CASCW at the Capitol

Siblings in Minnesota’s child welfare system

By Heidi Ombisa Skallet|2016-12-01T19:33:15-06:00July 31st, 2012|Categories: CASCW at the Capitol|

The 2012 legislative session concluded with several changes to Minnesota child welfare policy. This has been covered extensively in past blog posts, but I thought the topic of sibling placement and separation was important to highlight. New statutory language related to siblings involved in child welfare Overall, the new statutory language indicates that keeping siblings [...]

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Summer Institute in American Indian Child Welfare

By Megan Carriveau|2016-12-01T19:33:15-06:00July 30th, 2012|Categories: CASCW at the Capitol|

For the last five years, our Duluth colleagues at the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare have hosted a Summer Institute for tribal child welfare workers and administrators (see our post from last year). The theme of the Summer Institute this year was "Healing our Communities, Healing Ourselves." As a student attendee this year, [...]

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Curious about what’s new in foster care in Minnesota?

By Heidi Ombisa Skallet|2016-12-01T19:33:15-06:00July 25th, 2012|Categories: CASCW at the Capitol|

Over the past few months we've highlighted some of the changes in Minnesota's foster care policies resulting from the 2012 legislative session. Here are some of our posts on the topic: New foster care legislation in Minnesota, part 2(Stability, Permanency, & Adoption Blog, July 18, 2012)Keywords: relative search, definition of family to a child, paternal [...]

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Adapting child welfare policy to accommodate the changing face of ‘family’ in the U.S.

By Heidi Ombisa Skallet|2016-12-01T19:33:15-06:00July 23rd, 2012|Categories: CASCW at the Capitol|

A new report authored by Movement Advancement Project, Family Equality Council, and Center for American Progress discusses how legal recognition of LGBT parents is important for their children's social, emotional, and physical well-being. Specifically, this report, entitled Securing Legal Ties for Children Living in LGBT Families, focuses on how marriage and parenting laws impact children [...]

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Proposal to reform the Indian Child Welfare Act

By Heidi Ombisa Skallet|2016-12-01T19:33:15-06:00July 13th, 2012|Categories: CASCW at the Capitol|

Photo from October 2011 of 'Baby Veronica,' provided by Melanie Capobianco, the woman who was in the process of adopting her. AP Photo/NewsOK It is important that I provide some background to this post prior to delving into the issue. A toddler named Veronica is at the center of this story. This is what I've [...]

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A policy perspective on addressing the mental health needs of child abuse hotline workers

By Heidi Ombisa Skallet|2016-12-01T19:33:15-06:00July 10th, 2012|Categories: CASCW at the Capitol|

An article highlighted in a recent Child Welfare in the News listing from Child Welfare Information Gateway discussed issues with Illinois' child maltreatment reporting hotline: Child abuse hotline callers must leave messages. The article states that "[m]ore than 60 percent of calls to Illinois' child abuse hot line...are answered by a message service instead of [...]

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Full Family Foster Care

By Megan Carriveau|2016-12-01T19:33:15-06:00July 6th, 2012|Categories: CASCW at the Capitol|

Recently at CASCW's supportive housing training, the topic of full family (FF) foster care was brought up. This sparked my curiosity regarding current research on the effectiveness of FF foster care, which is also referred to as whole family foster care. In doing a brief search of the literature, it became apparent that the most [...]

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The importance of organized data & quality research in informing child welfare policy

By Heidi Ombisa Skallet|2016-12-01T19:33:16-06:00July 3rd, 2012|Categories: CASCW at the Capitol|

Earlier today in our Stability, Permanency & Adoption (SPA) blog, JaeRan blogged about data in the child welfare system as being "unorganized, uncentralized, and differ[ing] greatly depending on who is managing the data." She concluded with an explanation of how having better and shared data can help us better answer our questions about the wellbeing [...]

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CASCW at the Capitol

July 2012