Chronicle Of Social Change Archive

Author Katherine Paterson’s life was profoundly impacted when she became a foster parent. In fact, the influence of fostering was so intense that one of her first books, The Great Gilly Hopkins, was written around the experience.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the state of Kentucky in a case about kinship care that may have long-term impact across the United States. The high court passed on the agency’s appeal …

The jury is decidedly out on the academic track record of Head Start, the education-oriented pre-school program for low-income families invented in the 1960s and federally proliferated in the early 1980s. Critics will point to large impact studies that show …

As we reported last week, the Justice Department’s Inspector General exposed the fact that, from 2013 to 2016, the agency’s juvenile justice division – the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) – was willfully ignoring compliance standards on disproportionate …

The Chronicle of Social Change is highlighting each of the policy recommendations made this summer by the participants of the Foster Youth Internship Program (FYI), a group of 12 former foster youths who have completed congressional internships. The program is overseen …

Last week, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a bill making the leader of the state’s expanded child welfare system a member of his cabinet. Bill 1661 creates the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), a new agency focused on …

The Every Student Succeeds Act gave school systems across the country until December 2016 to  transport foster youth to school. Nine months later, implementation is wanting. For the roughly 270,000 school-aged children living in America’s foster care system, educational success …