Children’s Rights stands up for children in foster care who have nowhere left to turn.

We change the lives of children in foster care by holding the public child welfare systems accountable to their constitutional and legal obligations to keep children in foster care safe, provide them with needed services, and move them quickly into permanent homes.

We launch comprehensive reform campaigns designed to secure federal court orders mandating that child welfare systems:

• Keep children’s time in foster care to a minimum and find new permanent families quickly for those who cannot return home.
• Provide adequate services — including education, medical services, and mental health care.
• Maintain an adequate pool of available foster and adoptive homes so that they don’t have to house children in group homes, institutions, and emergency shelters unless absolutely necessary.
• Provide better training for caseworkers to help them make appropriate decisions about the safety of children in foster homes.
• Streamline their management for maximum efficiency and accountability and improve or implement systems for data collection and analysis so they can pinpoint internal problems and fix them before they get out of hand.

And we complement our legal efforts with research and policy advocacy at the state and national level to improve the public policy that guides child welfare systems — and to produce better results for the abused and neglected children in their care.

Learn More and Get Involved

• Read about Children’s Rights’ child welfare reform campaigns and policy advocacy.
• Learn about the related issues of child abuse and neglect and adoption.
• Check out our list of additional resources for detailed information about child welfare in the United States.
• Find out how you can help by making a gift to Children’s Rights or joining our network of supporters.