Roughly 1 in 100 children in the U.S. have their parents’ rights terminated by age 18, according to an expanded 2019 analysis by Cornell and Rutgers Universities, and Black, Brown and Indigenous families, as well as low-income families, disproportionately lose these rights.
A new House bill introduced in November aims to build in better protections for different marginalized groups in the system, as well as give more time for parents to get their kids back in their care. While some advocates want to remove the timeline altogether, the bill seeks to expand it to at least relieve some of that pressure, they said.