During the celebrations and hoopla that National Adoption Month brings, it can be easy to forget or dismiss the reality that adoption is not always the fairy tale ending to a child's life. A child brings with him or her a lifetime of pre-adoption history that is often very difficult and filled with trauma. Trauma [...]
Today's National Adoption Month post is aimed at foster youth. Although adoption is often presented as being about the best interests of the child, in reality the child or youth in foster care has very little say or input about their own permanency planning. Social workers, Guardian ad litems or CASA workers, judges and foster [...]
One of the ways adoptive families are supported are through the adoption tax credit. The adoption tax credit, first enacted in 1997 as a means to help offset the costs incurred to adopt children from foster care, the tax credit has since become available for all types of adoptions. However, the tax credit is soon [...]
On Monday, we highlighted some of the changes to the foster care statutes that were passed in the 2012 legislative session in Minnesota. This post will continue the focus on the foster care changes that were made. Many of the changes impact relatives. Changes to the law regarding relative search include: The court may now [...]
Significant changes were made to the foster care statutes in the last legislative session. This post will summarize part of the new legislation changes, and more will come in a future post. Several definitions were amended: "Child" was amended to include references to other statutes allowing youth to remain in foster care to age 21."Sibling" [...]
A story by Gail Rosenblum was published today in the StarTribune that is, unfortunately, not all that uncommon a scenario in the child welfare system these days. Tomorrow, the MN Court of Appeals will hear arguments on behalf of two families that want to raise two young girls that have been in foster care. We [...]
The National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth have focused their latest edition of The Exchange on permanency connections for youth. The issues focuses on helping youth who are homeless/runaway connect, build, and improve their permanent connections - that is, a stable living situation that these youth are not afraid of having to leave, with connected [...]
If you haven't had a chance to visit the Child Welfare Information Gateway website and subscribe to their news feeds and links, I would strongly recommend it. This is an invaluable resource for child welfare workers, supervisors, foster and adoptive parents, students, researchers and policymakers. Click here for the list of email subscriptions for which [...]