Children's Bureau Outlines New Priority Goals for Child Welfare
On March 28, Associate Commissioner Aysha Schomburg announced the Children’s Bureau’s new priority goals for child welfare.
Speaking about the president's budget proposals, which were released the same day, she said "The budget focuses on all the things that are really important to us - equity, fairness, and support for families."
She pointed to the president's Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities as a guiding document and said that the priority goals are aligned with its broader objectives. These priority goals include:
Preventing Children from Entering Foster Care
Call upon jurisdictions to examine and amend their definitions of neglect; particularly definitions that conflate poverty with neglect.
Expand funding for civil legal representation for families before foster care becomes necessary, and to facilitate reunification.
Strengthen interagency partnerships, coordination, and collaboration (for example, with the Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development.
In Family First, use the most expansive definition of candidacy to put as much money as possible into prevention services.
Support for Kinship Caregivers
Promote equitable (and easier) licensing standards for kinship caregivers.
Increase the number of kinship families by removing inequitable barriers to licensing and require that any approved IV-E eligible kinship home receive federal support. {See also the administration’s kinship legislative proposals below.)
Ensuring Youth Leave Care with Strengthened Relationships, Holistic Supports, and Opportunities
Provide youth in foster care with safe, healthy, and normative experiences.
Ensure youth have a successful transition into adulthood.
Empower youth to charter their life’s course after foster care. (See also the administration’s Chafee legislative proposal below.)
Investing in the Child Welfare Workforce
Create pathways for jurisdictions to recruit, retain, and nurture a diverse and well-equipped child welfare workforce.
Partner with child welfare agencies to devise innovative strategies to support the child welfare workforce.
Encourage and expand educational and training opportunities to recruit and retain child welfare professionals.
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