Holding Pattern in Senate Last week efforts to adopt the House version of the Family First Prevention Services Act, (HR 5456) (Conference Report 114-628) continued but success has stalled—at least temporarily. By week’s end the only thing that was clear is that they had not yet reached unanimous support for the bill and passing it.
On Thursday the House Subcommittee on Appropriations for the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor-HHS) approved a bill that reduces spending below current year funding and attaches a number of provisions the President would reject. Overall the bill provides $161.6 billion which is a cut of $569 million below this year.
Holding Pattern in Senate The Senate comes back mid-week for the waning days of the summer session. Plans are to depart by July 15 with no return until post-Labor Day. As a result, last week there were on-going discussions involving various organizations, foundations, and government representatives with some state and local governments and advocacy groups
On Tuesday, June 28 the Child Welfare League America and the National Association of Social Workers cosponsored a briefing on the child welfare workforce. The briefing entitled, Let's Improve Child Welfare Outcomes: The Workforce Matters, provided background on what it takes to perform some of the critical work within the child welfare field. Panelists included
Congress acting on an omnibus appropriations bill is certain. The only question is when they will pass such a bill and how long it will run. There are days not weeks left before the summer break starts. That break will run through Labor Day. It is expected that there will be limited days in September
Bill Passes House Before House action came to a halt in response to a gun-control sit-down protest, the House of Representatives passed the Family First Prevention Services Act, (HR 5456) by a voice vote. The legislation was taken up on Tuesday, June 21 as part of the House suspension calendar which is a House method
On Thursday the Education Department and HHS issued guidance, Non-Regulatory Guidance: Ensuring Educational Stability for Children in Foster Care that is intended to help implement new provisions of the reauthorized Education and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that seek to protect the education access for student who are also in foster care. The guidance includes 40
Part of the delay in the final two years of phase-out of the adoption delink from the 1996 AFDC eligibility standard as included in Family First Prevention Services Act, is that it has been challenging to get data on how states are reinvesting state dollars saved as the federal adoption assistance funding expands due to
On Wednesday, June 8, the Bureau of Indian Affairs released a long awaited set of regulations or final rule on the Indian Child Welfare Act. The Final Rule which will be implemented in 180 days, is the result of more than 2000 comments submitted after a proposed rule had been published in March 2015. CWLA
On Tuesday June 7 and Thursday June 9, the Senate Appropriations moved a Labor-HHS-Education bill through Subcommittee and full Committee respectively. Leadership from both sides proclaimed a bipartisan victory of what was passed with little controversy. The big winner, if there can be in tight budgets, is the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which received