Displaying 1 - 10 of 92
This advocacy brief provides an overview of promising practices and lessons learned to end child immigration detention in the U.S. and sets out a range of policy actions needed to scale up efforts to end this form of violence.
This report presents findings from qualitative interviews conducted with English-speaking Latino individuals from the United States who experienced parental deportation between the ages of 6 and 17 years old. They offer suggestions about what they needed following their loss as a child. By understanding what children need in these moments of crisis, practitioners, providers, and others are better prepared to address this form of complex childhood adversity.
Abstract
Experiencing parental deportation during childhood is associated with higher rates of mental health and…
For centuries, Indigenous children were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools or placed in adoptive non-Indigenous families. Hundreds of thousands of American Indian, Alaska Native, Canadian First Nations, Native Hawaiian, and Aboriginal children in Australia were forced to attend Catholic mission schools, where many experienced hunger, violence, forced labor, and sexual abuse. Indigenous parents and children who resisted child-family separation were harshly punished. The goal of forcible removals was to assimilate Indigenous children into Western society, erasing…
The origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States includes a dependency on slave labor and sales to sustain itself and build its institutions. In 1838, a group of America’s most prominent Catholic priests, the Society of Jesuits, sold 272 enslaved people to save Georgetown University, their largest mission project and the first Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States. The sale included the separation of children from parents, a common feature of the slave trade. In the…
Abstract
Background
For children who are not reunified with their biological family members, the child welfare system promotes legal permanence through adoption or guardianship. The intent of adoption and guardianship is a safe home where…
This presentation is by the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance and their colleagues regarding a project they have been working on in partnership with parents to identify alternatives to CPS investigations. Using a participatory action research approach, three foundations (Annie E. Casey, Stand Together, and Aviv Foundation) supported a project to engage with parents as planners, recruiters, and interviewers to reach out to 100 parents across the U.S. who have experienced an initial visit from their local child welfare system.
Ten parents interviewed 100 parents to help better understand their…
“If I Wasn’t Poor, I Wouldn’t Be Unfit”: The Family Separation Crisis in the US Child Welfare System
This report examines removals of children and termination of parental rights by state child welfare systems, focusing primarily on four states: California, New York, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. The number of children removed from their families, the too-often unjust circumstances of removal, and the disproportionate effects on Black and Indigenous families, and those living in poverty, make this a national family separation crisis warranting immediate attention and action. The report finds that child welfare systems too often respond to circumstances of poverty with punishment.
Parents…
Background
Mentoring, specifically peer mentoring, emerged in the child welfare setting in the early 2000s. Peer parent programs provide child welfare involved families a unique opportunity to connect with parents that have successfully navigated the child welfare system and who share similar lived experiences. No …
Research pertaining to effective foster care reunification strategies is well established. However, a gap exists in the literature surrounding social services for rural families post-reunification due to a lack of service provision for families following reunification. Reunified families often need additional support to prevent future reentry into foster care. Caseworkers work closely with families, offering a unique perspective as to what social services are most effective at preventing reentry into foster care.
Due to recruitment constraints in during the COVID-19 pandemic, a pilot study…
This bulletin outlines the importance of disaster planning in child welfare and discusses how caseworkers, with the help of their supervisors, can prepare themselves and the children, youth, and families on their caseloads for emergencies. It also provides direction for child welfare staff on response and recovery strategies they can use should disasters occur in their communities.