This article provides an overview of the funding streams that finance the U.S. child welfare system, reviews the federal legislation since 1970 that has led to the current funding structure, and ends with a discussion of how the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 has the potential to create better outcomes for children and families by promoting prevention activities and program support with strong evidence of success.

This article considers how U.S. child welfare agencies can best leverage the opportunities presented by the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 while addressing potential barriers posed by the paucity of evidence-supported prevention programs and avoiding the unintended consequences of limiting reimbursement to only selective prevention services that meet rigorous evidence standards of effectiveness.

The author of this article analyzes young people’s experiences in foster care from a life course perspective, accounting for when foster care happens, how long it lasts, and what happens when foster care placements end.

This commentary challenges the stereotypes created by hyper-attention to the struggles of child welfare-affected parents of color (CW-PaoC) and situates them, and their families, within the broader context of the American appetite for family separation, wherein specific types of families are targeted for scrutiny, intervention and regulation.

This research examines the intersection of cross-cultural practice and child maltreatment investigations.

This study provides an exploration of foster child stress and behavioral health during and after Hurricane Irma.

This article combines insights from Beck’s individualization theory and Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory to enhance understandings of why youth transitioning out of the child welfare system experience risk of poor outcomes.

The authors of this study used two independent methods to estimate prevalence of sex trafficking victimization among with prior maltreatment and foster care placements in one state in the U.S.

Child Maltreatment 2021 is the latest edition of the annual Child Maltreatment report series. States provide the data for this report via the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). NCANDS was established as a voluntary, national data collection and analysis program to make available state child abuse and neglect information.

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This episode focuses on the current reality of reunification across the public child welfare system. Listeners will hear a conversation among child welfare professionals, members of the American Bar Association (ABA) Center on Children and the Law(opens in new window), the Children’s Bureau, and an alumnus of foster care.