Blog

The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health is excited to bring together 10 talented practitioners to explore the Trauma Informed Practices that help improve birth outcomes and support human development right from the very start. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1998) launched the importance of trauma and trauma informed care in our health and educational systems. We suddenly had a measure of how early experiences in childhood could correlate with adult disease.

On Dec. 3 , a 28-year-old black mother lost her parental rights to her four children – ages 1 to 9 – in a Minnesota courtroom, just outside the Twin Cities. Instead of opening presents with their mother, the children spent Christmas with a white family two hours away. Across the country, black parents – like this mother, whom we will call Jane R. to protect her privacy – are more likely to lose custody of their children than their white, Asian and Latino peers. While African Americans...

A California legislator is looking to amend the state’s college aid program for foster youth so it covers more students and loses fewer of them to academic problems. The Chafee Education and Training Voucher (ETV) is a federal-state match program that provides up to $5,000 per year to current or former foster youth to help with the costs of college. Introduced by State Sen. Jim Beall (D), Senate Bill 150 would shift the way ETV grant payments are distributed and set unique ground rules for...

California foster youth who remain in extended foster care after they turn 18 have more savings and are more educated than their peers who exit foster care at 18, according to a report released late last year by the University of Chicago-based research group Chapin Hall. In 2012, Assembly Bill 12 extended foster care from age 18 to age 21 for eligible California foster youth. University of Chicago professor Mark Courtney and his team found that each additional year that a foster youth was in...

Community Resilience Initiative is officially launching a new series of blog posts, building to our 2019 Beyond Paper Tigers conference on June 25th - 27th. We’ll cover a range of topics relevant to conference material, events, and inspirations. In addition to the regular conference, CRI is offering two training add-on options on Tuesday June 25, 2019 prior to the conference: Resilience-Based Trainings, Course One and Two . https://criresilient.org/beyon...re-conference-event/ “A group of...

The number of children and youth in foster care nationally rose for the fifth consecutive year, to 443,000, in federal fiscal year (FY) 2017. While still below the high of 567,000 in FY 1999 , the FY 2017 number is a 1.5 percent increase from FY 2016 and a 12 percent increase from FY 2012, when the number of children and youth in care began rising after more than 10 years of decline. At the state level, Child Trends’ analysis of the newly released Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting...

Social workers and social scientists have a duty to educate, clarify and raise consciousness when empirically unfounded conclusions that can be harmful to marginalized populations are promoted as fact. Some may read Naomi Schafer Riley’s blog for the American Enterprise Institute – No, The Child Welfare System Isn’t Racist – and deem it as just another piece written from a shortsighted perspective steeped in white privilege. Others, however, may become even more convinced that implicit bias...

I am humbly honored to have been featured in “ Slandering the Unborn ” (“A Woman’s Rights” editorial series, nytimes.com, Dec. 28). As one of the mothers who suffered during the 1990s crack epidemic, I want to thank The New York Times for its apology for how it demonized mothers like me and for its brilliant journalism. The apology is welcomed, and it gives me hope. I want to apologize as well — to society, the media, my family and my children. My child welfare case happened because of my...

A few days before Christmas , the federal government extended an invitation to state child welfare agencies that has the potential to completely transform the system. The invitation did not arrive with great publicity. Nor was it lengthy. Instead, it was announced in a few ordinary-looking sentences, in a very ordinary-looking email. But looks can be deceiving. The change announced by the federal government could lead to far fewer children being placed in foster care. It could expedite the...

The number of children and youth in foster care nationally rose for the fifth consecutive year, to 443,000, in federal fiscal year (FY) 2017. While still below the high of 567,000 in FY 1999 , the FY 2017 number is a 1.5 percent increase from FY 2016 and a 12 percent increase from FY 2012, when the number of children and youth in care began rising after more than 10 years of decline. At the state level, Child Trends’ analysis of the newly released Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting...

The Family First Prevention Services Act , which was signed into law as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act on February 9, 2018, offers an historic opportunity for child welfare leaders to re-imagine a child welfare system for the 21 st century. By placing an emphasis on prevention, early intervention and evidence-based practices for children and families, this groundbreaking legislation is requiring child welfare providers to rethink the policies, practices and systems of yesterday and...

Lori Lynn Adams was a mother of four living in poverty when Hurricane Floyd struck eastern North Carolina in 1999, flooding her trailer home and destroying her children’s pageant trophies and baby pictures. No stranger to money-making scams, Adams was convicted of filing a fraudulent disaster-relief claim with FEMA for a property she did not own. She also passed dozens of worthless checks to get by. Adams served two year-long prison stints for these “blue-collar white-collar crimes,” as she...