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News
National U.S. News
In his fiscal year 2011 budget proposal, released February 1, President Obama maintained funding for foster and adopted children’s programs, and suggested some key increases. Among them:
- $78 million ($22 million more) for kinship-guardianship programs.
- $126 million ($4 million more) for the Children’s Mental Health Services Program, as well as $1,208 million ($23 million more) for mental health prevention and treatment activities.
- $42 million (up $3 million) for the Adoption Incentive program.
- $39 million (up nearly $13 million) for the Adoption Opportunities program —an increase achieved by folding adoption awareness funds into the grant program.
Find more detailed information at www.cwla.org/advocacy/budget.htm.
On February 11, more than seven months after being nominated, Bryan Samuels was confirmed as the new Commissioner of the federal Administration on Children, Youth, and Families. Director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family from 2003 to 2007, Samuels has a long history of public service as well as a personal dedication to promoting child welfare. Read the Health and Human Services press release at www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/02/20100212c.html
The Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, released to Congress in late January, reports a significant decrease in serious incidences of child abuse between 1993 and the 2005/2006 study period. The number of sexually abused children dropped 38 percent, 15 percent fewer children experienced physical abuse, and emotional abuse was down 27 percent. See more at www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/ abuse_neglect/natl_incid/
index.html.
Announced in a January Policy Instruction, the Social Security Administration (SSA) will now accept Supplemental Security Income (SSI) applications from disabled youth in foster care up to 90 days before their federal foster care benefits are expected to end. Previously, such youth were not SSI eligible until their foster care payments had stopped. Visit www.socialsecurity.gov to learn more (refer to ID code SI 00601 TN 18).
Organized this January by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA), the new Senate Caucus on Foster Youth was formed to direct attention to children in and aging out of foster care and the many needs they have. It will provide a forum in which current and former foster youth can share stories and ideas for reform, researchers and other child welfare associations can hold briefings, and senators can monitor the ongoing implementation of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008. Learn more at http://grassley. senate.gov/news/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=24553.
State and Provincial News
California
Under a new law that becomes effective July 2010 (signed last October by Governor Schwarzenegger), California tribes will have a more culturally sensitive permanency option for children who need new families. Known as customary adoption, the new practice allows American Indians to place children in permanent families without severing the children’s birth parents’ rights—a practice inconsistent with many tribes’ beliefs. Learn more at www.calindian.org/alerts/62-2010-alert/99-tribal-customary-adoption.
Florida
In the third ruling of its kind since August 2008, a circuit court judge has approved a lesbian woman’s adoption of her infant relative. In granting the adoption this January, Judge Maria Sampedro-Inglesia stated that Florida’s ban on gay and lesbian adoption is “unconstitutional on its face.” Since the decision, however, the Department of Children and Families has filed an appeal. Meanwhile, a Miami appeals court is still working to determine—through another adoption case involving a gay father--if the adoption ban is constitutional. Read more at www.miamiherald.com/ 2010/02/18/1485940/state-challenging-gay-adoption.html.
Indiana
A U.S. District Court approved, in January, an injunction to prevent the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) http://www.in.gov/dcs/ from reducing foster care and adoption subsidy payments. (Case 1:09-cv-01574-SEB-JMS Document 48) The state planned to cut payments by 10 percent January 1. Judges decided that the cut would create a hardship for families and children and that the blanket reduction, “reached without any consultation with adoptive parents, does not meet [the] statutory standard” for Title IV-E adoption assistance. DCS filed notice in February that it plans to appeal the decision.
West Virginia
The West Virginia Supreme Court, in a decision rendered late last year, determined that a parent who voluntarily relinquishes his or her rights at a child abuse and neglect proceeding still has to pay child support. The case in question combined complaints from two birth fathers who voluntarily terminated their parental rights and whose children were living with the children’s mothers. As the court emphasized, “[C]hild support obligations are not only responsibilities parents owe to their children, they are also rights which belong to children.”
Yukon Territory
Under its new Child and Family Services Act, Yukon Territory became the sixth Canadian province to open its adoption records. Effective April 30, 2010, adult adoptees 19 or older and their birth parents can apply for an original copy of the adoptee’s birth registration and adoption order. Adoptees and birth parents who wish to remain anonymous or prevent contact can file a disclosure veto or no-contact declaration. Learn more at www.originscanada.org/yukon-territory-adoption-records/.
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