The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) sought to end the forced removal of Native children from their tribes. Decades later, American Indian children are still placed in foster and adoptive care at disproportionately high rates. Drawing on forty years of archival data, this study examines the role of administrative burden in reproducing these…

Despite recent improvements in child welfare placement stability, youth in foster care still experience high rates of school moves. Although these findings are well documented in the literature, few studies have considered the interplay between child welfare placements and school moves. The purpose of this study was to determine the proportion of…

On November 8, 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act, otherwise known as ICWA, became law. Congress enacted this groundbreaking legislation, the impact of which has been arguably more profound than any other piece of federal Indian law in the modern era. While recent national attention has highlighted the law's role in child custody and adoption…

This Research-to-Impact brief is the seventh in a series by Chapin Hall's Voices of Youth Count on understanding and addressing youth homelessness. Each year, nearly 4.2 million adolescents and young adults in America experience some form of homelessness. This brief focuses on the subset of young people who experience homelessness after spending…

Postsecondary education in the United States has historically been the bedrock of individual social mobility and collective economic growth. Toward that end, policies at the state and federal levels have for decades sought to expand the reach of postsecondary education so as to provide individuals and communities with pathways to prosperity.…

The process of determining permanent living arrangements for children residing in foster care is referred to as permanency planning. I provide a preliminary framework for art therapists working with foster children and their families during the permanency planning process, and identify clinical and ethical issues that have resulted from the…

This article explores the New Zealand legal history of adoption and the effect it has had on Maori. The status of children within Maori and European societies before and during the early contact periods differed, and it is from here that the author begins this article. These two societies had their own terms in relation to the care of children by…

This paper explores societal perceptions of a child's disability and bilingualism through the author's observations and reflections. Drawing from the observations of the child in different public schools in the United States, the author shares how the child has been viewed differently and similarly by school personnel. By reflecting on different…

Children adopted from foreign countries, especially those who were in an orphanage, may experience greater difficulties than culturally or linguistically diverse children who do not come from such a background. Delays in learning language and, consequently, slower cognitive and social development, can undermine the academic success of these…

In this article, we use feminist theories of the state to examine why the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) has had relatively little impact on increasing men's caregiving after the birth or adoption of a child. An analysis of witness testimonies and of the language of the proposed bill at three different stages of its development revealed that…

In 1978 Congress passed an astonishing piece of legislation that gave Native American tribes a considerable amount of jurisdiction over matters of child custody and the adoption of their children. In 1976, the Association of American Indian Affairs gathered statistics relevant to the adoption of Indian children that Congress found "shocking…

Based on a survey of states, this document summarizes state-level approaches to using surrogate parents in order to meet the needs of children with disabilities. Most respondents noted that their states had issued policy or formal guidance pertaining to surrogate parents and children with disabilities, and most also described efforts to ensure…

President Clinton signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997, Public Law 105-89 105th Congress, 1st session on November 19, 1997. The ambitious new law aimed to reaffirm the focus on child safety in case decision making and to ensure that children did not languish and grow up in foster care but instead were connected with permanent…

This article introduces a special issue on the meaning of children in violent, uncertain times. It is framed in terms of the political-economy aspects of adoption, focusing on the local occurrences that make international adoption possible, from legal determinations of abandonment to wartime and postwar parenting. The article argues that…

A large body of descriptive literature demonstrates the problem of substance abuse in child welfare. The 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) established time frames that make children's need for permanency the overriding priority in families involved with the child welfare system. Child welfare workers often lack proper knowledge and skill…