Before You Call CPS, with Vivek Sankaren

When faced with a struggling family, bystanders can be quick to call CPS, not realizing that child protective agencies often aren’t equipped to help families and rush to punish them instead.

Vivek Sankaren is working to reform this broken system and provide families with helpful, high-quality legal care in the midst of CPS cases. Vivek is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, where he heads a program to educate future lawyers. In this week’s episode, Jim and Vivek talk about the work Vivek is doing to help create a more supportive and humane child welfare system – a system that actually helps families instead of harming them.