Orrin Hatch

In mid-April, former Senate Finance staffer-turned-lobbyist Becky Shipp sent an e-blast to dozens of key child welfare insiders inviting them to an intimate conversation focused on health care and child welfare policy.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) was furious and heartbroken. Nearly three years into an effort to fundamentally overhaul the nation’s foster care system, the bill Wyden had crafted alongside Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was dying.

Last week, Congress passed and the President signed into law the Family First Prevention Services Act. It is an encompassing and complex piece of legislation that will take some time for states to figure out in terms of the opportunities, as well as the data collection, reporting, accountability and state plan requirements that accompany those opportunities.

The Senate Finance Committee quickly followed the release of its report on privatization of foster care on Wednesday with legislation that tracked many of the recommendations made in the report. You can read all about the report here, and the bill here.

Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee introduced a bill Wednesday that would incentivize kinship placements in foster care, establish national child welfare standards on worker caseloads, and require better assessment of both child fatalities and the performance of private providers.

On Wednesday, Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) issued a report scrutinizing the management of private foster care providers, and skewering one especially notorious foster care agency.    Stirred by news stories chronicling dozens of child deaths because of management of foster care services by The MENTOR Network, a national for-profit provider, Hatch and Wyden directed the Senate Finance Committee to study the matter.

With less than two weeks before the federal program to support home visiting expires, the Senate has introduced a bill that sets up a showdown of sorts with the House over whether to make states match the money.

California fails to implement federal education law, denying students in foster care their right to school transportation. At least 35,000 school-aged California children live in foster care today. Entering the system is, invariably, traumatic.

Last week, several prominent California child welfare experts expressed grave concerns about the Family First Prevention Services Act, ­pending federal legislation that would dramatically change how foster care is paid for.