Congress will likely make this week their last week before they leave for the August break and that will happen regardless of the unaccompanied minor issue. Going into this week there are three general proposals: the President’s, the Senate’s and the House’s. It seems certain that none of them can garner enough votes to get
On Wednesday, July 23, the House of Representatives passed HR 4980, the “Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act.’ The legislation will reauthorize the Adoption Incentive Fund for three years and extend it to guardianship placements. It will also extend the Family Connections Grants by one year through this current fiscal year of 2014. After
On Tuesday, July 22, there was a Senate briefing on S. 2570, the Tribal Adoption Parity Act. The National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) is circulating a letter of support for the bill. This bill would ensure that families who adopt children designated as “special needs” in tribal court are eligible for the same flat
On August 21, 2014, at 3 p.m. ET, the Coalition for Juvenile Justice will present“Using Title IV-E for Juvenile Justice: The Multnomah County Experience.” This Webinar will focus on how jurisdictions can leverage Title IV-E of the Social Security Act to support home- and community-based programs and services in their juvenile justice system. Participants will learn
The National Quality Improvement Center on Differential Response in Child Protective Services (QIC-DR) has released the final report from the Cross-Site Evaluation on Differential Response. Differential Response (DR) represents a different way of structuring a state’s child protective services system (CPS). DR allows CPS agencies to respond differently to child abuse and neglect based on
By the end of last week, July 18, Congress’s path forward to address the issue of the surge of unaccompanied minors across the US boarder was becoming less clear with each house pursuing different approaches. The President has requested $3.7 billion in emergency funding mainly for services both legal and humanitarian with the bulk of
The debate over the increase in unaccompanied minors coming across the border has been largely focused on an argument of whether the President’s past policies have attracted these children to come from the three countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala or whether changes made to the TVPA in 2008 have resulted in the increases
The Congressional Baby Caucus celebrated its 5th birthday with a briefing on veterans and families. The briefing was a follow up to the Caucus’s initial briefing five years ago which also focused on military families with young children. The briefing included a panel of three that included one program expert and two veterans to reflect
The Commission To Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities conducted a second field hearing last Thursday, July 10 when they went to Tampa Florida. The Commission heard from both Florida officials as well as national experts. Panelists included Interim Secretary Mike Carroll, Florida Department of Children and Families, Dr. Celeste Philip, Florida Department of Health,
On Tuesday, July 8, 2014, the Subcommittee on Children and Families of the Senate HELP Committee held a hearing on “Falling Through the Cracks: The Challenges of Prevention and Identification in Child Trafficking and Private Re-homing” Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) opened the hearing with remarks that focused on two key goals: prevention and identification in