Today's Guest Blogger is Micheline Mutombo Floyd Harris. I extracted my article entitled Foster Youth Perceptions on Educational Well-Being from the Families in Society Journal. The article was published in 2015, and focuses on the educational disparities between foster care youth and youth in kinship care in the state of Vermont. The article highlights school [...]
Today's guest blogger is Matt Roesler. This article discusses a new bi-partisan U.S. Senate Bill S.2574 titled “Modernizing the Interstate Placement of Children in Foster Care Act”. The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Grassley, Gillibrand, Franken, Peters and Blumenthal. The bill aims to streamline placement of children into foster homes regardless of state lines. Currently [...]
In 2014, there were over 12,000 children who spent some time in out-of-home care in Minnesota, with a majority in family foster care. While most children in foster care return home, for others, reunification is not an option. As the agency policy specialist for the Permanency Unit of the Child Safety and Permanency Division at [...]
Today's guest blogger is Robin Johnson. The following is a summarization from a chapter titled “Family Reunification and Kinship Care,” retrieved from The Child Welfare Challenge: Policy, Practice, and Research; written by Peter J. Pecora, James K. Whittaker, Anthony N. Maluccio, Richard P. Barth, and Diane DePanfilis, with Robert D. Plotnick (2009). As the title [...]
This guest blog post was written by Clint Mack. In December 2012, Wilder Research completed a 3 year study on the effectiveness of the Kinship Navigator Project. This project was a collaboration of Minnesota Kinship Caregivers Association (MKCA) and its partners to help support successful caregiving outside the formal child welfare system. The project goals [...]
This guest blog post was written by Ryan Lewsander. Right now the Minnesota Supreme Court is tasked with making a tragic choice: who will they rip two children away from, their prospective adoptive family, or their biological grandmother and extended family in Georgia? The sad drama of this case is documented compellingly in Olivia LaVecchia's [...]
Hello again! Over the past few weeks we have been working to revamp our policy blog and plan for the upcoming legislative session here in Minnesota. Below you will find our child welfare legislative roundup for the month of September so far. For the remainder of September we will be highlighting the federal Child and [...]
The House passed the Health and Human Services Omnibus bill this week, SF760. Here are some of the key Child Welfare elements: Streamlining the Children and Community Services Act (CCSA), see line 30.21 Appropriation of $64.3 million for each biennium. For American Indian Child Welfare projects, see line 281.10 Subd. 14b. The amounts of the [...]