Arizona’s child welfare agency has agreed to boost behavioral and health services for children in foster care and limit use of group homes for those children to settle a lawsuit filed by child advocacy groups. The state Department of Child Services also will be required to monitor and limit workloads for front-line workers to ensure […]

“The lower courts correctly held that the City of Philadelphia’s anti-discrimination regulation applies to all taxpayer-funded child welfare agencies to ensure that the pool of foster parents and resource caregivers is as diverse and broad as the foster children they serve,” Christina Wilson Remlin, lead counsel at Children’s Rights, said in a statement. “I urge […]

Dr. Nia Heard-Garris was startled when her 4-year-old son came home from preschool one day and declared, “Mommy, sometimes I’m white.” As a pediatrician who studies the impact of racism on children’s health and the mother of a Black boy with caramel skin, she carefully inquired further. He told her one of his friends said […]

Kansas foster children will no longer sleep overnight in offices or be shuttled from home to home and, for the first time, will receive mental health screening when they enter care. Those mandates are key components of a settlement filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in a class action lawsuit aimed at fixing the […]

The state of Kansas settled a class-action lawsuit filed by child care advocates who accused the state of not providing foster children with adequate mental health care and moving them too frequently between homes. The settlement, filed Wednesday, mandates the state stop moving foster children often and track them more carefully. The agreement won’t take […]

A watchdog for children’s welfare claims that children are being abused by workers in psychiatric treatment facilities in Courtland, Owens Cross Roads, Tuskegee, and Montgomery. In a public letter, the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program wrote they have “grave concerns about the immediate safety and welfare” of the nearly 100 children, aged 12 to 18, currently in […]

Children’s Rights authored a report Fostering Inequity: How COVID-19 Amplifies Dangers for LGBTQ+ Youth in Care. Christina Wilson Remlin was quoted in The Hill: “It’s important to have a very urgent reminder that our child welfare systems need to become safer places for LGBTQ young people. This population is already exposed to a great deal of danger.”

The Trump administration on Friday finalized a rule axing Obama-era health protections for transgender people, moving to strip guards against discrimination in the heart of Pride Month and in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Christina Wilson Remlin was quoted in the New York Daily News, “yet another move by the Trump administration to deny […]

Donald Williams fought for custody of his daughter across 600-miles for 5 years while she was under the care of a loving foster parent. Our senior policy analyst, Elissa Hyne, spoke with @azcentral regarding the case and others like this: “It’s a hard balancing act. There’s no ‘if this, then that.’ “

Frederick’s death – and the realities of trying to social distance in a facility packed with teenagers – highlights one of the many problems facing America’s foster care system amid the pandemic, writes USA Today. “We are really worried that an already-strained system is going to buckle under the weight of the coronavirus,” says Sandy Santana, […]