Blog

To read the Families Against Fentanyl article, please click here. A new analysis by Families Against Fentanyl has found that synthetic opioid (fentanyl) deaths among children 14 and under are increasing at a faster rate than any other age group in the United States, and more than tripled in just two years. FAF’s new issue brief, entitled “The Changing Faces of Fentanyl Deaths” is based on the non-profit organization’s analysis of data from the Center for Disease Control on synthetic opioid...

(l-r) Judge J. Corpening; Ben David, district attorney, New Hanover County; Chief Justice Paul Newby; Judge Andrew Heath, executive director, Administrative Office of the Courts of the Chief Justice's ACEs Informed Courts Task Force. David and Heath serve as Task Force co-chairs . “There is not any more important work going on in the State of North Carolina,” said Ben David, District Attorney for New Hanover County and co-chair of the Chief Justice’s ACEs-Informed Task Force . The Task force...

Jenna, Nate, Tim and Julien Riccio. PHOTO: COURTESY JENNA RICCIO To read more of Wendy Grossman Kantor and KC Baker 's article, please click here. Connecticut teachers and spouses Jenna and Tim Riccio say their "family is complete" after they adopted one of their students, 10-year-old Nate Innocent Riccio. "He taught me how to be a mother," Jenna — a 37-year-old reading teacher at Walsh Elementary School in Waterbury, Conn. — tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "He's a perfect example of how...

By Andy Newman, The New York Times, Photo by Nora Savosnick for the New York Times, November 22, 2022 New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services must protect children without overpolicing families. A report the agency commissioned says it often fails. For decades, Black families have complained that the city’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, is biased against them. It turns out that many of the agency’s own employees agree, according to a racial...

By Zach Mortice, Photo: Zach Mortice/Bloomberg CityLab, November 22, 2022 When the Ruth Ellis Center , a Detroit nonprofit that helps support LGBTQ youth, began a foster care program 10 years ago, they kept it very quiet; no press release, not even a sign on the door. “We were so afraid of how the community would react,” says Mark Erwin, Ruth Ellis’s co-executive director. Now things are different. In October, the nonprofit held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new permanent supportive...

By Joanna Lack & Bill Bettencourt, upEND, November 15, 2022 A key tenet of abolition is the recognition that carceral systems are not broken; no amount of reform can fix them. Yet time and again, family policing systems push forward the same reforms – a maddening demonstration that the more things change, the more they stay the same . The pandemic, and now endemic, have placed the family policing system under additional stress. Like always, children and families trapped in its carceral...

By Jeremy Loudenback, The Imprint, November 17, 2022 A sprawling report released today by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union describes civil rights issues within the child welfare system as a “national family separation crisis” that needs “immediate attention and action.” The analysis of federal and state data and dozens of interviews with parents draw attention to the harms of child welfare investigations and the disproportionate involvement of Black and Indigenous...

New!! 48-HOUR HISTORICAL TRAUMA SPECIALIST CERTIFICATION in collaboration with THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORICAL TRAUMA ASSOCIATION We are the only entity offering a comprehensive, 48-hour Historical Trauma Specialist Certification Program. The Program is broken into 6 levels and is built on a foundation of BIPOC cultures and neurobiology. It is taught from a multicultural perspective, injecting traditions and ideology from various cultures from around the world. In this inclusive study we rely...

By Tori DeAngelis, American Psychological Association, October 1, 2022 At least 204,000 U.S. children and teens have lost parents and other in-home caregivers to COVID -19—more than 1 in every 360 youth, according to COVID Collaborative , an interdisciplinary group of experts that is raising awareness and support for COVID -bereaved children. The growing number of children facing these tragedies highlights the pressing need for clinicians to become versed in helping them cope and ultimately...

Every child has a right to a life free from harm within a community that supports them and their family to thrive. But does every child get to experience these rights? https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/re-imagining-childrens-rights-through-a-family-centred-lens-tickets-465184939677 Join Starlings Community and their partners at Family Advocacy Support Centre , as they recognize National Child Day in a special webinar that will inspire a society that supports children to experience their rights...

By Roxanna Asgarian, Photo by Shuran Huang, The Texas Tribune, November 10, 2022 Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, an anesthesiologist and a stay-at-home dad, already had two biological children when they decided to foster a child. “God started to speak to our hearts about opening our home for more,” Jennifer explained in a now-defunct blog. The Evangelical Christian couple in Fort Worth began caring for a 10-month-old boy in 2016, and the next year, decided they wanted to adopt him. But the boy...

Since 2001 the Children’s Bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has conducted periodic reviews of state child welfare systems. These reviews monitor compliance with federal child welfare requirements and determine how children and families experience being served by the child welfare system. Three rounds of these “Child and Family Service Reviews” or CFSRs have been conducted, and the fourth round (CFSR-4) is underway. ( See the most recent reports .) Ensuring that child...