SNAP

The Imprint is highlighting each of the policy recommendations made this summer by the participants of the Foster Youth Internship Program (FYI), a group of 12 former foster youths who have completed congressional internships.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is slated to consider two motions to improve permanency and food security among transition-age foster youth. Tomorrow’s proposed initiatives are the latest in a series of motions focused on improving outcomes for foster youth as they age out of L.A.

Less than a year after landmark federal legislation quietly transformed the child welfare field, tensions about the future of federal support for foster care emerged again in California. At a meeting of the state’s influential County Welfare Directors Association, Jerry Milner— one of the the nation’s top child welfare officials— laid out his vision for overhauling the country’s foster care system in the wake of the passage of the Family First Prevention Services Act.

Access to food stamps for millions of people hangs in the balance as Congress negotiates two disparate versions of the farm bill. Last week, the House passed a bill that calls for significant cuts to the federal food stamp program, known nationally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

In 1984, George Orwell defined “doublethink” as holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting them both. In child welfare, for example, we have been told for decades that child welfare systems don’t take away children because their families are poor.

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.

Recent changes to eligibility requirements for the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, SNAP, threaten to increase food insecurity for thousands of Americans who rely on these benefits, according to the USDA Food and Nutrition Service which released a memo to all regional directors of SNAP on June 26, 2015.

Food insecurity, which according to the USDA is “the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food,” has long been known to have adverse health consequences.

Time continues to wind down toward the end of 2012, which is also the deadline to get an agreement on federal budget and tax policy before America goes over the so-called fiscal cliff.