The final conference report on the “CARA” legislation includes changes under nine titles. Its emphasis, unlike past anti-drug initiatives, is more on prevention and treatment. It is a distance from some of the efforts of the 1980s when crack-cocaine was attracting all the attention in regard to substance use. Actions then and into the 1990s
On the last day of summer session, Thursday, July 14, the Senate approved the conference report on the “CARA” legislation and sent the legislation onto the President who will sign it. The vote was 92 to 2 with only Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) voting no. CARA or the Comprehensive Addiction
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.
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
On Thursday, May 17 the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) focused on, Preventing Harm to Children through Predictive Analytics. A somewhat formal definition of predictive analytics would define it as a practice of taking data and the information gathered from that data to determine patterns and predict outcomes and trends. It predicts or forecasts what might
On Wednesday, May 17 the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources held their own hearing on the substance-abuse issue and the relationship to child welfare. It follows last week’s Senate Finance Committee hearing on the use of evidence-based services and its relationship to child welfare. In his opening statement, the Chairman, Congressman Vern
On Wednesday, May 11, the House of Representatives passed the Infant Plan of Safe Care Improvement Act, H.R. 4843, by a vote of 421 to zero. Late last year a Reuters investigation examined the care for infants born to parents struggling with opioid and heroin addiction. It caught the attention of Congress especially the parts
Thursday a Capitol Hill briefing featuring Dr. Phil McGraw became more like a Capitol Hill hearing as he discussed the heroin/opioid use epidemic and its impact on the child welfare. The briefing sponsored by the House Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, co-chaired by Congressperson Karen Bass (D-CA) and Congressman Tom Marino (R-PA), was open to
On Thursday, April 28, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce approved HR 4843, a bill to amend requirements around the “safe care” plans as described in the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA). The Infant Plan of Safe Care Improvement Act was introduced by Reps. Lou Barletta (R-PA) and Katherine Clark (D-MA) and
During the Capitol Hill Day, while CWLA members handed out Hot Topics on key policy issues, members could also break to attend a briefing that focused on the significance of the child welfare workforce. CWLA was focusing Capitol Hill attention on the significance of the workforce in advancing the many outcomes within child welfare and