What comes from listening

by Frank Taylor, Managing Editor

Carolina Public Press’ major investigative projects result from listening to things people tell us. We receive pieces of information and think about them. Sometimes we recognize connections between different strands of information and a pattern emerges.

Based on a tip in 2016, we reported on an Asheville company housing adults with mental health issues that announced its contempt for its clientele in its name: “Nutz R Us.” We began asking more questions. From this tip and initial reporting evolved our July 2017 series “Questionable Care,” examining the state’s oversight of adult care homes.

In 2018, we listened to a tip about very low convictions rates for sexual assault in one county. We ask ourselves what was happening in the rest of the state. From that was born the idea for “Seeking Conviction,” a major investigative series that appeared in March 2019. From the listening sessions with stakeholders we conducted for that project was born the idea for another project examining the issue of access to sexual assault nurse examiners, “Finding Nurses,” which appeared in January 2021.

During the past week, we published the project “Patchwork Protection,” examining problems plaguing North Carolina child protective services. This project grew out of reporting over several years. In 2016 we reported on a child adopted without the knowledge of his birth family shortly after his mother’s death, and whose experience of abuse in foster care was never properly addressed. In 2017, we reported on a woman who left the country with her son because, according to court documents, she feared his father was abusing him during state-mandated visitation. In 2017 and 2018, we reported on the legal fight after a child protective services director was disciplined for misconduct, but the courts forced the county to rehire her. From 2019 to the present we’ve closely followed a county’s use of unlawful removal of children from their parents without judicial authority. We recognized a pattern. North Carolina was among a small group of states with a county-administered child welfare system, leading to inconsistency and little accountability. We developed a project.

In February 2020, we conducted a listening session with stakeholders in Pittsboro. Over the last year, lead investigative reporter Kate Martin analyzed a decade of data on child removals in North Carolina and found what we expected. Instead of broad uniformity, many counties were removing children at levels far above or far below the statewide average. Combining these narratives and others, we produced the past week’s project.

We hope that North Carolina influencers, legislators and policy makers take our findings to heart.

For our part, we promise one thing. We will continue to listen.
 

6/12/2021 email from The Carolina Public Press Team <weekend@carolinapublicpress.org>