All Series

Born of History: A Tulalip Youth’s Journey to Indigenize Child Welfare

This three-part Imprint series explores a young person’s journey through a tribal foster care system and into a life of advocacy — as well as the challenges a family and the Tulalip Tribes confronted.

Child Welfare
Upstream City

A collection of columns on the future of family support in New York City written by Nora McCarthy, co-founder of the Family Policy Project.

Family
Youth Voices Rising Writing Contest 2023 Winners & Finalists

Each year, Fostering Media Connections hosts the Youth Voices Rising Writing Contest — an opportunity for youth with experience in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems to write about their experiences.

Youth Voices Rising
High Stakes, Silent Systems

An investigation on sexual and reproductive health in foster care. This Imprint review of 50 state policies and interviews with dozens of current and former foster youth, child welfare experts, officials and legal advocates revealed a troubling lack of critical guidance.

A Second Look

Cordell Miller was sentenced to 97 years for a crime he committed at age 17 following an adolescence marked by abuse and homelessness. Evolving policies around youth offenders gave him another path to freedom.

Justice
Brackeen v. Haaland

A collection of The Imprint’s coverage of Brackeen v. Haaland, a case that could decide the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act

ICWA
Youth Voice Writing Contest 2022 Winners & Finalists

Each year, Fostering Media Connections hosts the Youth Voice Writing Contest — an opportunity for youth with experience in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems to write about their experiences.

Youth Voices Rising
Child Welfare Ideas from The Experts, 2022

The Imprint highlighted each of the policy recommendations made this summer by the participants of the Foster Youth Internship Program, a group of seven young people that experienced foster care and have completed congressional internships.

Child Welfare
Foster Youth Speak on Roe v. Wade

This series features former foster youth who are Youth Voice writers responding to the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which removed the constitutional right to abortion, leaving the legal decision to each state.

Foster Care
Child Welfare Ideas from the Experts

The Imprint highlighted each of the policy recommendations made this summer by the participants of the Foster Youth Internship Program, a group of 11 former foster youths who have completed congressional internships.

Child Welfare
Hidden Foster Care

The federal government reports there are roughly 425,000 children across the United States living in foster care. The real number appears to be much, much higher — a little known shadow system known as hidden foster care.

Child Welfare
Youth Voice Writing Contest 2021 Finalists & Winners

Each year, Fostering Media Connections hosts the Youth Voice Writing Contest — an opportunity for youth with experience in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems to write about their experiences.

Creative Writing
One Year Later: Youth Voice Writers Reflect on the Police Murder of George Floyd

May 25, 2021 marks one year since the police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd. He was a father, a Minneapolis resident and a Black man in America. The murder, which was caught on video and widely viewed, sparked global protests last summer and a national reckoning not only with racist police violence, but with the white supremacy that is embedded in American institutions.

Justice
The Space between Life, Death and Opportunity: When I Was 16

On April 20, 2021, Ma’Khia Bryant was killed by a police officer outside of the foster home she was living in. For many Black people who have experienced the foster care system, bearing witness to Ma’Khia’s violent death as the officer’s body camera footage spread on social media has been excruciating.

Foster Care
We Asked the New York City Mayoral Candidates About the High-Stakes Child Welfare System. Here’s What They Said.

When eight leading candidates vying to be mayor of New York City appear this evening for the season’s first official televised debate, they will argue over how best to manage schools, housing and police.

Child Welfare
Profiles in Permanency

The National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation (QIC-AG) is a five-year cooperative agreement, funded through the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau, designed to promote permanence when reunification is no longer a goal and improve adoption and guardianship preservation and support.

Adoption
Foster Care is Personal: Youth Speak Out on Family & Stability

This series highlights three writers from Northern California who share their experiences dealing with foster care and how the system affects their family relationships in addition to always being place in a position to survive.

Child Welfare
Far from Home | Far from Safe

California sent thousands of vulnerable children to out-of-state facilities run by a for-profit company. Reports of rampant abuse followed. Now, confronted with a Chronicle and Imprint investigation, the state is bringing every child home.

Child Welfare
Youth Sound Off: Racism and Police Brutality

Between COVID-19 and the widely publicized incidents of police brutality in the U.S., the summer of 2020 was highly charged. We reached out to young people with systems experience across the country to see what they were thinking about and what their experiences had been when it comes to racism and policing in America.

Fostering Adults: The State of Care

“The thing about extended foster care is, it’s a deal, but it comes with strings attached.” Since 2008, nearly every state in America has extended foster care to age 21, an effort to help prevent the staggering levels of homelessness and criminal justice involvement experienced by those who “age out” of the system.

Latonia vs. Chisago County

In 2016, the child welfare agency in Chisago County, Minnesota, took a newborn child into foster care. This series charts the agonizing four years spent by his grandmother, Latonia Rolbiecki, trying to bring the child back to his family as his foster parents pursued adoption.

Hearings: Stories from Inside America’s Child Welfare Courts

“Hearings” is a series of stories from a corner of the law that is not reported on enough – America’s child welfare courts. Across the country these tribunals – often called juvenile dependency or family court – are routinely witness to some of the most high stakes legal proceedings in American jurisprudence.

A Complete Guide to The Family First Act

The Family First Prevention Services Act has become law. It includes the biggest change to the structure of federal child welfare finance since the establishment of the Title IV-E entitlement in 1980.

Western States Face Spikes in Drug Use, Foster Care

At an August 2016 campaign stop, President Donald Trump made the opioid crisis part of the dismal portrait of America he purported to change. “We’re going to take all of these kids … that are totally addicted and they can’t break it,” he promised at a Columbus, Ohio, town hall meeting.

Out of County, California

One in five California foster youth will find themselves taken away from the county where they lived and placed in another county. This three-part series looks at the experiences of some of those youth.

Positive Youth Justice: Curbing Crime, Building Assets

Underneath the tension-laden surface of national politics, there is growing agreement that the United States needs to rethink criminal justice, that the nation is over-reliant on expensive and ineffectual incarceration and short on other strategies that would lower the likelihood of continued criminal behavior.