Today's guest blogger is Wijit Xiong The article I found was called, What’s the Point of Adopting a 17-year-old Kid? This article was written by Jessica Good on November 4, 2015 and was published by adoption.com. The author started out by telling her own story of how she thought back on the hardship that she had [...]
The House and Senate introduced their 2015-2016 Health and Human Services (HHS) Omnibus Bills that will establish the HHS budget for the next two years: SF 825 and HF 850. The bill covers everything from child protection to health care to food services. This post will highlight the proposed policy changes to past child welfare [...]
Today's guest blogger is Jill Mehrkens. Photo: David Joles for the Star Tribune The article “A Minnesota success: Adoption of teens is rising” was written by Jeremy Olson in the Star Tribune on December 23, 2012. This topic was related to a personal story of a 15 year old girl (Brianna) that was [...]
As of last Thursday, August 1 2013, the Family Reunification Act went into effect. This law allows foster youth 15 and older who were never adopted to have the option to reunite with their birth parents. The law stipulates that the birth parents must be able to demonstrate that they have resolved or addressed the [...]
This guest blog post was written by Azeb Gebretsadik. [Photo of County Attorney John Choi by Sasha Aslanian for MPR] "The Family Reunification Act could restore parental rights in some lost custody cases" by, Sasha Aslanian Minnesota Public Radio. The article discussed about how the Act would allow the option of reversing TPR, which before [...]
This guest blog post, also about the Family Reunification Act, was written by Colleen Doescher-Train. On February 13th, 2013 five Minnesota State Senators introduced S.F.422; appropriately nicknames the Family Reunification Act of 2013. The Family Reunification Act, as currently written would allow parents who had their parental rights terminated at least 36 months ago to [...]
Today's guest post was written by Kris LaFleur. What to do with children reaching the age of majority has been an ageless problem since the inception of the foster care system. Many youth are considered difficult to place; older children, sibling groups, African American and American Indian children. These lost children are forced to leave, [...]
Because the Minnesota legislative session will begin in a couple of weeks, I'd like to focus this blog post on a Minnesota-specific bill related to child welfare. Last April, the Minnesota House (HF 0749) and Senate (SF 1339) introduced a bill called the Family Reunification Act of 2011. The bill would reestablish legal rights between [...]