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As foster care removals plummet, where’s the promised help for families?

Child Welfare Monitor

Year after year, states and the federal government continue to release annual data showing a decline in the number of children in foster care, congratulating themselves on keeping families together. However, FFPSA has not made massive federal resources available for such services. percent over the previous year 15.6

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Backers of a bill that tries to legitimize hidden foster care in Virginia say it creates guardrails. On the contrary; it sends the rights of children and families careening off a cliff.

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

This process, known as kinship foster care, is usually the least harmful form of foster care. But it’s still foster care. Let me repeat that: Kinship care is foster care. Kinship care is foster care. Kinship care is foster care. Easier than what?

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Seven children and all she needed was a van: large families and the blindness of the child welfare establishment

Child Welfare Monitor

Reed explained the Indiana Family Preservation Services (IFPS) model requires that “concrete support be provided to families when not doing so would result in children having to come into foster care.” There is something strange about this example.

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The Associations between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Social Services Use among Head Start-Eligible Low-Income Families

Social Work Blog

Social services use is a critical aspect in the field, and the current study seeks to better understand the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and social services use. Do family characteristics have any association with parental social services use?

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Is this family police agency leader really bragging about misleading the public?

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

Last week, Virginia’s Director of Social Services, Danny Avula, gave a presentation to the state Commission on Youth. The upside of that is that it keeps our overall numbers of kids in formal foster care low,” Avula said. There’s a term for these kinds of placements – “hidden foster care” (of course).

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The fundamental misconception at the heart of the Family First Act

Child Welfare Monitor

Sometime in the early years of the current century, a group of powerful advocates who thought that too many children were being placed in foster care came up with a proposal for change that they called “child welfare finance reform.” … So under Family First, we created new federal funding for those services.

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The good news: A public radio station in Kansas City talked to the right people for a "child welfare" story. The bad news: They still missed the point

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog

The premise is that because of the “shortage,” children can’t see their parents while in foster care, and families don’t get the guidance they need to jump through all the hoops they must surmount to prove themselves worthy of getting their children back. Anybody see the problem here yet? Curts get an apartment.