Spurred by a child welfare reform campaign initially filed in 2000 by Children’s Rights, the state of Tennessee has employed a number of strategies over the years to dramatically reduce its reliance on institutions — and now placesthe vast majority of youth in foster care with relatives and foster families. This report not only explores […]

The state of Wisconsin recently launched a new effort to license and train relatives following a legislative change in 2009 requiring relatives caring for foster youth to apply for a foster home license. This report evaluates the implementation of this new policy shift in Wisconsin, and offers specific recommendations that would help ensure that foster […]

An in-depth report on the New York City child welfare system detailing problems that delay the progress of children in New York City foster care toward reunification with their parents, adoption, or permanency through legal guardianship — and making concrete recommendations about how these problems can be solved.

The first-ever nationwide, state-by-state calculation of the real cost of supporting children in foster care, revealing widespread deficiencies in reimbursement rates across the nation — and major disparities among the states — and proposing a new standard rate for each state to use in fulfilling the federal requirement to provide foster parents with payments to […]

A comprehensive assessment of the performance of the New York City child welfare system, revealing that despite a decade of reforms and improvements in the system’s infrastructure and in certain aspects of case practice, safety and permanency outcomes for many children and families have not significantly improved and, in some cases, have worsened.

A major initiative of Children’s Rights and the Children’s Defense Fund comprising three reports, several proposals for changes to federal policy, and ongoing outreach to federal legislators in support of improvements to the child welfare workforce nationwide. Related publications: Components of an Effective Child Welfare Workforce to Improve Outcomes for Children and Families (2006) List […]

A study of efforts to improve the child welfare workforce in the context of class action litigation in 12 states and localities across the nation, documenting the progress made and barriers encountered and providing a set of recommendations to guide current and future reform efforts.

A comprehensive review of the literature on the needs of children with disabilities in foster care, focusing on abuse and neglect, health and medical issues, educational challenges, foster parent training and support, and aging out of the foster care system.

A study of the impact of adoption subsidies on adoption, including a survey of hundreds of adoptive and prospective adoptive parents in six states to learn firsthand about the impact of adoption subsidies on their decision to adopt.

A best-practices guide to help caseworkers match children with prospective adoptive families, developed through interviews with child welfare professionals, adoptive families, and young adults formerly in foster care and designed to increase the number of successful, long-term adoptions.