The Imprint Weekly

On this week’s podcast we discuss some of the figures in the biennial report on state-by-state child welfare spending from Child Trends. Also: looming deadlines on “Family Miranda” laws in two states and a Supreme Court case on ICWA, and more.

Imprint reporter Michael Fitzgerald joins to talk about his investigative reporting looking into sexual and reproductive health policies for youth in foster care, an issue brought into sharp focus last year when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Reading Room

Child Welfare Financing Survey SFY 2020
https://bit.ly/43EVtHE

San Bernardino Foster Youth File Class-Action Lawsuit
https://bit.ly/42rUp8O

Texas Bill To Increase Rights for Parents Under Investigation Passes State House and Senate
https://bit.ly/3qk9nR5

Another Try for Legislation In New York Giving Parents ‘Miranda’ Rights During CPS Investigations
https://bit.ly/3oQZc5V

California’s Santa Clara County Aims to Keep Girls Out of Juvenile Lockups
https://bit.ly/3Hh2lm3

Four California Counties Join Effort to End the Incarceration of Girls
https://bit.ly/43hWB42

High Stakes, Silent Systems
A three-part investigation on sexual and reproductive health in foster care.
https://imprintnews.org/special-series/high-stakes-silent-systems

The Imprint Weekly Podcast is releasing bonus episodes featuring our publisher, Daniel Heimpel, and Molly Tierney, the child welfare lead at Accenture and former child welfare director for Baltimore.
On this episode, the two friends discuss the growing call for child welfare to paddle “upstream,” investing more money in keeping families together and less on splitting them apart. What will it take to improve our prevention of abuse and neglect in America? And should that work be done by child welfare agencies, other parts of government, or something entirely different?

On this week’s podcast, we discuss the decline in reunifications during the early pandemic, a potential legal counsel law in Congress, a new national campaign to connect current and former foster youth with pandemic assistance, and juvenile justice reforms in Michigan and New York.

David Kelly, a former official in the Children’s Bureau during the Obama and Trump administrations, joins to talk about his federal career and what he sees on the horizon for child welfare.

Reading Room

Families in Limbo: Coronavirus Hobbles Reunifications from Foster Care
https://bit.ly/3vgscRO

AP Analysis: COVID Prolonged Foster Care Stays for Thousands
https://bit.ly/3xiqT6y

Senate Bill May Require Legal Counsel for Parents, Children in Child Welfare Cases
https://bit.ly/3g9GyiH

Federal Guidance on Foster Youth Pandemic Relief: A Breakdown
https://bit.ly/3lj19lL

“Check for Us” National Campaign
www.checkforus.org

A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention.
https://bit.ly/3zlYyOj

After Grace’s Story, Michigan Will Study Its Juvenile Justice System
https://bit.ly/2ThbX9T
Attorney David Kelly Leaves the Children’s Bureau
https://bit.ly/3vvREUx

This week we discuss SafeCamp Audio, the forthcoming podcast network from Fostering Media Connections, which will feature terrific audio projects on child welfare, youth justice and more. Click here to join the SafeCamp newsletter!

We also review some recent headlines, including new research on racial disparities in the child welfare process, renewed Congressional interest in congregate care, family separation in Ukraine, and more.

Reading Room

Bipartisan Bill Introduced To Tighten Oversight of Residential Centers for Youth
https://bit.ly/41WfAjU

Mississippi Governor Touts ‘Culture of Life’ with New Laws
https://bit.ly/3HSgTsr

Abortion Ruling Means More and Riskier Births in Mississippi
https://bit.ly/3oUbbiR

State-Level Variation in the Cumulative Prevalence of Child Welfare System Contact
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36874408/

Racial/Ethnic Differences in Child Protective Services Reporting, Substantiation and Placement, With Comparison to Non-CPS Risks and Outcomes
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36990447/

State-level Data for Understanding Child Welfare in the United States
https://bit.ly/3LL0Oa4

Think of Us Receives $47.5 Million from TED’s Audacious Project
https://bit.ly/3Nots26

As always, we were fortunate to have some amazing guests join us this year on The Imprint Weekly Podcast. In this episode we feature clips of 10 great interviews from 2023.

If you enjoy this podcast, or the great work our reporters do at The Imprint and Fostering Families Today, and the work that our Youth Voices Rising team does, please consider making a donation. And if you do so this month, during Newsmatch, your donation will get doubled!

Fostering Media Connections is very lucky to have some terrific philanthropic supporters, advertisers and sponsors, and subscribers to our business and policy section that help make this organization go. But we really cannot do it without donors like you who read our stuff, listen to our podcasts and attend our online events.
There are tons of really great nonprofit, independent news outlets to support out there, and we hope you consider us one of them. To give today it’s easy! Visit www.imprintnews.org/donate.
Guests include:
Shelly Jackson, law enforcement policies attorney for Strategies for Youth.
LaShawnda Pittman, associate professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Rob Geen, founder of CWPolicy, LLC and leads the Child Welfare Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Carolyn Travis, community advocacy coordinator for California Youth Connection.
Alex Piquero, professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminology at the University of Miami and previously served as the Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Serita Cox, co-founder of iFoster.
Gwen Moore, Member of Congress
Dawn Post, founder of Themis Youth Law & Advocacy.
Jerry Milner, co-founder of the Family Justice Group, and former associate commissioner of the U.S. Children’s Bureau.
Will Schneider, associate professor at the University of Illinois School of Social Work and the faculty director for the Children and Family Research Center.