Cashing in on Kids

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel spent four months investigating the $340 million taxpayer-financed child-care system known as Wisconsin Shares and uncovered a trail of phony companies, fake reports and shoddy oversight. Following is the continuing coverage of the story. 

LETHAL LAPSES: 50 botched cases. 53 dead children.

Fifty-three children died between 1998 and 2005 after state child welfare workers assigned to protect them committed serious errors, made lapses in judgment and ignored their own rules.

Deadly Combinations The drugs that are killing the most people right now  didn't originate on the street, but with a prescription. Special report: Video, audio charts, slideshows and more

Troubled Children: Trapped by Greed
Charlotte Observer
January 16-18, 2005

CPS under fire

The Washington Post
Pulitzer Prize Winner in 2002
Decade of Deadly Mistakes

New American Magazine Articles

RISKY RX: A KNIGHT RIDDER INVESTIGATION A six-month probe has found that patients nationwide are being injured and killed as doctors routinely prescribe drugs in ways the FDA never certified as safe and effective.

PART ONE: 'Off-label' drugs take their toll
A six-month probe has found that patients nationwide are being injured and killed as doctors routinely prescribe drugs in ways the FDA never certified as safe and effective.

PART TWO: Pharmaceutical companies target doctors to boost off-label drug sales.

PART THREE: For years, the FDA looked the other way as off-label prescribing soared.

Searching for stability
Michigan's foster care system
Lansing State Journal
Day one — 12/14/2003

Drugging the Poor

South Florida Sun Sentinel

PART I
Medicaid costs are going up while patients are dying.

PART II
Millions of tax dollars have been lost to fraud and abuse in Medicaid's system for distributing prescription drugs.

PART III
Many doctors who prescribe the most narcotics to Medicaid patients have troubled pasts.

PART IV
State officials won't succeed in reducing the death toll from prescription drug abuse until they tighten up and modernize record keeping and fraud detection systems.

Failure to protect
WTHR 13
Indianapolis, Indiana

About the Series

Each year, Indiana's Child Protective Services division takes thousands of children away from parents accused of abusing or neglecting them. But what happens when the system fails to protect those children once they are in state care? The Eyewitness News Investigators uncovered alarming information about how the system sometimes goes wrong. In one case, a young boy paid with his life. And children being victimized while in state care is not an isolated problem. In fact, we found the state is above the federal limit for cases of abuse and neglect in foster homes. It's a failure to protect that is putting children at risk.

When the bough breaks
By Barbara White Stack, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
December, 1999

United Press International
UPI Looks at America's shame - child abuse

United Press International found that despite the periodic eruption into public consciousness of high-profile cases, the issue has failed to resonate with the general public or government officials in any consistent way.

"Many child protection caseworkers are in violation of the law even before they walk into their offices in the morning," says Anita Bock, former head of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.

"Social workers violate policy and procedures everyday," she says. "It's the quiet shame. It's the dirty little secret."

The Power to Harm
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Lawrence Journal World
Lawrence, Kansas

Sight Unseen

Carole Abbott was an expert witness in child sex-abuse cases. What she witnessed at home was a different matter. 
BY ERIC DEXHEIMER
originally published: March 16, 2000

PBS FRONTLINE

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