Children who can’t safely live at home deserve the best care while waiting for permanency. Every effort should be made to ensure that time in out-of-home care is as short as possible, which means children and youth need services to heal and their families need supports to stabilize. Foster care families and residential treatment facilities must be able to meet children’s every need while guiding the transitions to and from their care. Social workers must have the capacity and resources to oversee both the out-of-home care and the urgent return of the children to permanency. Each child in out-of-home care must be supported by every level of government and community resource. We must all do our part because children don’t stop developing for any intervention and every child needs constant, loving care.

• Family Connection Grants 
• LGBTQ Youth 
• Treatment Foster Care
  • HR 835/S 429
• Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, Foster Care
• Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, Kinship Care
• Tribal Title IV-E Technical Assistance
• Residential Treatment 
• Seclusion & Restraint
• Sex Trafficking from Foster Care 
• Older Youth 

• Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act (113^th Congress, H.R. 3205)
• Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-351)

• See also Financing Child Welfare Services [Policy Topic] and “Budget Policy” [Policy Priority]
• Preventing Sex Trafficking and Improving Opportunities for Youth in Foster Care Act (2/2014)
• CWLA’s Fostering ConnectionsTestimony – House Ways and Means Subcommittee (9/15/2009)
• CWLA Testimony to the House Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support for the Hearing on Racial Disproportionality in Foster Care (7/31/08)
• Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System Comments on ACF Proposed Rule (3/11/08)
• CWLA Testimony Before the House Subcommittee On Income Security And Family Support (2/27/08)
• CWLA Testimony Before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the Multiethnic Placement Act: Minority Children in State Foster Care and Adoption (9/21/07)
• Testimony submitted to the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support for the Hearing on Health Care for Children in Foster Care (7/19/07)
• Testimony submitted to the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support for the Hearing on Income Security and Family Support (7/12/07)
• Testimony submitted to the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support for the Hearing on Disconnected and Disadvantaged Youth (6/19/07)
• Statement by Shay Bilchik, President & CEO of Child Welfare League of America on HHS Decision to Grant Foster Care Funding Waivers to Five States (4/11/06)
• CWLA comments to the EPA regarding Pesticide Testing on Foster Children (12/12/05)
• Testimony of Shay Bilchik, President/CEO, Child Welfare League of America, for the California Assembly, Select Committee Hearing on Foster Care (11/21/05)
• Statement of the Child Welfare League of America for House Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means for the Hearing on Federal Foster Care Financing (6/09/05)
• CWLA Statement on Permissions for Children in Foster Care to Participate in Treatment Research for HIV Infection (5/23/05)
• Memo from Shay Bilchik regarding Medicaid Amended Interim Final Rule (5/23/01)
• CWLA’s comments filed March 15 on the interim final rule on the use of restraint and seclusion in psychiatric residential treatment facilities for individuals under the age of 21 (3/15/01)
• CWLA Testimony Submitted to the Senate Finance Committee for the Hearing to Examine the Use of Seclusion and Restraints in Mental Hospitals (10/26/99)
• CWLA Comments on the HHS Interim Final Rule Regulating the Use of Seclusion and Restraints (8/26/99)