CONSULTATION TOMORROW

on US National Action Plan on Children in Adversity   

Advocacy and implementing organizations are urgently mobilizing to call on the US government (USG) to develop a multi-year, interagency strategy to address the needs of children in adversity. It is believed that there is an immediate and historic opportunity for the U.S. Government to lead a renewed global effort on behalf of the world's children.  

The Public Law 109-95 Secretariat cordially invites you to attend a briefing on Thursday, July 19 on the United States National Action Plan on Children in Adversity: A Framework for U.S. Government International Assistance.  Dr. Neil Boothby, U.S. Government Special Advisor and Senior Coordinator to the USAID Administrator on Children in Adversity, will present the background leading up to the plan, its development process and content.  There will also be a discussion on ways in which civil society organizations can support the approval and implementation of the plan at the highest levels of government.

To learn more about the plan or how to engage your organization in this process, join tomorrow's consultation in person or via telephone.   Learn more here: http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/Events.asp

Pulling experiences and stories from two upcoming books Everybody Needs Someone: The Aging-Out of Foster Care Project and David Tobis' From the Other Side: How Parents and Their Allies Changed New York City's Child Welfare System, this recent article in the New York Review of Books examines the systemic shortcomings that had stifled New York City's child welfare system and the families it sought to serve. It highlights the progressive interventions for children and families made available over time through such programs as the Child Welfare Fund and Child Welfare Organizing Project. Through these programs as well as the progress within the city's system itself, the review documents successes achieved to reduce unnecessary family separation and invest in interventions aimed to sustain a family's ability to stay together with better outcomes for children.

While specifically in reference to child protection in the United States, the lessons articulated in terms of the empowerment of children and families and the reforms to underperforming child welfare systems pose opportunities for across contexts.

To read the full article, visit:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jul/12/new-york-besieged-children/?pagination=false

Virginia Commonwealth University Professors, Karen Smith Rotabi and Rosemary Farmer, examine impact of neglect on brain development in their recent podcast, Orphaned and Vulnerable Children and Brain Development. Through the persepective of the intersection of neuroscience and social welfare practice, Farmer and Rotabi examine how poverty of experience and such potential adverse situations as institutionalization disrupt brain development in babies and young children. 

To watch the full podcast, visit: https://blackboard.vcu.edu/bbcswebdav/users/jmkincannon/RotabiBook/wonderdog.html