Child Trends

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced last week that it opposes federal legislation that would temporarily preserve child welfare waivers and delay implementation of the landmark Family First Prevention Services Act.

According to California child welfare officials, the state’s foster care system will take a big hit if federal Title IV-E waivers are allowed to expire at the end of September. “Our counties are likely to see a decrease of federal funds in the neighborhood of $320-some odd million at the conclusion of the waiver,” said Greg Rose, deputy director of the Children and Family Services Division of the California Department of Social Services (DSS), in a state budget hearing last week.

As states prepare for a child welfare overhaul that will limit federal funds to group care, a recent report shows that most systems are already gravitating toward greater use of family foster homes and relative caregivers.

Child Trends has released a new tool that offers browsers a robust collection of data around child maltreatment, foster care, kinship caregivers and adoption for all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

Five states – Arizona, Arkansas, Montana, New Mexico and Ohio – hold the dubious distinction of leading the country in the percentage of children burdened with three or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), between birth and age 17, according to a recent Child Trends report.

The second most common cause for entry into foster care system nationwide, parental substance use disorder consistently jeopardizes child health and safety. An uptick in the use of opioids and other substances has led to a rise in the number of children being removed from their homes due to parental substance abuse.  

The U.S. Border Patrol will have intercepted an estimated 90,000 children without any sort of legal protective status by the end of 2016. These are mostly traumatized children who are fleeing violence in their home countries, often without an adult.

By Tim Morrison When children are removed from their homes, foster care agencies prefer to place them with caregivers who are related, often grandparents. Unlike adoptive parents, however, nearly nine out of 10 of these grandparent caregivers who are eligible for benefits that support children newly in their care do not receive them, and in most cases purposefully reject them, because of the way they are administered.

Federal spending on children fell by $2 billion in fiscal 2011 in comparison to fiscal year 2010, according to a  report by the Urban Institute, “Kids Share 2012: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2011” ( http://www.urban.org/publications/412600.html