Shaquita Ogletree On Tuesday, November 27, the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth held a congressional briefing to discuss the issue of disrupted and dissolved adoptions. The event was a part of a series of Washington National Adoption Month events this year. The discussion focused on estimated ten to twenty-five percent of adoptions disrupted before being
Voice for Adoption (VFA), the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC) and the Center on American Progress have released a new study, Welcoming All Families that analyses discrimination against LGBTQ youth in foster care and discrimination against the recruitment of foster and adoptive parents. The report finds that although same-sex parents are not banned
On Tuesday, November 13, the Department of Health and Human Services used their National Adoption Month celebration to highlight a new focus for the next year on the promotion of adoption of teenagers from foster care. The annual event, which began in 1994, was held in the great hall of the Hubert H. Humphrey HHS
On Tuesday, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released, Fostering Youth Transitions analyzing that status and outcomes for young people exiting foster care. Fostering Youth Transitions uses data collected across 50 states to assess how young people fare as they transition from foster care to adulthood. Key points raised by the authors include: • Among older
On Thursday, November 8, the Ninth Circuit Court in California left in place a nationwide injunction keeping the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program alive. The Court, responding to an action led by the California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, found that former President Barack Obama’s creation of the program was a legitimate exercise of
Shaquita Ogletree On Monday, October 1, the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth held a congressional briefing to discuss the Every Student Success Act (ESSA) and School Stability for Foster Youth. According to the most recent report from AFCARS, there were over 260,000 school-aged children in foster care, some of the nation’s most educationally disadvantaged students.
The agreed to legislation on opioids (see below), HR 6, fixes a glitch in the ACA that mandates that any young person that ages out of foster care is covered by Medicaid to age 26. Through the work of Congressperson Karen Bass (D-CA), the provision was included in the House version of the opioids legislation
CWLA joined a number of groups including American Unity Fund, Family Equality Council, FosterClub, Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, National Association of Social Workers, PFLAG National and Voice for Adoption to sponsor a Senate and a House briefing, How Discrimination in Foster Care Harms Foster Youth. The two briefing included remarks by Ernesto Olivares, San
The House and Senate agreed to the Substance Use–Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act’’ or the ‘‘SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act’’ or HR 6. The House has passed the bill and left town until November. The Senate is expected to take up the bill this week. In
Last week, HHS released data on the Adoption-Kinship Incentives awards for FY 2018 (based on FY 2017 data) and the total awarded was $64 million. The $64 million is the largest awards ever provided by the fund since it was created as part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). The second biggest
