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Religions worldwide emphasize the sanctity of the family and advocate strongly for children’s access to essential needs like food, health, shelter, education, and community support. These principles establish faith communities as leading advocates for children’s well-being around the world.
On closer examination, however, religious communities are at times divided internally and from one another on issues related to the rights of and responsibilities toward children and the dynamic interplay between parents and states in ensuring their protection and care. Some members of faith communities…
In this webinar, community providers discussed the challenges they face in providing responsive services, including building evidence and operating in the context of restrictive “evidence-based” standards, as well as recommendations for actions state and federal policymakers can take to ensure all families have the support they need through expanding access and availability of programs that are developed by and for communities of color.
Panelists and Moderator:
- Alexandra Citrin, Senior Associate, Center for the Study of Social Policy (Moderator)
- Esi Hutchful,…
Bethan Carter, a research associate at Cardiff University, discusses the ReThink Project; a project run in collaboration with Adoption UK and Coram Voice to investigate what processes are linked to mental health and wellbeing of care-experienced young people and how they manage at two key transitions in life.
Find out more about the conference series 'On the Journey: Navigating Mental Health' here: https://www.exchangewales.org/on-the-journey-navigating-mental-health/
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…
In the U.S., youth in foster care are nearly twice as likely as war veterans to suffer from PTSD. Placed in foster care at just 11 months old, 2023 Audacious Project grantee Sixto Cancel experienced the faults of the system firsthand. Now, he's the founder of Think of Us, an organization working to reform child welfare by centering kinship care, or placing a child with an extended family member or a familiar adult. Learn more about his plan to help thousands of kids searching for a loving home with one simple, systemic switch.
In February 2023, the New York Times published “Alone and Exploited,” an article on the experiences of newly-arrived migrant children in the United States who are often exploited for their work in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws. Having crossed the U.S. southern border unaccompanied, many of these young people are under pressure to earn money to support their families back home, pay rent and living expenses, as well as debts to smugglers, while also…
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…
Globally, during the COVID-19 pandemic there have been disruptions to initiatives, services, and programmes that promote and protect nurturing care for young children. While necessary to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2, strategies such as complete or partial lockdown, physical distancing measures, and school and childcare closures, have made it increasingly difficult to reach children and caregivers. At the same time, the social and economic ramifications of the pandemic have put families in even greater need of parenting and family support. In response to the COVID-19 crisis, many…
Creating the conditions in which families and communities can thrive means keeping families together and reimagining what support looks like, how harm and accountability are understood and addressed, and who should be leading the way forward.
Black communities, communities of color, and those living in poverty are overrepresented in many systems, including the foster system, that claim to support and protect.
This webinar, the fourth in the Shriver Center's Spotlight on the Foster System series, focused on intersections between the healthcare and foster systems. Watch a…