stimulus

After months of on-again, off-again negotiations that seemed doomed as recently as last week, Congress has approved a deal on annual funding and coronavirus relief that includes more than $400 million in federal support for child welfare systems.

Hubert Humphrey once said “the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

The coronavirus crisis has put children in foster care – and those who need to be there – at serious risk in numerous, unnerving ways. To date, however, they and their families have barely been mentioned as potential victims of the pandemic, and the federal government has been done virtually nothing to help them.

Hundreds of child welfare and family services organizations signed on to a letter asking House and Senate leadership for a massive boost to child welfare funding for the year as part of a possible next piece of stimulus legislation.

Congress passed, and President Trump has signed, the CARES Act, a massive piece of stimulus legislation aimed at shoring up the American economy and protecting workers and businesses in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic.