On Tuesday night Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WS) announced a final budget deal that wraps up appropriations for the rest of fiscal year 2016. The House approved the package in parts with approval of the appropriations, the final piece, coming on Friday. The Senate wasted no time in voting later that day to approve the combined
The new version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), S. 1177, the Every Student Succeeds Act, with a text that runs over one thousand pages includes a number of long sought after reforms that are intended to help children in foster care and improvements in the McKinney-Vento Education For Homeless Children and Youth
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 Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities continued their deliberations last week with a two day discussion in Virginia just outside of Washington DC. Based on the public discussions, members continued to disagree and debate what should be included in a final package of proposals that will go to the Administration, the Congress
The only thing clear by the end of last week was that Congress needs more time to negotiate a final budget for FY 2016. By Friday both houses of Congress adopted an extension of federal funding from its expiration on December 11 to December 16 of this week. Reports were kept confidential but what has
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
This week the Senate is expected to complete action on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), more commonly referred to as the No Child Left Behind Act since the last reauthorization in 2002. The House approved the new version S. 1177, the Every Student Succeeds Act, on Tuesday with an overwhelming
The House is expected to re-approve a reconciliation bill that guts the ACA and cuts Planned Parenthood funding this week. The Senate redesigned an earlier House version in an effort to attract enough Republican Senators. The bill passed the Senate on Thursday by a vote of 52 to 47. Two Republican Senators (Kirk R-IL, and
On Thursday, December 3 the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Brookings Institution held a joint meeting to release a new paper and to discuss their joint proposal on Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream. The two-hour discussion focused on the consensus document that was crafted
