U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

A new online portal will help children and families in crisis because of the COVID-19 pandemic more easily get help from local churches. When human services agencies who enroll on the CarePortal hear from someone who needs help, they can log on to the portal and post the relevant information about that need, and churches in the immediate area with the ability to help can do so.

In 2016, “Valeria” was handed over to U.S. Border Patrol 21 days before her 18th birthday. She is one of the nearly 60,000 unaccompanied children who have traveled to the U.S.  

When the President and Congress asked the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities (CECANF) to develop a national strategy to eliminate child maltreatment fatalities in 2014, we knew the task would not be easy.

The United States and its northern neighbor are plagued by many of the same child welfare system challenges. Recent reports have suggested there is a “foster-parent crisis” in Canada, citing a drastic lack of qualified foster parents relative to the number of children in need of foster homes.

This month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a brief about the efficacy of differential response (DR) and child safety in six states that have implemented this child protection strategy for over ten years.

Upon hearing the term “human trafficking,” most Americans envision foreign nationals who have been smuggled into the United States to engage in sex work within our borders. While this situation is common and grave, it is important for Americans to know that the trafficking of American citizens is on the rise right here at home.

This issue brief provides an overview of protective factors approaches to the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. It is designed to help policymakers, administrators, child welfare and related professionals, service providers, advocates, and other interested individuals understand the concepts of risk and protective factors in families and communities and learn ways in which building protective factors can help to lessen risks for child abuse and neglect.

On Lorraine Hargrave’s 16th birthday, she was exactly two weeks from becoming a mother and being removed from her temporary foster home. Back then, she says, most of the group homes in San Francisco didn’t accept teenage mothers.