Operating under budget caps and an allocation $3 billion below 2014 funding, on Wednesday, June 17 the House Appropriations Subcommittee approved a funding bill for 2016. The bill is still in draft form until the full report is prepared for full committee deliberation. The House draft avoids some of the controversial cuts of the recent
On Friday, June 19, 2015, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) introduced a key bipartisan measure, the Educational Stability of Foster Youth Act. The bill is an attempt to align federal education law with was enacted under child welfare law, Title IV-E in 2008. The bill would: Ensure that children can
The House Appropriations Subcommittee will take up a Labor-HHS appropriations bill for FY 2016 on Wednesday. Any real debate is likely to be delayed for the full committee later in the week or month. As of last week the House had sent six appropriations bills to the Senate: Commerce-State-Justice (HR 2578), Energy and Water (HR
On Wednesday, June 10, the House Ways and Means Committee held what was to be the Committee’s annual review of the Administration’s proposed changes for HHS (including proposals addressing child welfare) but instead the event may be a precursor for a coming fight over health care reform. With the Supreme Court in the last weeks
On Wednesday and Thursday of last week, the Department of Health and Human Services along with the White House coordinated a convening of states to help address the implementation of last year’s Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act. In announcing the event, the National Convening on Trafficking and Child Welfare , the White House
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), Human Resources Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany (R-LA), Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced legislation to prevent the Administration from implementing proposed new regulations intended to update child support provisions. The legislation was announced along with tough talk about “dead-beat
On June 11, Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA), Ranking Member of the Education and Workforce Committee introduced HR 2728, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2015. It picks up on some of the key provisions of a bipartisan Senate version (S 2999) by Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Senate Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Like
Late last week the House of Representatives was working on the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and other agencies (THUD) appropriations bill trying to make it the fourth bill to pass the House. There are twelve appropriations bills (and an annual Defense Department reauthorization that gets adopted at the same time) that need to be
Senator Wyden is still seeking input on his discussion draft bill. The discussion draft would build on the Administration’s FY 2016 budget request that seeks to expand the use of the foster care “candidacy” category as a methodology to provide home and community based services for children who have not yet been placed into foster
A letter in support of the President’s budget request for greater funding in some child welfare services has collected over 160 organizational sign-ons. The Administration’s FY 2016 budget request includes a number of proposals including the expansion of services to help prevent foster care placements as well as some limited funding for post-permanence funding. The