GAO Report on Title IV-B

Title IV-B of the Social Security Act is the primary source of federal funding for services to help families address problems that lead to child abuse and neglect and to prevent the unnecessary separation of children from their families. Title IV-B is divided into two parts. States can use subpart 1 funds on almost any child welfare activity. Subpart 2 provides grants to states for similar types of child welfare services, such as family support services to enhance family stability and services to help parents reunify with a child in foster care, but is more restrictive in how the funds can be spent. In fiscal year 2003, appropriations were $292 ...

Hague Intercountry Adoption Regulations Released Today

The U.S. Department of State today issued long-awaited proposed regulations to implement legislation which was signed into law nearly three years ago to implement a global treaty that streamlines the international adoption process affecting tens of thousands of children adopted by U.S. citizens each year. The 2000 law, known as the Intercountry Adoption Act, put in place a structure that should provide greater safety, accountability and transparency for adoptive families who seek to adopt children from other nations. The proposed regulations are designed to implement those goals by ensuring that adoption service providers are properly accredited to ...

Safe Haven Laws

The battle over safe haven laws is heating up! These laws are intended to allow parents to leave their newborns at designated safe places, including hospitals and police stations, while guaranteeing those parents anonymity and freedom from prosecution. Sounds good huh? Read on. There are some serious issues. First there was the excellent report by The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute - Unintended Consequences: Safe Haven Laws are Causing Problems, Not Solving Them - which was critical of safe haven laws. Then noted columnist (and adoptive parent) Al Hunt wrote a hard hitting commentary in the Wall Street Journal praising Hawaii Governor Linda ...

Website of Interest

This is a nice site and great resource for tracking national child welfare legislation. This page, at least, is a fancy blog! I don't know Marcia but she is doing a great job. The only change I would make is to provide the legislation as a PDF instead of HTML. Check it out. Best Interests: Legislation

When Children Take the Stand

There is undoubtedly an increase in the number of children involved in the judicial system either as victims (there are 500,000 children in foster care all of whom were in court last year), perpetrators (there were 1 million court involved delinquents and status offenders in 1999), and witnesses in divorce, domestic violence and other civil cases. One of the best books on child witnesses remains Anne Graffam Walker's Handbook On Questioning Children: A Linguistic perspective. Another good publication is Evidence in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases by John E.B. Myers. Both of these books should be mandatory reading for anyone who questions children in ...

The Boston Globe – TPR Series

I found this article moving and profound. The reporter clearly did an excellent job of presenting the nuances of terminating the parental rights of so-called chronically neglectful parents. Barbara's story is, sadly, typical of the families who are all too frequently involved in the child welfare system: often impoverished, with mental disabilities, inadequate parenting skills (or is that inadequate middle class parenting skills?), unstable employment, no family support and poor decisionmaking skills. She was clearly not abusive; even the social workers acknowledged that. Were her children neglected or just poor? The chronicle of inadequate social ...

Sperm Donor Introductions for Lesbian Couples and Single Women

Okay - close on the heels of Snowflake adoptions we have e-sperm "adoptions." This gives spam a whole new meaning. Be careful ladies when opening any unknown e-mails or you could get more than a virus or worm! Trojan horse comes to mind . . . Seriously now I'm not sure how I feel about this new business model in assisted reproduction. If, as they say, every sperm is sacred - or at least half as sacred as a frozen embryo - then new legal models will have to develop to address e-sperm babies. Or will they? Given the radical nature of internet dating, file sharing and now blogging I forsee a time when you can do "peer-to-peer" sperm donation. Just log ...

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