This chapter focuses on the U.S. as the nation with the largest number of adoptions. Although adoptions represent a small portion of family growth, from a demographer’s point of view they are worth investigating.

This article from the New York Times reviews how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting surrogacy, foster care, and adoption in the United States.

This article from ABC News describes the impacts the COVID-19 crisis has had on families in the US whose children are in foster care, including the halting of family reunifications.

"In this time of profound uncertainty, child welfare systems face unprecedented challenges to ensuring safety, well-being, and permanency for young people," says this joint statement.

IPAN is seeking a person to work one day a week for the next six months as the administrator of IPAN.

In this piece for the Chronicle of Social Change, Fred Wulczyn - a senior research fellow at Chapin Hall and the director of its Center for State Child Welfare Data - discusses the potential long-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the U.S. child welfare system.

Child protection experts are worried that school closures and self-isolation efforts in place to hamper the spread of the coronavirus in the US will put children at greater risk for abuse and violence, according to this article from ABC News.

During a teleconferenced hearing, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles said she wants unaccompanied and separated immigrant children to be moved out of government-contracted facilities and to ensure they are released to suitable sponsors in an orderly fashion and aren’t put in danger, according to this article from the Associated Press.

"Families and children involved with the child welfare system have begun to experience disruptions," says this article from Vox. "Courts are closing, cases are delayed, and in-person contact with social workers is severely limited. As a result, vulnerable children who are already experiencing great instability are being further destabilized."

Sharing Ideas that Strengthen Families and Engage Communities to Promote Child Well-Being will bring together policy, research, and practice professionals from child- and family-serving systems in the United States and other countries, as well as youth, caregivers, and community partners, to share and advance more effective family supports and systems of care for children and families in the 21st century.