Child Welfare

A Catholic mother’s lawsuit alleging bedrock religious discrimination by South Carolina’s largest child-placement agency with the blessing of state and federal officials may proceed, a federal judge ruled this week, rejecting calls to throw out her case.

Last month, New York’s Office of Children and Family Services offered a compromise to the advocates pressuring the state to allow youth in foster care to continue receiving housing support and other services past age 21, when the financial help typically expires.

When the clouds of COVID-19 descended over the world, like many others, current and former foster youth lost their jobs and then their housing.

Imagine for a moment that leaders of a group called the Association of Really Good Police Departments wrote a column proclaiming their sympathy for the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and even used their rhetoric, beginning the column with “Say his name. George

“I can’t breathe.”

These words are now painfully familiar. They were the last words of George Floyd who died on May 25, when a police officer pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as well as Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who was killed in 2014 after being put in a chokehold by New York City police.

Late last week, a bipartisan group of House legislators introduced a bill that would supply $2 billion to states for help in preventing youth or family homelessness during the coronavirus pandemic.

The House Ways and Means Committee dropped a bipartisan bill today that would prevent youth from aging out of foster care during the coronavirus pandemic and provide additional federal cash to state child welfare agencies.