Beginning this month, Washington officials have new authority to root out abuse and neglect of children housed in private boarding schools, residential treatment centers and the state’s school for the deaf. Senate Bill 5515 tasks the Department of Children, Youth and Families with investigating allegations and approving licenses for facilities that had previously been beyond the scope of the child welfare agency. 

Since 2021, migrant children have been traveling alone to the United States in record numbers: Nearly 400,000 children have crossed the southern border by themselves, most of them fleeing extreme poverty.

Survivors of institutions run by Catholic diocese recall litany of sexual abuse as bankruptcy process keeps documents hidden

Native American mothers whose children were separated from them – either through child removal for assimilation into residential boarding schools or through coerced adoption – experience the kind of grief no parent should ever feel. Yet theirs is a loss that is ongoing, with no sense of meaning or closure.

The proposed plan ‘will harm vulnerable children who need loving homes and set a precedent that undermines everyone’s parental rights,’ an ethicist warns.

Former President Donald Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and restrict legal immigration if elected to a second term in office.

Relatives and family friends who step up when struggling parents can’t care for their children play an essential role in keeping countless kids out of foster care. In New York, hundreds of these caregivers receive monthly financial payments that amount to thousands of dollars a year, through the state’s Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program (KinGAP). But here and across the nation, the money is still tight, and not everyone who takes in foster children qualifies. 

The Biden administration announced a mix of final and proposed rules on child welfare policy today that cover the placement of foster youth with relatives, legal representation for parents and children involved with the system, and the placement of LGBTQI+ youth in foster care. 

Given the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), it is crucial to emphasize the importance of protecting and strengthening ICWA in light of the disproportionate representation of Native American children in the foster care system.

Once considered a last resort reserved for parents who abandon their children, the involuntary and permanent termination of parental rights now hangs over every mother and father accused of any form of abuse or neglect — including allegations of nonviolent behavior like drug use or truancy.