MNINF Printouts

Letter to the Judge and Social Services

Date: _________________________

Dear Judge and Social Services,

I am writing as a dependent youth in the care of the state. As any safe parent should provide for and protect their child, I am asking for the same care, rights, protection, stability, and opportunities.

At this time, my long-term “shoot for the moon” goal is to become a:

__________________________________________________

I understand my goal may grow or change as I learn more about myself. Right now, I need help building a future instead of only surviving placement to placement.

I was harmed and removed from my biological family. Since entering the care system, I have also experienced things that have affected my safety, education, health, trust, and future planning.

Things That Have Affected Me

Foster homes that were dirty, unsafe, crowded, unstable, or not appropriate for my needs.
Foster parents or caregivers who did not meet my basic needs, listen to me, protect me, or help me feel safe.
Too many moves without enough warning, preparation, emotional support, or planning.
School changes that caused me to fall behind academically and socially.
Not enough tutoring, academic testing, or help catching up.
Caseworkers, DCFS workers, therapists, or other professionals changing before my needs were followed through on.
Medical, dental, vision, therapy, or medication needs being delayed, missed, ignored, or not explained to me.
Educational needs not being identified, tested, supported, or met.
Being exploited, pressured, threatened, or manipulated by people who used my situation against me.
Being harmed or abused without an adult noticing, believing me, or helping me quickly enough.
Transportation problems that kept me from school, court, therapy, medical care, family visits, activities, or services.
Lost clothing, belongings, school records, medical records, court papers, identification documents, or personal items.
Being bullied or embarrassed because I did not have clean, current, properly fitting clothing or basic hygiene items.
Not having consistent access to tampons, pads, approved pain relief, hair care, grooming products, skin care, laundry supplies, or personal-care items.
Living in unsafe neighborhoods or attending schools where I did not feel safe, supported, or able to learn.
Living in foster homes that did not function in a healthy way, such as:
__________________________________________________
Food that was unhealthy, not enough, not culturally appropriate, or not made for my medical, sensory, religious, or special-diet needs.
Being placed around youth with serious behavioral, addiction, violence, or survival problems without enough supervision, support, or safety planning.
Being exposed to illegal drugs, pressured around drugs, or given prescribed medication without enough explanation, monitoring, or second opinions.
Being exploited or put at risk online without enough adult supervision, privacy protection, or help.
Therapists or providers who were not a good fit, did not help me, did not listen, or only checked boxes instead of helping me heal.
Medical decisions, vaccinations, medications, or treatments that I did not understand and needed explained to me in age-appropriate language.
Not having enough Helpers, mentors, tutors, advocates, and safe adults to help launch my life.
Other things I need the court to know:
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

What I Am Asking For Right Now

As a 12-year-old youth in state care, I am asking for these supports now. If any request is refused, please give me a clear written reason why, who made the decision, what rule or law the decision is based on, and who can review or approve the request.

I am asking for the kind of help a safe, well-resourced parent would fight to provide for their child. I am not asking to be spoiled. I am asking for tools, safety, education, health, structure, mentorship, and a fair chance.

A good parent knows that keeping a young person busy with learning, lessons, healthy activities, and future-building support helps protect their growing mind.

Please Arrange

Continuity of Care
I need continuity with my judge, doctors, educational psychologist, CASA, GAL, therapist, attorney, school team, and other key supports whenever possible, even if my placement changes.
A Helper and Mentor Team
Please ask my CASA, GAL, attorney, caseworker, or trusted adult to help me find at least 10 safe Helpers/Mentors. I would like a written agreement placed in my court file for any Helper/Mentor I work with. The agreement should say that the Helper/Mentor will be safe, will not harm me, will not exploit me, will not ask me to do anything illegal, will respect confidentiality, and will be part of my support team. I would like Helpers who can continue checking in with me, even if I move, return home, or age out.
A Full Educational Evaluation
I am asking for a full educational evaluation by a qualified child educational psychologist or other appropriate specialist. I want to understand how I learn, whether I have learning differences, and what supports I need.
IEP or 504 Plan Support
I am asking for help determining whether I need an IEP or 504 plan. If I do, I want the plan to be specific, strong, and built around my actual needs. I also ask that someone qualified attend the meeting and help advocate for my education.
One-on-One Tutoring
I am asking for the best tutor available for my learning needs, including one-on-one tutoring at home, school, online, or another safe location.
Testing and College Preparation
I am asking for tutoring and test preparation so I can qualify for the college, trade school, training program, or career path of my choice.
Music Lessons and Instrument
I would like to learn a musical instrument. Please provide a quality instrument, supplies, and lessons with a safe, qualified teacher.
Sports or Physical Activity
I would like to learn a sport, dance, martial art, fitness activity, or other healthy movement skill. Please provide the fees, equipment, transportation, and instruction needed.
Second Language Lessons
I would like to learn another language. Please provide books, materials, software, tutoring, and/or a teacher.
School Supplies and Technology
I need school supplies, books, test prep, learning tools, a laptop or tablet, reliable internet or hotspot access, and a safe phone with service.
Creative and Career Classes
I am asking for access to art, sports, dance, coding, trade, business, public speaking, writing, leadership, financial literacy, or career classes.
Application and Exam Fees
I am asking for help paying application fees, exam fees, transcript fees, testing fees, and other costs connected to school, work, college, trade school, or career planning.
College, Career, and Trade Visits
I am asking for transportation and support to visit colleges, trade schools, career programs, job sites, legal offices, businesses, and other places connected to my future.
College and Graduate School Planning
I would like help planning for college, trade school, certification programs, and graduate school if those are part of my future plan.
Career Mentor
I am asking for a mentor who can help me explore becoming a lawyer or another future career.

Money and Life Skills

I need a money mentor and classes about budgeting, banking, credit, saving, investing, taxes, insurance, and avoiding debt.
I am asking for a bank account to be set up with safe adult guidance as soon as legally allowed.
I am asking for monthly money to be placed into savings for my future.
I am asking for a supervised monthly amount to practice saving, budgeting, and investing.
I am asking for an allowance or budget so I can learn money skills before adulthood. I request that the court consider a monthly amount of:
$_________________________
I am asking for help learning how to spend responsibly, track money, save receipts, use a debit card safely, understand credit, and avoid scams.

Safety, Housing, Health, and Dignity

I need safe, stable housing where I never feel like I need a weapon to protect myself.
I need placement planning that considers my school, therapy, safety, siblings, culture, transportation, and future.
I need help moving only when necessary, with preparation, records, belongings, emotional support, and school stability.
I need trauma-informed therapy with a provider who is a good fit.
I need the right to request a new therapist if the current one is not helping.
I need a second opinion if medication, placement, therapy, medical care, or school support is not working.
I need medical care, dental care, braces if needed, wisdom teeth care or removal if needed, eye exams, glasses or contacts, hearing tests, medication review, nutrition support, sleep support, and age-appropriate health education.
I need all medical decisions explained to me in language I understand.
I need clothes that fit my body now.
I need shoes, underwear, socks, bras or binders if needed, seasonal clothing, school clothes, work clothes, interview clothes, pajamas, and clothing for activities.
I need hygiene supplies, laundry supplies, deodorant, menstrual products, shaving supplies, skin care, hair care, textured-hair products, barber/salon money, and personal-care funds that help me feel clean, prepared, and respected.
I need driver’s education, permit fees, license fees, safe driving practice, and transportation support when I am old enough.
When I am older, I need help planning for a reliable car, car insurance, gas, repairs, and transportation to school, work, therapy, medical care, court, sibling visits, and opportunities.
I need health coverage or insurance through early adulthood for as long as legally available or orderable.
I need consistent caseworker communication.
I need copies of records, case plans, court orders, school records, medical records, and service requests.
I need written follow-up after requests, approvals, denials, placement changes, school meetings, and court hearings.
I need adults to explain who is responsible for each service and who can approve it.
I need adults to stop telling me “no” without explaining how I can appeal, ask again, or find another path.

Future Opportunities I May Ask For

As I get older, I may ask for:

The opportunity to be an exchange student or participate in educational travel, including visiting other states or countries with safe adult supervision.
Help learning about real estate, housing, budgeting, and financial independence, including mentorship about buying property or becoming a landlord someday.
Extra classes or training to explore careers such as mechanic, electrician, plumber, hairstylist, contractor, lawyer, medical professional, business owner, artist, or another skilled path.
After high school graduation, safe and structured travel, service, internship, or learning opportunities before college, trade school, military service, work, or another long-term plan.
When I am old enough, help obtaining a reliable car, car insurance, gas support, maintenance support, and driving education so I can get to school, work, therapy, medical care, visits, and opportunities.

My Commitment

For these asks, I will do my part.

I will try to be responsible with what is provided to me.

I will go to therapy and work on healing from what has happened to me so I do not carry untreated pain into my future.

I will not participate in criminal behavior.

I will work to stay alcohol, drug, and marijuana free.

If I struggle, I will ask for help instead of hiding it.

I will try to attend school, therapy, meetings, court, tutoring, and activities.

I will try to keep records, ask questions, and follow through on my goals.

If this seems like a lot of money, please compare it to the cost of crisis: emergency placements, juvenile detention, homelessness, untreated trauma, addiction treatment, repeated placement disruption, and prison.

A small investment now can prevent much bigger costs later.

This is a small ask compared with the cost of giving up on a child.

It is a big investment in me, your child.

Please do not only give me survival.

Please help me build a future.

My Top 5 Requests Right Now

Respectfully, ________________________________________

My name: ________________________________________

Date: ________________________________________

Case number, if I know it: ________________________________________

The Helping Books®

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Our books are designed to support children, teens, and adults as they name what happened, understand their feelings, ask for help, build safety, and imagine a future bigger than survival.

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ARTICLES WRITTEN

2026 NOT the year for children

America’s Children Are Disappearing Into the Gaps

Epstein files, foster-care failures and child-labor cases expose a child-welfare system built for delay, secrecy and damage control

By: LC Galbraith
June 26, 2026

WASHINGTON — 2026 has been an abhorrent year for child welfare in America. Not because the crisis suddenly began, but because the country has been forced to look at what institutions too often bury: the files, the missing reports, the redactions, the delayed investigations and the children left unprotected by systems that were supposed to keep them safe.

The Epstein files opened America’s eyes to what can happen when someone has more money than morals — and when power, reputation and access move faster than accountability. In January, the Justice Department said it had published more than 3 million additional pages responsive to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, bringing the total production to nearly 3.5 million pages. The department said the files came from investigations involving Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and related federal inquiries, while also warning that victim-identifying information and sensitive sexual-assault material required protection.

But the files have also raised a deeper question: How many children are only protected after the powerful are exposed? United Nations-appointed experts said in February that allegations reflected in the Epstein records may meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity and called for an independent investigation into both the abuse and the institutional failures that allowed it to continue. They also warned that flawed redactions exposed sensitive victim information and retraumatized survivors.

The struggle over disclosure has continued. A federal judge ordered the Justice Department to turn over less-redacted versions of some Epstein-related records or explain by July 2 why the information must remain withheld; the judge also ordered a redaction log. The ruling came after claims that the department had not fully complied with the transparency law.

Yet Epstein is not the only child-welfare scandal hiding in plain sight. Across America, children in foster care — children already taken into state custody for protection — have gone missing from placements, and government agencies have not always followed the law designed to help find them.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General reported that its audit covered 74,353 missing-child episodes from foster care between July 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2020. The watchdog estimated that state agencies failed to report 51,115 of those episodes to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as required; of those, an estimated 34,869 missing-child episodes were never reported at all, and another 16,246 were not reported within 24 hours.

That number matters — and it must be stated correctly. The report did not say 34,869 individual children were missing at one time. It said 34,869 missing foster-care episodes were never reported to NCMEC. Still, each episode represents a child whose disappearance may have gone without the urgent national response the law requires.

A companion HHS watchdog report found that state agencies also failed to properly report some missing foster-care episodes to law enforcement for entry into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database. The watchdog estimated that 13,983 of 74,353 missing episodes were not reported to law enforcement in accordance with federal requirements.

The risk is not theoretical. HHS OIG has warned that children who go missing from foster care face heightened risks of human trafficking, poor health and safety outcomes, disrupted education, unemployment and later criminal-justice involvement. A 2026 HHS OIG report on Alaska found that American Indian and Alaska Native children go missing at a rate more than double their representation in the population and are more likely to go missing from foster care than from any other location. In the Alaska review, the state frequently failed to assess children for sex-trafficking indicators after they went missing or ran away from care.

The warning signs were already there. In a review of five states, HHS OIG found that 65% of foster children sampled — 268 of 413 — had no evidence in their case files of a required sex-trafficking screening after returning from going missing. The same report found screenings, when they did occur, were often incomplete or lacked documented conclusions.

The secrecy is not always a locked door. Sometimes it is a missing form. Sometimes it is a database that cannot answer basic questions. Sometimes it is a child returned from danger without anyone documenting what happened.

Residential facilities present another blind spot. HHS OIG reported that many states lacked the information needed to monitor maltreatment in residential facilities for foster children; nearly one-third of states could not identify patterns of maltreatment in those facilities, and 13 states did not consistently report whether maltreated children were living in residential care.

A Senate Finance Committee investigation went further, accusing major youth residential treatment facility operators of exposing children to physical, sexual and verbal abuse, improper restraints, unsafe conditions and poor behavioral-health care. The committee described the model as one that could reward “warehousing” children while keeping costs low, often with taxpayer dollars.

The Government Accountability Office has also said federal and state oversight remains inadequate. GAO noted that youth in foster care are often placed in residential facilities because there are not enough family foster homes, especially for children with mental or behavioral health needs. It also reported that the number of foster youth whose most recent placement was a residential facility fell from about 101,000 in 2002 to about 34,000 in 2022 — but abuse, restraints, psychotropic medication concerns and out-of-state monitoring problems continue.

Even when abuse becomes undeniable, accountability often arrives years late. In February, the Associated Press reported that Riverside County, California, and foster-care agency ChildNet reached a $13.5 million settlement with six Turpin siblings who alleged they were abused in foster care after being rescued from years of abuse in their biological home. The county and agency denied wrongdoing, but the case became another reminder that removal from one abusive home does not automatically mean safety.

America’s child-welfare crisis also reaches into workplaces. The Department of Labor says it saw a 31% increase between 2019 and 2024 in the number of children employed in violation of federal child-labor laws. Reuters reported that in 2025 Perdue Farms and a staffing agency agreed to pay more than $4 million to settle child-labor claims involving hazardous jobs at a Virginia poultry plant; the Labor Department said it had concluded 736 child-labor cases the previous year involving more than 4,000 children and $15.1 million in penalties.

Meanwhile, immigration policy has added another layer of risk for vulnerable children. HHS OIG previously found gaps in sponsor screening and follow-up for unaccompanied children, including missing documentation of required sponsor safety checks in 16% of case files reviewed and untimely safety-and-well-being follow-up calls in 22% of cases.

This month, the Associated Press reported that federal officials had identified more than 15,000 cases of adults taking custody of multiple unrelated migrant children, raising concerns about possible sponsor fraud and exploitation. The same report noted that stricter rules have also increased the average time children spend in federal custody — 206 days as of May, compared with 37 days when Trump took office — creating a bitter debate over how to protect children without trapping them in prolonged detention.

And this week, Sen. Ron Wyden warned that the administration may be preparing to hastily remove more than 500 unaccompanied migrant children from the country, a claim HHS denied. AP reported that the children at issue had been in U.S. custody, mainly in foster care, for at least 180 days and lacked viable sponsors.

What connects these stories is not one party, one agency or one scandal. It is a pattern: children become invisible when systems prioritize liability, politics, profit or paperwork over protection.

Some secrecy is necessary. Victims’ names should be protected. Child sexual abuse material must never be released. Medical records and identifying details should remain private. But privacy for victims is not the same as secrecy for institutions. A government can redact a child’s name while still revealing whether agencies followed the law, whether reports were filed, whether screenings happened and whether anyone was held accountable.

The question in 2026 is no longer whether America has a child-welfare problem. The evidence is in the audits, the lawsuits, the settlements, the congressional reports and the files.

The question is whether America will keep treating those records like scandals to survive — or like alarms that demand action.

M

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