John Broden

On Thursday morning, legislators tasked with recommending solutions to issues plaguing Indiana's Department of Child Services will sit down in a government conference room and begin their work of balancing politics with policy. Perhaps some of them won't...

Debra Blacklaw says she couldn’t believe what she was hearing when a local Department of Child Services supervisor told her it is possible the man who had repeatedly beaten her 8-year-old grandson will retain his parental rights. When Blacklaw...

By the time Travis Thieneman discovered that his girlfriend was pregnant with his child, the two had already split up. The 26-year-old southern Indiana man says he was worried enough about their infant that he called the state’s child abuse hot...

A growing number of those involved in protecting Indiana’s children are alarmed at the quiet revamping of the state’s Department of Child Services — changes they say too often result in a reluctance to act appropriately on reports of...

The online photos of Indiana children waiting to be adopted are heartbreaking, the brief descriptions containing clues to the difficulties these wards of the state have already known. “Toby just learned how to swim, and would gladly take your...

At 3:30 in the morning of April 4, two South Bend police officers responded to a neighbor's call about a young boy standing outside, yelling for his mother. "Upon arrival at the address I observed that the front door to the residence was open and not...

INDIANAPOLIS — Ask Indiana lawmakers about tax increment financing, and many of them start by calling  TIF “a good tool” for communities to fund infrastructure and attract new development. Then they usually add an “if” or...

SOUTH BEND — The Republican member of the Board of Voter Registration worked on the four days in early 2008 when a number of suspected fake petition pages passed through the county voter registration office, according to county payroll records. The...