Adoption and Safe Families Act

A bill introduced before Congress would allow states to decide whether to seek the termination of parental rights in child welfare cases.

A bill introduced before Congress would allow states to decide whether to seek the termination of parental rights in child welfare cases.

A campaign announced in March to seek repeal of the Adoption and Safe Families Act has brought in a strategist to lead the effort.

While conversations about statutory reforms in child welfare are important and will hopefully result in meaningful change, questions linger.

This is a moment that should not be wasted. Seemingly everyone who wants to be on Martin Luther King Jr.’s side of the arc of justice has issued uncommonly strong criticism of structural racism in the United States, including many who have played an outsize role in shaping America’s child welfare system.

The child welfare system has a problem that is rarely mentioned in the literature. Children wait too long for permanency, and the problem is exasperated by the age of the children.

Diane Savino is the rare kind of politician: she’s known for her impassioned, sometimes salty candor, and for her granular knowledge of the foster care system. The Democratic New York State Senator for Staten Island spent five years in the early 1990s working for the city, knocking on the doors of parents accused of abusing or neglecting their children.