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
The Senate is struggling to move a reconciliation bill that would repeal parts of the ACA and cut-off federal funds to Planned Parenthood. Last month the House of Representatives passed a reconciliation measure based on an instruction included in the spring budget resolution. The legislation is political message bill that will certainly be vetoed by
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
On Tuesday, November 17, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources held the last of a series of hearings on welfare and human services funding programs with a focus on how other countries design their programs. In announcing an end to the series of subcommittee hearings Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany (R-LA) said, "While
Building on earlier announcements about the “TAG,” Think, Act ,Grow, HHS’s Office of Adolescent Health is continuing their efforts regarding a national call to action to improve the health and healthy development of America’s 42 million adolescents. Adolescent Health: Think, Act, Grow, or TAG, calls on youth-serving professionals, families, and youth to take action by
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,
On October 21 the National Crittenton Foundation sponsored a briefing, Beyond ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences). The focus of the briefing was on the use of the ACEs or Adverse Childhood Experience evaluation tool. Ongoing research and findings document that when individuals are evaluated in terms of how many adverse experiences they have had as a
As a way to highlight the need to prevent child abuse and child maltreatment from taking place, Prevent Child Abuse America held an event on the Washington National Mall last Tuesday, October 13. Led by their Virginia and Maryland chapters the gathering was an attempt to celebrate childhood and all that communities and individuals can
On Monday, October 5 the American Youth Policy Forum sponsored a briefing that focused on how state and local child welfare programs address the challenge of converting research to inform policy and practice decisions in the child welfare field. The research was funded by the W. T. Grant Foundation in an effort to improve the