On Monday, March 11, the House introduced its version of the omnibus health and human services finance budget bill, H.F. 1233; the Senate version, S.F. 1034, had been introduced March 4. As this is a budget year, this bill will be a main focus of our blogging, if not the main focus. Next week I [...]
Amanda at the Declassified Adoptee, a popular adoption blog, wrote a terrific post called "5 Things Every Adoptee Needs To Hear From Absolutely Everyone." Each adoptee will have a different experience with adoption and a unique story. People often want to know how they can be sensitive to someone's story, particularly when it's something that [...]
New Legislation Proposed This legislative session has seen mental health, particularly children's mental health, emerge as a pressing issue. Another bill currently being debated would change the ways in which Minnesota deals with the issue of maternal depression and provides for the care of new and expectant mothers and their babies. This bill, HF1047/SF582, would [...]
Adoptive Families Magazine online featured an article in their Circle forum by Jane Brown, an adoptive parent well known for her workshops for adoptive families, on why race matters for a transracially adopted child. In many ways the article was actually a lesson in why race matters for transracial adoptive parents. There are many adoptive [...]
Studies have found that children with disabilities experience a higher rate of maltreatment than children without disabilities, and that they are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system. For example, a study in 2000 by Sullivan and Knutsen showed that youth with disabilities were 3.4 times more likely to be maltreated. Last year, CASCW released [...]
Legislation to close the "doughnut hole" for adopted individuals born between 1964-1996, the years of closed adoptions in Ohio, is currently in committee. Legislation opening access to original birth certificates (OBC) in 1996 was not retroactively given to adoptees born in these years. The Toledo Free Press reported in February that opposition to access regarding [...]
In the 2011 legislative special session, the legislature passed a Safe Harbor law that began addressing how sexually exploited youth are viewed in the eyes of the law in Minnesota. Under this law, sexually exploited youth under age 18 are viewed as victims of crime (children in need of protection) rather than juvenile delinquents, at [...]
A new report by the British Association of Adoption and Fostering on children adopted by same-sex partners found that these children have same outcomes as children adopted by heterosexual parents. "Gay, Lesbian and Heterosexual Adoptive Families: Family relationships, child adjustment and adopters' experiences" studied130 families, 40 2-parent lesbian mother-headed households, 41 2-parent gay father-headed household [...]