Child Welfare

Guam Gov. Lou Leno Guerrero has ordered a shakeup of the island territory’s Child Protective Services in the wake of a data review that pointed to systemic problems that have led to a failure to identify and root out “serious and significant instances of child abuse, maltreatment, and neglect,” according to news reports.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to expand a program that has helped drive kinship placements of children in its foster care system to nearly twice the national average.

The leader of a prominent foster care reform group – who spent time as a child in foster care herself, a searing experience that she’s said shaped her work as a congressional policy adviser – has been appointed to a senior role in President Joe Biden’s administration, according to tweets and website updates today from her organization, Foster America.

Child welfare advocates in Minnesota are calling for the state to use some of its funds from the federal coronavirus relief bill to make direct payments to current and former foster youth who are transitioning to adulthood.

While millions of California residents have been pushed into financial peril under the crush of the coronavirus pandemic, new research shows that more than a quarter of the state’s former foster youth struggled with homelessness and housing instability well before the virus’ economic devastation hit. 

Moving swiftly to address a growing hunger crisis, the Biden administration on Friday announced several new efforts to put more for on the tables of Americans who’ve been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Youth and young adults who are having a rough time overcoming the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic are targeted for help under a set of long-awaited initiatives announced this week by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. 

The conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI) published a set of recommended “lessons learned” about child welfare practice during coronavirus, while taking issue with several child welfare positions the Trump administration had during the pandemic.

The Biden administration promised bold transformative policies that would meet the contemporary racial and economic justice challenges facing the nation. We are hopeful that the Biden administration will include in that commitment some needed and radical changes to its child welfare policy, starting with the nation’s top-down policies around punitive child abuse and neglect registries.