Adoption Archive
President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget proposal includes a slate of deep cuts and eliminations of programs aimed at serving youth and families, but includes a hefty increase in the amount spent on an entitlement for foster care and adoption assistance. …
May is Foster Care Month, and it is a great time to sing the praises of the many wonderful foster parents who are changing children’s lives every day. As a social worker in Washington, D.C.’s child welfare system until a …
In reading Daniel Heimpel’s article “Responding to foster kids like Alex, L.A. County acts to protect educational stability,” it occurred to me that Los Angeles County is focused on a poorer solution than the one that ultimately worked for Alex. …
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) came about because the federal government and states had a long history of treating Native American* parents as unfit just by their being Indian.
Prolonged temporary care, whether unintended or not, amounts to child abuse. Child protection agencies have the power to radically reduce time in foster care, but too often back off, waiting to see how the birth parents do. Meanwhile, as the child remains …
When Sonya Fultz adopted her son Marty from Guatemala in 2004, she set to work securing his re-adoption in her Ohio county, getting his Social Security card and ensuring his American citizenship. Fultz adopted under an IR-4 Visa because she …
Progress toward a lifetime commitment to permanence has stagnated over the past decade at just under three-fourths of those children and youth in care. The reunification rate has slipped from 53 percent to 51 percent. Adoptions have stayed the same …
A new report from the National Council for Adoption highlights American adoption trends, including for infant adoptions, intercountry adoptions and adoptions from foster care. The report, Adoption: By the Numbers, covers findings from the seventh edition of the National Adoption …
Last month I wrote a column called “Why the ‘Foster-Care-at-All-Costs’ Crowd Will Never Surrender Their Horror Stories.” I offered those wedded to a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare a deal: a mutual moratorium on the use of horror stories to …
On November 30, 2015, something made Mindy Knapp very angry at her adopted daughters, Malayia, aged 17, and her 14-year-old sister. Knapp told the girls’ 16-year-old brother to discipline them. So he made Malayia and her sister run up and down …
