Earlier this school year, 6-year-old Kaia was handcuffed, arrested, and taken to a juvenile detention center where she was charged with battery for having a tantrum in her first grade class. How Kaia was treated is appalling, and yet the criminalization of our children is all too common: A child is arrested every 39 seconds in America and about 76,000 children are placed in the adult criminal justice system annually.
Read MoreCoordination and partnership between school systems and child welfare systems is essential. Teachers, who in most states are mandatory reporters, often serve as the frontline when it comes to identifying children in their classrooms who might be suffering from abuse or neglect and filing reports with their local child welfare agencies. As a result, educators and other school staff make up the largest percentage of abuse and neglect reports, and protect countless children every year by. But recently we’ve seen several troubling cases of schools misusing—and thus endangering—this important relationship.
Read MoreThe government’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program imperils our children’s—and nation’s—future success.
Read MoreIn February 2018, after many years of attempts, the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 was signed into law. Implemented properly, this landmark law has the potential to change the face of child welfare as we know it.
Read MoreIn more good news and another victory for immigrant children, a federal judge upheld a landmark 1997 court settlement governing the standards of care for immigrant children in U.S. custody, rejecting the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle protections for immigrant children and supplant them with regulations that would have had a devastating impact on children’s health, education and general welfare.
Read MoreWhen the Department of Homeland Security notified Congress one week after the emergency hearing that it would reverse its misguided revocation of medical deferred action, it was, as Rep. Jamie Raskin, said, “[A] moment of good news.” That’s a moment of good news achieved by immigrant families, advocates and Congressional intervention. Here’s to many good moments to come.
Read MoreThis week, CDF released Protect Children, Not Guns 2019, a report that analyzes the latest fatal and nonfatal gun injury data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for children and teens.
Read MoreTennessee released a plan last Tuesday to fundamentally restructure its Medicaid program, known as TennCare. If the proposal were to be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the state would become the first in the country to convert Medicaid to a block grant and this would set a dangerous precedent for other states to follow suit.
Read MoreDuring a visit to California earlier this week, President Trump made it clear who he believes to be the true victims of the homelessness crisis: luxury real estate owners.
Read MoreAs many as one third of the roughly 20,000 youth who age out of foster care each year experience homelessness in the years after emancipation despite being eligible for a special category of housing vouchers, but a new bill aims to fix that.
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