After the Sandusky child abuse scandal rocked Pennsylvania, the state required more professionals to report suspected child abuse. That led to a strained child welfare system and more unsubstantiated reports against low-income families.

Diane Baird labeled her method for assessing families the “Kempe Protocol” after the renowned University of Colorado institute where she worked for decades. The school has yet to publicly disavow it.

The child welfare system strives to provide children and adolescents in foster care with a safe, nurturing environment through kinship and nonkinship foster care placement with the goal of either reunification with birth parents or adoption. Pediatricians can support families who care for children and adolescents who are fostered and adopted while attending to children’s medical needs and helping each child attain their developmental potential. Although this report primarily focuses on children in the US child welfare system, private and internationally adopted children often have similar needs.

Foster parents, tasked with the 24-7 care of often-traumatized children, show up for parent-teacher meetings, ferry their charges to doctor’s appointments, supervise homework and serve up cuddles. Many work closely with struggling biological parents in hopes of an eventual reunion. These days, many foster parents are being asked to do even more, as an increasing […]

A movement to change the child welfare system asks caseworkers to speak up.

The 147-page report, “‘If I Wasn’t Poor, I Wouldn’t Be Unfit’: The Family Separation Crisis in the US Child Welfare System,” documents how conditions of poverty, such as a family’s struggle to pay rent or maintain housing, are misconstrued as neglect, and interpreted as evidence of an inability and lack of fitness to parent. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU found significant racial and socioeconomic disparities in child welfare involvement. Black children are almost twice as likely to experience investigations as white children and more likely to be separated from their families.

More than 3 million U.S. children were involved in an intervention for suspected abuse or neglect in a single year. Advocates say a disproportionate impact on families of color makes reform urgent.

One death came after family courts ordered a child to live with a paedophile, a BBC investigation finds.

A bill introduced before Congress would give states greater authority in deciding whether to seek the termination of parental rights in child welfare cases.

If parents are unable to take care of their children, the latter may end up in foster care. But what if the authorities believe that the couple will never be able to take care of their children? Such a case may end up in forced adoption.

In at least 36 states and the District of Columbia, child welfare agencies use a child's benefit checks to offset the cost of foster care, often leaving them with a tattered safety net as adults.

It's shockingly easy for CPS to destroy poor, Black families.

In the name of anti-racism, Bethany is willing to throw away a huge victory. Black children will bear the brunt of this decision.

Stolen children, sealed records, unwed mothers, orphan trains, foreign adoptions, good intentions, bad intentions, the fate of detained…

Parents are rehoming their adopted children on the internet, just like pets. And it must stop.

African Americans are in the minority in America, but black children cost less to adopt and are in the majority when it comes to needing forever homes.

The uptick of unaccompanied migrant children at the border is a challenge for agencies having to rebuild gutted systems to shelter them

The foster care system is tasked with protecting the welfare of children suffering from abuse and neglect. However, many children taken from their families are subjected to sexual abuse and left in a more vulnerable and traumatized state. Several localized studies demonstrate the startling implications of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse in the foster care...