Yesterday I attended the 2014 Children and Youth Issues Briefing at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in St. Paul, MN. This briefing is held annually prior to the start of the Minnesota legislative session to discuss emerging legislative issues and initiatives that will impact children and youth in Minnesota. The event was well attended (as usual) [...]
This post is written by the Stability, Permanency, and Adoption MSW Intern, Andrea Brubaker, with additional content from editor Heidi Ombisa Skallet. Yesterday I provided some background information on adoption assistance and the Adoption and Safe Families Act. As a follow up, I will now lay out two bills about adoption incentives—The Promoting Adoption and [...]
This post is written by the Stability, Permanency, and Adoption MSW Intern, Andrea Brubaker. This past September, Senator Dave Camp (R-MI) introduced the Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act. The bill would certify the continued funding for the Adoption Incentives program, prioritize increasing adoption rates, and create a legal guardianship [...]
Policymakers in Minnesota have increasingly been focusing on policies that positively impact young children and promote overall child well-being. Not only did the House of Representatives create a committee devoted to early childhood and youth development policy in 2013, but both the education and health and human services omnibus bills included several large provisions that [...]
Here are a few scattered notes from a seminar entitled, “The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: Recovering Humanity; Repairing Generations,” held Saturday, October 5th, at the Law School at the University of Minnesota. What drew my attention was not only the subject, “transmission of trauma,” a child welfare issue of central importance, but also the auspices [...]
This post is written by the Stability, Permanency, and Adoption MSW Intern, Andrea Brubaker. Scientific evidence shows the detrimental impact of institutionalized care on brain development in children. While many governments in other countries want to place children in permanent homes they often don't have the resources to do so. As a result, many children [...]
This blog post was written by Joan Riebel, LICSW, Executive Director of Family Alternatives in Minnesota. Family Alternatives is a licensed foster care and adoption agency. Andrea Brubaker's blog post on San Pasqual Academy caused me to share our experiences as well. For any child, being removed from her family is a traumatic experience, regardless [...]
This post is written by the Stability, Permanency, and Adoption MSW Intern, Andrea Brubaker. As an alternative design to placing children in foster care in permanent families, the non-profit group home San Pasqual Academy near San Diego, CA offers a place for youth in foster care to live, attend high school, learn job skills, and [...]
