For more than a decade national child welfare policy has encouraged timely adoptions as way to stabilize the lives of kids in foster care. But the system is challenged when a child’s new home proves to be a bad fit.
Sixteen years ago the federal government put new pressure on states to facilitate adoptions. But it never bothered to track how many of those adoptions fail.
Adoption is a good outcome for many children in foster care. But not every adoptive parent-child combination is meant to be.
S.D. held out hope that her parents would bring her home. That never happened. But avoiding adoption was her choice—and it was a wise one, her lawyer says.
While there’s disagreement among child welfare officials and advocates about all we can do to prevent broken adoptions, there is consensus on a few common-sense steps.
New York stands virtually alone among states in allowing teenagers to be tried as adults and sentenced to adult prisons. Amid a wave of juvenile justice improvements, these children seem to have been forgotten.
The city hopes EarlyLearn will make for higher-quality city-funded daycare. Despite funding shortages and doubts about the way contracts were awarded, some agencies and advocates believe the program has promise.
No precinct saw more police stops in 2011 than the 75th in East New York, and no patrol sector in the 7-5 had more encounters than Sector E. There, realism about crime and resentment of the police go hand-in-hand.
The city’s teenaged dads can make a huge difference in the lives of their kids. Yet they are forced to navigate Family Court with little guidance, and must deal with agencies and jurists who know next to nothing about them.
In an interview with City Limits, Administration for Children’s Services Commissioner Ronald Richter says of the scarce resources in Family Court: “Our issues are often not popular. It takes a lot of effort to draw politicians’ attention.”
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