When Congress returns this week it will mark the beginning of a very short congressional calendar. The President is scheduled to deliver his last State of the Union address on January12 which will unofficially begin the new budget debate for FY 2017. The official budget will come a little more than four weeks later in
According to published news reports he was removed from his home and his mother due to child abuse allegations. He was three years old at the time and he spent the next two months in foster care. He left that first foster care placement to stay with a relative. Details aren’t clear but that arrangement
The draft bill, the Families First Act, will likely come up early in the New Year rather than this month as had been originally hoped. The legislation would allow Title IV-E funding on a limited category of substance abuse, mental health and in-home parent support programs for up to 12-months contingent on a child being
On Thursday, December 3, Capitol Hill was the location for a briefing on Substance Use Treatment: A Core Component of Child Welfare Reform, the briefing entitled the Elephant in the Room discussed the roll that substance abuse is and has been playing in child welfare and foster care in particular. CWLA was one of the
When Congress returns this week there is the possibility the Senate Finance Committee could take up a child welfare bill that is still very much in flux. The draft bill, the Families First Act, would allow Title IV-E funding on a limited category of substance abuse, mental health and in-home parent support programs for up
On Friday, November 20 the American Youth Policy Forum sponsored a Capitol Hill briefing on the topic of How Research Evidence Informs Foster Youth Medication Policies. The panel discussion included an examination of definitions, usage and oversight of psychotropic and other medications for youth and children in foster care. The discussion reached beyond the numbers
On November 9, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report they had provided to the Senate Finance committee in October. The report: HHS Could Do More to Support States’ Efforts to Keep Children in Family-Based Care examined eight states including Washington, Kansas, New Jersey, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Connecticut and Colorado by interviewing 41 stakeholders
On November 17, Senator Tom Kane (D-VA) introduced S 2289, the Family Unification, Preservation and Modernization Act, a bill that would extend the Family Unification Program or “FUP.” The 1990, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program provides housing vouchers to families involved with the child welfare system. In 2000, Congress extended this program
November is National Adoption Month and last week the President issued a proclamation saying in part, “All young people deserve a safe place to live, and with each passing year, more children know the warmth and comfort of a loving family thanks to adoptive parents. People who adopt do so for a variety of reasons,
On Friday, September 23, New York City was the setting for an adoption symposium called “Broken Adoption Beyond Permanency: Challenges for Foster Youth.” The one-day session sponsored by the Children’s Law Center focused on strategies to address those adoptions from foster care that “fail” or as they labeled such instance, “broken adoptions.” In other words,