A national for-profit foster agency in the US has come under recent scrutiny due to investigations revealing alleged “missteps” that are linked to the abuse, maltreatment, and deaths of children served by the agency.

In this blog piece from the Huffington Post, Michael Piraino makes his case for the need for nurturing family-based care as a way to enhance the wellbeing of children in the child welfare system in the United States, citing some recent research.

This article from the Pacific Standard discusses a new bill passed by the state legislature of Colorado in the United States. According to the article, the bill is designed to combat the “foster care to prostitution pipeline.”

In this article, the author addresses the topic of child neglect, or allegations thereof, as it relates to children and families in the Child Welfare System in the United States.

The present study employed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore the experiences and meaning of motherhood among teen mothers in foster care in the United States.

In this opinion piece from the Huffington Post, Frank Ligtvoet writes about the cost of international adoption and how those resources might be better directed to keeping families together. The piece is particularly focused on the practice of intercountry adoption amongst the U.S. Christian community.

In this comment, published in the Houston Law Review, the author, Destinee Roman describes and assesses the practice of “re-homing” adopted children.

A new study from the Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law presents finds that the United States federal government is not adequately enforcing child welfare laws and standards and that individual states are not adequately complying with these laws, says the article.

The child welfare system was created to care for abused and neglected children. But too often, teenagers are landing in the system because they simply aren’t getting along with their parents. This paper traces Casey’s efforts to learn from communities that are preventing teens from landing in the system by helping families while the teen remains at home. A survey of the states, interviews with experts, secondary research and visits to several communities show common elements of successful programs.The paper presents information on related laws and policies, funding sources and programs for families while including the infrastructure and services needed to support such initiatives.

This toolkit, originally published in September 2010 and updated in February 2015, serves as a resource for social workers in the US who are working with immigrant families within the child welfare system.