Number of Unaccompanied Alien Children Escalates Dramatically: This New York Times article reviews the huge increase in unaccompanied minors entering the United States. Since October 1, 2013 over 47,000 children traveling without parents had been caught crossing the southwest border of the U.S. -- a 92 percent increase over the same period in 2013. Most are coming from three Central American countries: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. More than 33,000 minors were apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
The HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) administers the Unaccompanied Alien Children program (UAC). It recently announced the availability of $350 million in cooperative agreements seeking residential care providers to provide temporary shelter care and other related services to UACs in ORR custody. Care providers must be licensed by an appropriate State agency to provide residential, group, or foster care services for dependent children, including a program operating group homes, foster homes, or facilities for special needs minors. The majority of UAC are expected to remain in ORR custody between 30-35 days, but some will have a longer or shorter length of stay. Of the children served, some 85% are reunified with their families across the U.S.
Shelter care services begin once ORR accepts a UAC for placement and ends when the minor is released from ORR custody, turns 18 years of age, or the minor's immigration case results in a final disposition of removal from the United States. ORR has identified the following states as priority areas: Texas, California, Arizona, Florida, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Georgia, specifically Atlanta and North Carolina, specifically Charlotte.
National TANF Data Released: HHS has posted TANF caseload data for the first quarter of FY 2014. In that quarter, there was a monthly average of 1.69 million families receiving TANF/SSP assistance, representing 3.98 million recipients. The average monthly caseload for the first quarter of FY 2014 decreased about 5.4 percent when compared to the average monthly caseload for the first quarter of FY 2013. Nine TANF jurisdictions had an increase in caseload and forty-five jurisdictions had a decrease compared to the first quarter of FY 2013. Click here to view state-by-state data.
HHS and Education Dept. Urge Coordination Between CWS and Schools: On May 30, HHS and the U.S. Dept of Education sent a letter to state child welfare and education departments to highlight the school stability provisions for foster children in the Fostering Connections Act. The letter emphasizes that the Act places specific obligations on local education agencies as well as child welfare agencies and urges that child welfare and education agencies to work together this summer to develop policies and procedures that ensure both educational stability and the appropriate, immediate enrollment of all school-aged children in foster care in the upcoming school year. A website dedicated to the issue has been created to encourage these efforts.
Education Dept. Releases Guidance on Foster Youth Education Records: The U.S. Department of Education has released new guidance on the Uninterrupted Scholars Act (USA) amendments to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The provisions permit educational agencies and institutions to disclose personally identifiable information from the education records of students in foster care placement, without parental consent, to an agency caseworker or other representative of a State or county child welfare agency or tribal organization authorized to access a student's case plan when such agency or organization is legally responsible, in accordance with State or tribal law, for the care and protection of the student. The guidance is a question and answer document that explains how the new law works.
Housing Resources for Youth Aging Out of Foster Care: The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has released a report, The Family Unification Program: A Housing Resource for Youth Aging Out of Foster Care, which chronicles the housing needs of youth leaving foster care and the different housing options available. The Family Unification Program (FUP), a special-purpose voucher program under the HUD's Housing Choice Voucher (HCV, also known as Section 8) program, is one resource for such youth. The primary purpose of FUP is to provide housing vouchers to child-welfare involved families for whom the lack of adequate housing is the primary reason for imminent out-of-home placement of children or delays in family reunification. However, youth ages 18 to 21 who leave foster care at age 16 or older and who do not have adequate housing are also eligible for a time-limited housing voucher. FUP vouchers offer up to 18 months of rental subsidy and supportive services to help such youth gain skills for independent living. This report describes the extent to which-and how-communities are using FUP to support youth.
Report Issued on Dual Status Youth: Dual status youth cross the agency lines of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, yet the agencies do not always communicate or collaborate on plans to serve the youth. Research and experience indicate that an integrated, multi-system approach can effectively yield better outcomes for youth and families, enhance system performance, and produce significant cost savings within communities. The Robert F. Kennedy National Resource Center for Juvenile Justice, has issued a white paper, From Conversation to Collaboration: How Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Agencies Can Work Together to Improve Outcomes for Dual Status Youth. It highlights strategies to develop a more integrated approach and looks at examples where system integration and coordination led to transformations with better outcomes for youth.
House Focuses On IV-E Psychotropic Use: The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing last month on the high rate of psychotropic drug prescriptions among foster care children. According to data compiled by the Congressional Research Service, between 2008 and 2010, nearly one out of every four children in foster care was using a psychotropic medication on any given day-more than four times the rate among all children. A recent Wall Street Journal story and a multi-part Denver Post series highlighted how youth in foster care may be prescribed these powerful, mind-altering drugs because they are misdiagnosed as having mental health disorders instead of being recognized as having problems stemming from the abuse and neglect they have experienced.
GAO Issues Foster Care & Psychotropic Use Report: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report last month, Foster Children: Additional Federal Guidance Could Help States Better Plan for Oversight of Psychotropic Medications Administered by Managed-Care Organizations, which examines the extent to which the use of psychotropic medications was supported by foster and medical records for selected case studies of children in foster care who were prescribed these medications. The report also describes selected states' policies and procedures intended to address oversight of psychotropic medications, and assesses what, if any, actions HHS has taken to help states oversee psychotropic medications prescribed to children in foster care since the December 2011 GAO report on psychotropic medications prescribed to children in foster care.
Latino Issues in Child Welfare: This webpage compiles child welfare information relevant to serving Latino populations. Resource abstracts and links include: child welfare terms in Spanish and English, national and State resources for working with Hispanic families; promoting and supporting Latino families in adoption and foster care; toolkits for developing and enhancing partnerships with community and faith-based organizations for outreach; the disproportionality of Latino children in child welfare; the impact of Hispanic cultural values and expectations and strategies for enhancing service delivery, and many more.
HHS Issues Re-Homing Guidance: The guidance, Re-homing of Adopted Children: Responsibilities for States and Opportunities in the Provision of Post-adoption Services refers to a topic that gained public attention through media reports published earlier this year. It refers to a practice taken by some families after they have adopted a child, mainly through the international adoption process and attempted to place the children through private (frequently Internet) methods. The instances documented in the news reports were mainly through private actions and did not generally happen through the child welfare system. The guidance suggests actions states should and can take and it makes clear that current funding through Title IV-B Child Welfare Services and Promoting Safe and Stable Families can be used to support vulnerable families even if the child did not come from the state foster care system originally. They also suggest that states need to examine their child protective services (CPS) system since some of the actions outlined in the news reports were instances of child abuse and neglect.
Webinar: Improving Employment Outcomes for TANF Participants: HHS is offering a free webinar next Tuesday, June 24 from 1 pm- 2:30 pm ET. It will address the potential of career pathways practices tailored for TANF participants and other low-income, low-skilled individuals and those with barriers to employment. TANF representatives will highlight how they have maximized regulatory flexibility to implement career pathways, while strengthening the employment opportunities of participants. Click here to learn more and register.
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