On March 4, President Obama released his budget for fiscal year 2015. In sum, the budget allocates $77.1 billion to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is $0.8 billion less than the 2014 enacted level. Child welfare-related highlights of the presidential budget are listed below. Medicaid Demonstration Project for Youth in [...]
In this Field Notes post, Shavon writes about her field placement working with youth at Family Alternatives, a local foster care and adoption agency. I am a IV-E Child Welfare scholar in the MSW program at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work, and I am completing my first field placement at Family Alternatives. Family [...]
This blog post was written by Joan Riebel, LICSW, Executive Director of Family Alternatives in Minnesota. Family Alternatives is a licensed foster care and adoption agency. Andrea Brubaker's blog post on San Pasqual Academy caused me to share our experiences as well. For any child, being removed from her family is a traumatic experience, regardless [...]
The American Academy of Pediatrics as part of their Healthy Children series, has created a brochure for parents who have or are considering adopting a child internationally. Their brochure, "A Healthy Beginning" offers advice on things to consider prior to bringing the child to the U.S., what to expect in the first medical visit, a [...]
We are back to our regular posting. The lack of posting on our Stability, Permanency and Adoption (SPA) blog the last two weeks was a result of our blog writer's trip to Russia to attend the 3rd Russian American Child Welfare Forum. To see what CASCW was doing there, here is a link to the [...]
Minnesota Statute 257.0725 requires the Department of Human Services to make available annually a report on child maltreatment and children in out-of-home placement. This report for the year 2012 is now available online. Federal Safety Measures In terms of Federal Safety Measures, Minnesota did better than the national standard for: absence of repeat maltreatmenttime to [...]
Ra'Shede Hageman, defensive tackle for the University of Minnesota Gophers football team, knows about strength and resilience - and not just on the football field. After being removed from his mother, Ra'Shede and his brother were placed in foster care. After twelve foster homes, Ra'Shede had a natural distrust for people. [Photo by Jerry Holt] [...]
In our last blog post we highlighted a film about a family, the Wilson's, and the director's commentary about the cycle of violence, poverty, drugs and interaction with the child welfare system intergenerationally and how difficult it is to break that cycle. Today we'd like to let you know about some of the other stories [...]
