Health and Human Services

Consulting firm ICF will continue to oversee the federal Child Welfare Capacity Building Center for States, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) main conduit of training and technical assistance to state and local child welfare agencies.

The Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program began in 2003 as part of a recognition by both political parties that when children arrived alone at our border, often in search of safety from circumstances back home, they warranted special protection.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has laid out a parallel track for states to clear services for the Family First Prevention Services Act, a new law that opens up uncapped federal dollars to prevent the use of foster care in some cases.

JooYeun Chang, a veteran of child welfare policy and practice, is now the senior deputy director in charge of the Children’s Services Agency at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

Updated information from the federal Administration for Children and Families (ACF), obtained last week by Youth Services Insider, shows that the number of states intending to delay on the Family First Prevention Services Act is now at least 27 states.

The federal Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has already begun to set up the guidelines and rules that will govern state implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act, a law passed in February of 2018 that aims to prevent the use of foster care more often and reduce the use of group homes and other congregate care settings.

Documentarian Karen Grau has been filming dependency court proceedings for decades. In her experience, there’s one variable that makes it easy to know early in a case if justice will be served.

Documented child abuse and neglect declined for a second consecutive year, while investigations of such maltreatment continued to increase. Nationwide, 3.5 million children were the subject of at least one report to child protective services (CPS), according to the federal “Child Maltreatment” report for fiscal year 2017.

The legal challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 40-year-old law passed to protect Native American families from child welfare system intrusion, has its next court date set. Oral arguments in the appeal of a federal district court decision to strike down most of ICWA is scheduled for the week of March 11 at the Fifth Circuit Court Appeals in New Orleans, according to counsel for one of the tribes involved in the case.