future where every child finds a family and protection, every family receives the support and service, and systemic indifference becomes reason for dismissal.
What’s Behind the Smiles on National Adoption Day was originally published by The CT Mirror and is republished with permission.
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hands holding a sign that reads "FREEDOM"
Photo Credit: gpointstudio
Framing "Freedom"
Dec 12, 2025
The idea of “freedom” is important to Americans. It’s a value that resonates with a lot of people, and consistently ranks among the most important. It’s a uniquely powerful motivator, with broad appeal across the political spectrum. No wonder, then, that we as communicators often appeal to the value of freedom when making a case for change.
But too often, I see people understand values as magic words that can be dropped into our communications and work exactly the way we want them to. Don’t get me wrong: “freedom” is a powerful word. But simply mentioning freedom doesn’t automatically lead everyone to support the policies we want or behave the way we’d like.
How we talk about freedom has major implications for how our messages are received and what they inspire people to do.
For the last two years, the Culture Change Project has been conducting research into how different values can be used to strengthen systemic thinking across issues. One thing we’ve found is that compared to other values (like fairness), appealing to freedom is more likely to backfire and reinforce unhelpful ways of thinking, like individualism. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t appeal to the value of freedom, but it does mean we need to do so very intentionally.
When we talk about freedom, it’s critical to emphasize systems—and specifically, to center how systems can and should be redesigned. If we don’t, our research shows that freedom will likely be understood in individual terms—as people’s ability to exercise their will without limits. Just mentioning “freedom” and not deliberately bringing systems into view can make it harder for people to see why we need to take collective steps to change our systems.
The role our laws, policies, and institutions play in protecting or threatening our freedoms is off the radar for most people. It’s up to us to bring that into view.
Here are two steps you can take to foreground the role of institutions and power when talking about freedom:
1. Be explicit about who poses a threat to core freedoms.
Fill in the blanks early and bring power into view. Talk about that “who” as a set of actors, naming categories rather than individuals (e.g. talking about “corporations” or “big tech”) whenever possible, to avoid your audience focusing on how they feel about particular people.
What this could look like: A wealthy few have designed the economy in their favor. They hoard wealth and limit our freedom.
What this could look like: Big tech dominates our society, controlling it without our permission. It makes huge profits from new technology, even if that tech hurts people.
2. Offer a clear explanation of how freedoms are under threat.
Show how institutional power is wielded, to what effect, and what we can do about it.
What this could look like: A few big corporations have twisted our tax system by slashing taxes on investments and corporate profits. While those companies get rich, our government is left without the money to pay for essential public services. If we want to be free from the domination of big corporations, we need to demand higher taxes on investments and corporate profits.
What this could look like: Our campaign finance system is rigged against the public interest. It lets a small number of ultra-rich people buy influence over elected officials. As a result, the government helps corporations profit at the expense of the rest of us by cutting taxes for the wealthy and letting employers avoid paying decent benefits. As wealth gets more and more concentrated in a few hands, there’s even less of a check on the powerful. That leaves the rest of us without a real say over our own lives.
To us at FrameWorks, there’s no question of whether or not we should try to contest the meaning of freedom. We must contest the meaning of freedom so that over time, the role that systems and collective decisions play in shaping our freedom becomes obvious to everyone. But it’s also critical for us to recognize that this isn’t the default understanding of freedom right now. Simply dropping the word “freedom” into our messages is likely to only push systems further out of view. If we want to win the contest over what freedom means, it will take careful, strategic framing.
A full research report, Claiming Contested Values: How Fairness, Freedom, and Stability Can Help Us Build Support for Transformative, Structural Change will be available this winter. Make sure you’re subscribed to the On Culture newsletter to read it as soon as it’s available.
Framing "Freedom" was first published on FrameWorks and was republished with permission.
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Over a hundred students from universities nationwide join the 2026 Model Constitutional Convention to propose, debate, and vote on U.S. democracy reforms.
Getty Images, jacoblund
Future Leaders Tackle Constitutional Amendments at Model Convention 2026
Dec 11, 2025
Few things are more civically encouraging than student activism. When focused on advancing democracy, it deserves to be celebrated and repeated.
That's just what is happening for university and law students wanting to propose, debate, and vote on constitutional amendments. The second Model Constitutional Convention (MCC) will build on the successful inaugural program at Arizona State University's law school in 2024, when more than 100 students from more than 70 schools convened to consider constitutional change.
The fact that there will be a successor MCC in 2026 is a bright light for the country at what can feel like a dark time. Foundational challenges in American democracy, including those that are constitutional, merit attention—particularly by tomorrow’s leaders. And interested students can still apply to participate next year (more on that below).
The MCC is the brainchild of Stefanie Lindquist, dean of Washington University Law School in St. Louis, the host for next year’s gathering. She convened the first one as leader of the Center for Constitutional Design at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. “To sustain our constitutional order, we need citizen engagement with our founding document,” she said. “We hope that the MCC will help train the next generation to lead the nation in serious conversations about constitutional law and potential reforms.”
The inaugural MCC proved an extraordinary success (as a participating mentor, I can attest to its quality). The students not only gained the experience Lindquist hoped, but also proved that a challenging democratic process can work. She added, “The students’ enthusiasm was overwhelming and positive, so we think the MCC has great potential for impact.”
The students worked in committees and plenary sessions to develop 20 proposed amendments, debate their merits, and then vote on each idea. To be adopted, each amendment needed to earn at least 75 votes from among the 100 delegates, mirroring the demanding threshold of the U.S.’s existing ratification requirement: adoption by 75% of the states (38).
The students dealt with this ratification rigor wonderfully. After several early amendment proposals got close to but did not reach the threshold, understandable attempts were made to lower it. But the delegates rejected such change, recognizing their need to generate proposals that could survive ratification. Ultimately, four proposals were approved.
Neta Borshansky is directing this year’s MCC and worked on the inaugural convention. She was struck then by “each delegate’s professionalism and desire to immerse themselves in our simulation. We witnessed many students finding their voice, learning to respect differing viewpoints, and thinking about the contributions they want to make within our democratic system of government.”
For interested students, the application can be found here, and the deadline is January 15, 2026. (There’s still time to apply—just use the link or pass it along!) Students selected will have required reading, background lectures, and virtual committee work prior to the in-person convention over the Memorial Day weekend. Lodging, food, and a travel stipend will be provided.
Next year’s participants will again work in ten “Committees of Eleven,” comprised of ten Delegates and one Alternate. (History buffs may note that the 1787 convention had several critical Committees of Eleven to forge compromises that beguiled the entire convention.) They will also hear from top leaders in the field; the inaugural MCC included keynotes from Richard Albert, Erwin Chemerinsky, Jill Lepore, and Jeffrey Rosen.
Another noteworthy example from 2024 occurred when a delegate proved obstreperous, another flagged it, and still another called for wider courtesy. Tempers and frustrations were calmed. This instance stood out for two reasons: it was the only one involving real or perceived disrespect during the plenaries, and it was resolved by the delegates themselves, not the convention chair, parliamentarian or organizer. Kudos all around.
Constitutional amendments do seem impossible today, but history shows that even the onerous Article V amendment process produces a wave of amendments after political upheaval. It has earned historian Jill Lepore’s label of a “sleeping giant.” But it will wake up, almost assuredly in the lifetimes of the students participating in the MCC. The future of our democracy will be in their generation’s hands, which I suspect, after making the alarm clock ring louder and the coffee smell stronger, will be making the Constitution work better.
Rick LaRue writes about constitutional electoral structure and amendments at Structure Matters. He reported on the inaugural MCC for The Fulcrum in June 2024.
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Amid headlines about Epstein, survivors’ voices remain overlooked. This piece explores how restorative justice offers CSA survivors healing and choice.
Getty Images, PeopleImages
What Do Epstein’s Victims Need?
Dec 11, 2025
Jeffrey Epstein is all over the news, along with anyone who may have known about, enabled, or participated in his systematic child sexual abuse. Yet there is significantly less information and coverage on the perspectives, stories and named needs of these survivors themselves. This is almost always the case for any type of coverage on incidences of sexual violence – we first ask “how should we punish the offender?”, before ever asking “what does the survivor want?” For way too long, survivors of sexual violence, particularly of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), have been cast to the wayside, treated like witnesses to crimes committed against the state, rather than the victims of individuals that have caused them enormous harm. This de-emphasis on direct survivors of CSA is often presented as a form of “protection” or “respect for their privacy” and while keeping survivors safe is of the utmost importance, so is the centering and meeting of their needs, even when doing so means going against the grain of what the general public or criminal legal system think are conventional or acceptable responses to violence. Restorative justice (RJ) is one of those “unconventional” responses to CSA and yet there is a growing number of survivors who are naming it as a form of meeting their needs for justice and accountability. But what is restorative justice and why would a CSA survivor ever want it?
“You’re the most powerful person I’ve ever known and you did not deserve what I did to you.” These words were spoken toward the end of a “victim offender dialogue”, a restorative justice process in which an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse had elected to meet face-to-face for a facilitated conversation with the person that had harmed her. This phrase was said by the man who had violently sexually abused her in her youth, as he sat directly across from her, now an adult woman. As these two people looked at each other at that moment, the shift in power became tangible, as did a dissolvement of shame in both parties. Despite having gone through a formal court process, this survivor needed more…more space to ask questions, to name the impacts this violence had and continues to have in her life, to speak her truth directly to the person that had harmed her more than anyone else, and to reclaim her power. We often talk about the effects of restorative justice in the abstract, generally ineffable and far too personal to be classifiable; but in that instant, it was a felt sense, it was a moment of undeniable healing for all those involved and a form of justice and accountability that this survivor had sought for a long time, yet had not received until that instance.
Contrary to the common assumption that survivors simply want longer and longer prison sentences, a 2024 national “Crime Survivors Speak” survey finds that by margins of 3:1, victims of violent crime prefer investments in rehabilitation, treatment, and community-based alternatives over longer prison or jail sentences.
One of the most common arguments against making restorative justice more widely available is that because it does not contain elements of punishment, it minimized the severity of child sexual abuse. The best evidence against the presumption that RJ is simply a “slap on the wrist” can be found in the feedback provided by people that have caused CSA and go on to participate in an RJ process. In my work as an RJ practitioner, I have heard people who cause harm most often describe their RJ process as the “hardest thing they’ve ever done; the first time they ever truly took responsibility for the harm they caused; the only time they’ve felt they are actually being held accountable.” Additionally, RJ is not only immensely challenging, it is also very effective at reducing occurrence of future harm.
While there is not a lot of recidivism data on RJ programs that address sexual harm (solely because there so few programs in existence), the data we do have is encouraging, such as the efforts of the Objibway community of Hollow Water to address the high occurrence of sexual harm via community healing circles. Outcomes in Hollow Water showed a roughly 4% reoffence rate. While it goes without saying that Hollow Water’s sample size was significantly smaller, a 1996 meta-analysis of people who cause sexual harm conducted by Corrections Research in the Policy Branch of Solicitor General Canada nonetheless showed a notably higher recidivism rate of 13.4%. In another example, a Canadian study of a Circles of Support & Accountability pilot program reported a ~70% reduction in sexual recidivism as compared to the control group of the same size. While these statistics are worth noting, what is of much greater importance is that restorative justice gave survivors the opportunity to choose what their justice process would look like.
In closing, survivors of childhood sexual abuse are by far the most invisiblized victims of violence (both during their experience of that harm and throughout our criminal legal system’s limited response to it). Seeing the vast disparity between what some CSA survivors say they need and what is ultimately afforded to them paints a clear and indisputable picture of how we continue to let down the most vulnerable members of our society. Our approach to justice and healing cannot be one-size-fits-all and it cannot be based primarily on the interests and assumptions of those not directly involved in the harm. It cannot continue to decenter those who should, in reality, be the focus of any true justice and accountability process. Restorative justice as a response to childhood sexual violence may be unfathomable for some, but for those survivors who see it as a necessary and invaluable contribution to their healing, it should be available, accessible and offered widely, with no judgement, no assumption and no limitations to the rightful power and agency every survivor should have to define what justice means to them.
Sandra Rodriguez is Director of Healing Pathways at The Ahimsa Collective and a longtime restorative justice practitioner whose work centers community-based responses to harm, particularly sexual violence. Her practice is rooted in building BIPOC communities’ power to heal and develop life-affirming alternatives to punitive systems. She lives near the Russian River in Northern California.
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