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Blog Posts -- Child Welfare System/Reform

All Foster Kids in California Can Now Attend Any State College for Free (thenmessenger.com)'

A student walks near Royce Hall on the campus of UCLA on April 23, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. Under a new law, foster children in California will have their tuition covered if they attend a state or community college. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images To read more of Christopher Gavin's article, please click here. Children and teens in foster care across California will be able to attend state and community colleges free of charge under legislation signed into law this week. Through the...

Is N.Y.’s Child Welfare System Racist? Some of Its Own Workers Say Yes. [nytimes.com]

By Andy Newman, The New York Times, Photo by Nora Savosnick for the New York Times, November 22, 2022 New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services must protect children without overpolicing families. A report the agency commissioned says it often fails. For decades, Black families have complained that the city’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, is biased against them. It turns out that many of the agency’s own employees agree, according to a racial...

We Know Investing In Families Works. Why Are We Still Investing in Harm? [upendmovement.org]

By Joanna Lack & Bill Bettencourt, upEND, November 15, 2022 A key tenet of abolition is the recognition that carceral systems are not broken; no amount of reform can fix them. Yet time and again, family policing systems push forward the same reforms – a maddening demonstration that the more things change, the more they stay the same . The pandemic, and now endemic, have placed the family policing system under additional stress. Like always, children and families trapped in its carceral...

Texas case could change adoption rules for Native American children, and undercut tribal rights [texastribune.org]

By Roxanna Asgarian, Photo by Shuran Huang, The Texas Tribune, November 10, 2022 Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, an anesthesiologist and a stay-at-home dad, already had two biological children when they decided to foster a child. “God started to speak to our hearts about opening our home for more,” Jennifer explained in a now-defunct blog. The Evangelical Christian couple in Fort Worth began caring for a 10-month-old boy in 2016, and the next year, decided they wanted to adopt him. But the boy...

New Study to Apply Race Equity Lens to Federal Child Welfare Data [chapinhall.org]

Since 2001 the Children’s Bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has conducted periodic reviews of state child welfare systems. These reviews monitor compliance with federal child welfare requirements and determine how children and families experience being served by the child welfare system. Three rounds of these “Child and Family Service Reviews” or CFSRs have been conducted, and the fourth round (CFSR-4) is underway. ( See the most recent reports .) Ensuring that child...

Children's Bureau Express: Spotlight on National Adoption Month [cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov]

The November issue of Children's Bureau Express features National Adoption Month and brings to the forefront the need to find loving, stable, and permanent homes for children and youth of any age waiting to be adopted. Our message from Associate Commissioner Aysha E. Schomburg continues to feature how the Lakota tribe implements the principle of being acutely mindful of the language they use around their children. This issue also includes valuable resources for professionals and the families...

Stepping Into My Power: ‘I made a change because my kids were hurting’ [risemagazine.org]

By Shamara Kelly, Rise, October 31, 2022 My biggest fear has always been ACS taking my kids. I have embodied trauma from when I was a child—the system broke me and my siblings apart and took us away from our mom. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen to my two kids. As a parent, I had my share of ACS cases when I was experiencing domestic violence, but because of my childhood experiences, I don’t believe ACS could have helped. ACS actually made things worse for me because caseworkers...

New Rise Series: The Intersection of Family Policing and Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence [risemagazine.org]

By Rise, November 1, 2022 At Rise, the vast majority of parents impacted by the family policing system are Black and brown women who are survivors of domestic violence (DV), intimate partner violence (IPV) and/or sexual violence. Every year, many—if not most—parents in our Rise & Shine Parent Leadership Program write about and/or discuss experiences of domestic violence, sexual abuse and/or intimate partner violence in connection to their experience with the family policing system , a...

American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) Children Are Overrepresented in Foster Care in States With the Largest Proportions of AIAN Children [childtrends.org]

By Deana Around Him, Child Trends, November 8, 2022 In the 10 states with the largest proportions of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) children, AIAN children are overrepresented in foster care in nearly every state when comparing their percentages in the foster care and total child populations (see figure below). Of these 10 states, the percentage of AIAN children in foster care was highest in South Dakota, Alaska, and North Dakota; and lowest in Arizona, Oregon, and Nebraska. These...

Supreme Court hears case challenging who can adopt Indigenous children [pbs.org]

PBS News Hour, November 4, 2020 As the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of the Indigenous Child Welfare Act, many Native Americans anxiously await the outcome. The law governs the removal of Native American children from their homes and where they are subsequently placed. It's an effort to keep them with other family members and their tribes. Stephanie Sy reports on the challenge that could dismantle it entirely. Read the Full Transcript

Save the date: 23rd National Conference on Child Abuse & Neglect: April 11-13, 18-20, 2023

A Theme That Recognizes the Importance of Change “I spent 8 or 9 months really just meeting with pretty much anyone who would ask because there's always something to be learned from a conversation. And, having really thoughtful conversations about not only what the problems are, but what the solutions are, that's also really important.” —Aysha E. Schomburg, J.D., Associate Commissioner, Children's Bureau, “Threading Equity Throughout Child Welfare” podcast Nearly 1 year after her appointment...

Mandatory Reporting Was Supposed to Stop Severe Child Abuse. It Punishes Poor Families Instead. [propublica.org]

by Mike Hixenbaugh and Suzy Khimm , NBC News, and Agnel Philip, ProPublica, October 12, 2022 After the Sandusky child abuse scandal rocked Pennsylvania, the state required more professionals to report suspected child abuse. That led to a strained child welfare system and more unsubstantiated reports against low-income families. More than a decade before the Penn State University child sex abuse scandal broke, an assistant football coach told his supervisors that he had seen Jerry Sandusky...

Can ‘Kinship Care’ Help the Child Welfare System? The White House Wants to Try. [nytimes.com]

By Erica L. Green, Photo by Chet Strange for the New York Times, The New York Times, October 13, 2022 The Biden administration proposes spending $20 billion over a decade to help some of the most vulnerable families in the country, including relatives suddenly thrust into child rearing. WASHINGTON — Maria Elena Thomas and her husband were ready for a simpler life after they retired in 2015, sold their home in Colorado and settled on the southeastern coast of Spain. “People would ask, ‘When...

Freedom to Dream: A Future without Family Policing (How We endUP 2022 Convening) October 17-18

The How We endUP Convening is a two-day virtual gathering of advocates, activists, researchers, policymakers, and leaders from different communities, agencies, and efforts coming together to explore how we can move toward abolition of family policing--how we can dismantle harmful, racist systems and build different ways of caring for one another. Featured speakers are Angela Davis, Joyce McMillan, and Mariame Kaba. Join in discussions that expose racism in how families are surveilled and...

Spotlight on Youth Homelessness from Children's Bureau Express

The October 2022 issue of Children's Bureau Express (CBX) features resources related to the issue of youth homelessness and ways to mitigate the challenges children and youth involved with child welfare face during times of financial insecurity. Read a message from Associate Commissioner Aysha E. Schomburg about the importance of practicing positivity when engaging with children and youth and how the Lakota tribe implements this principle of being acutely mindful of the language they use...

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