removal

In a world where “social distancing” has become a necessary practice and the primary preventative measure for reducing the spread of coronavirus, we must remember that children in foster care and their families have already been “distanced” from each other.

Last week, the Washington Post profiled the remarkable work of Judge Ernestine Gray to essentially eliminate New Orleans’ foster care system. Between 2011 and 2017, the number of kids in foster care in New Orleans fell by 89 percent.

A few weeks ago, a retired judge shared with me how he’d reform juvenile court. He remarked, “I’d tell judges they shouldn’t be umpires. They need to do more than call balls and strikes.

200 Beats a Minute It was the week before Christmas 2018. Sometime around noon that day, the 1-year-old baby girl ingested methamphetamines and opioids she had found in her mother’s purse.

A nonprofit in Washington state is moving forward with plans to create a “soft landing spot” for children entering the foster care system. The Bridge Receiving Center, a Redmond, Wash.-based nonprofit, is building a therapeutic, camp-like facility where children can stay for up to 30 days before they are placed with a family in the state’s foster care system.

It is National Adoption Month, and I’m remembering the four adoptions that I oversaw in my five years as a foster care social worker. These were among the happiest occasions in my child welfare career.

Lisa Mayrose knew Florida’s Department of Children & Families needed to overhaul how it investigated phone calls reporting beaten and neglected children. “We had a rash of child deaths,” Mayrose, the regional managing director of the department in Tampa, said in an interview with The Imprint.

On Monday, The Imprint published a column by Katie Jay, a member of our Blogger Co-Op. In it, Jay argues that the priority of the child welfare system has swung away from the safety of a child and toward parental rights.

Every other week, The Imprint features one key indicator from Kidsdata.org, which offers comprehensive data about the health and well-being of children across California. This installment of “Focus on the Figures” looks at the outcomes after four years for California children taken into foster care during the first half of 2008.