Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA)

A UN committee to end racial discrimination said Congress and the Biden administration should amend or repeal certain child welfare policies.

We can help formerly incarcerated women keep their children with holistic legal services and other support, writes Andi Mazingo.

Advocates, representatives and former child welfare officials say it's time to change a 1990s-era federal law that incentivized adoptions.

The "uncooperative mother" has become a racial trope used by well-meaning people who work in the child welfare system, writes Karen Baynes-Dunning.

A new memorandum from the federal government’s top child welfare leaders argues that the field has been getting one of its most important goals — permanency — all wrong. After examining the latest research — including new analyses of federal data conducted by the U.S.

As we move into a new Democratic administration, ending family separation inflicted by the so-called child welfare system should be a top priority. Specifically, the Biden administration should refuse to sanction the federal government’s endorsement of arbitrary timelines that permanently tear families apart. That

Throughout the 1990s, the number of children in foster care surged, reaching a peak of 567,000 children in 1999. The rise occurred in the wake of the crack and cocaine epidemic, which forced tough choices on child welfare systems that were often ill-equipped to help keep families together.

Marcia Lowry, the crusading child welfare attorney, works out of an office on Hardscrabble Road. She didn’t name this leafy suburban New York lane, but it suits her reputation: The slew of big-ticket settlements she’s secured against large foster care systems made her one of the nation’s most respected, winning and – in some quarters – loathed attorneys for vulnerable youth.

Our intuition has long been that early life experiences, like genes, are vital and long-lasting. The timelines mandated by the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) were based on this premise.