Blog

By Roxanna Asgarian, Photo by Shuran Huang, The Texas Tribune, November 10, 2022 Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, an anesthesiologist and a stay-at-home dad, already had two biological children when they decided to foster a child. “God started to speak to our hearts about opening our home for more,” Jennifer explained in a now-defunct blog. The Evangelical Christian couple in Fort Worth began caring for a 10-month-old boy in 2016, and the next year, decided they wanted to adopt him. But the boy...

Since 2001 the Children’s Bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has conducted periodic reviews of state child welfare systems. These reviews monitor compliance with federal child welfare requirements and determine how children and families experience being served by the child welfare system. Three rounds of these “Child and Family Service Reviews” or CFSRs have been conducted, and the fourth round (CFSR-4) is underway. ( See the most recent reports .) Ensuring that child...

The November issue of Children's Bureau Express features National Adoption Month and brings to the forefront the need to find loving, stable, and permanent homes for children and youth of any age waiting to be adopted. Our message from Associate Commissioner Aysha E. Schomburg continues to feature how the Lakota tribe implements the principle of being acutely mindful of the language they use around their children. This issue also includes valuable resources for professionals and the families...

By Shamara Kelly, Rise, October 31, 2022 My biggest fear has always been ACS taking my kids. I have embodied trauma from when I was a child—the system broke me and my siblings apart and took us away from our mom. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen to my two kids. As a parent, I had my share of ACS cases when I was experiencing domestic violence, but because of my childhood experiences, I don’t believe ACS could have helped. ACS actually made things worse for me because caseworkers...

By Rise, November 1, 2022 At Rise, the vast majority of parents impacted by the family policing system are Black and brown women who are survivors of domestic violence (DV), intimate partner violence (IPV) and/or sexual violence. Every year, many—if not most—parents in our Rise & Shine Parent Leadership Program write about and/or discuss experiences of domestic violence, sexual abuse and/or intimate partner violence in connection to their experience with the family policing system , a...

Note: PACEs Connection is in dire financial straits. We are asking for support, from you, our 57,586 members, to help cover the loss of foundation funding that was promised and did not come through. Pay and hours have been cut for our staff—most of us will be laid off for the month of December. Another grant will pick up in January, but we will still be underfunded. Since sounding the alarm this summer, we’ve raised about $26,000 . Thankfully, about 25% of new donors are making monthly...

The Connections Matter Academy is a set of engaging videos designed to educate young people about trauma and how it impacts their life. We created it to inspire teens to begin their healing process, break the cycle of intergenerational trauma, and reach their highest potential through healthy connections with others. What exactly is The Connections Matter Academy? An educational, inclusive, and entertaining animated series to help teens and young adults cope with trauma Co-created by Beth...

By Deana Around Him, Child Trends, November 8, 2022 In the 10 states with the largest proportions of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) children, AIAN children are overrepresented in foster care in nearly every state when comparing their percentages in the foster care and total child populations (see figure below). Of these 10 states, the percentage of AIAN children in foster care was highest in South Dakota, Alaska, and North Dakota; and lowest in Arizona, Oregon, and Nebraska. These...

By Jan Hoffman, Photo: Allison V. Smith/The New York Times, The New York Times, November 7, 2022 The little girl who will soon be known by the nine justices of the United States Supreme Court as Y.R.J. is now 4 years old. For much of her short life she has been living with Dr. Jennifer Brackeen and Chad Brackeen, a suburban Texas couple fighting with the Navajo Nation to adopt her. Y.R.J.’s birth mother is Navajo. The Brackeens are white. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments...

PBS News Hour, November 4, 2020 As the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of the Indigenous Child Welfare Act, many Native Americans anxiously await the outcome. The law governs the removal of Native American children from their homes and where they are subsequently placed. It's an effort to keep them with other family members and their tribes. Stephanie Sy reports on the challenge that could dismantle it entirely. Read the Full Transcript

By Jackie Mader, Photo: Katie Cotterill/The Hechinger Report, The Hechinger Report, November 2, 2022 By his mid-20s, Tommy Andrade was tired of working dead-end jobs. With a young child at home, he realized he needed more than a high school diploma to support his family. When he heard about a new, advanced manufacturing program at Austin Community College (ACC), Andrade was intrigued. Some of the jobs that graduates would be trained for carried salaries well into the six figures, enough to...

By John Kelly, Image: Screenshot from article, The Imprint, November 1, 2022 The number of youth in foster care dropped below 400,000 for the first time since 2012 last year, according to data released today by the Administration for Children and Families. There were 391,098 youth in foster care in 2021, according to today’s report from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, which uses a point-in-time count from September 30 of a given year to track the nation’s foster...