Two weeks ago the City Limits newspaper published a series by Rachel Blustain on what she termed, "broken adoptions" - that is, adoption dissolutions. Photo by Marc Fader for City Limits. The numbers of how many adoptions fail is a tough statistic to obtain, in part because many adoption dissolutions occur years afer an adoption [...]
An interesting story came out earlier in the week about using social media sites such as Facebook to connect foster youth with relatives. We typically hear stories about the problems associated with social media use among foster youth. In this story however, it is not a foster youth - or a biological parent - that [...]
Last week a local news organization, The City Pages, published a feature article about a contested adoption case that the Minnesota Supreme Court is reviewing. As with many of these cases, this story highlights systems issues in child welfare, the tension between biological family and foster families, racial differences, interjurisdictional placements between states and the [...]
The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW) will graduate its first cohort of 39 adoption-competent mental health and child welfare workers through CASCW's Permanency and Adoption Competency Certificate (PACC) program today. The graduation celebration will take place from 4 PM to 6 PM in the Minnesota Commons Room at the University of Minnesota [...]
Last Friday it was announced that the Supreme Court would hear the case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, also known as the Baby Veronica case. This highly contested and controversial case may be a watershed moment in determining the strength of the Indian Child Welfare Act. For a detailed summary of the case from [...]
Representative Karen Bass (D-CA) along with bipartisan support from fellow members of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth Reps. Tom Marino (R-PA), Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) and Jim McDermott (D-WA) saw their bill aimed at improving educational outcomes of youth in foster care pass both the House and Senate on January 1, 3013. The members of [...]
The Adoption Tax Credit was included in the last-minute legislation passed to prevent the "fiscal cliff" but it falls short of what many had hoped for. The tax credit was initially conceived to help support foster care adoptions. Many families who adopt from foster care are relatives, foster parents or families of modest financial means [...]
To the distress and dismay of many Americans, it was announced at the end of December that Russian president Vladamir Putin signed a law banning international adoptions to the U.S. This act is being considered retaliation for the Magnitsky Act passed by U.S. Congress in response to Russia's human rights violations. [Graphic from the New [...]