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The 2020 election involved several ballot measures of interest to child welfare and juvenile justice observers.

Youth Services Insider examined a few, including Florida's new minimum wage, marijuana legalization in four states, and the continued expansion of Marsy's Law in America. Read more.

Los Angeles voters approved Measure J last week, which dedicates annual city money to invest in youth development and alternatives to incarceration.

Measure J was strategically marketed as "Reimagine Los Angeles County" by proponents and shaded by critics as a dangerous and ill-considered step toward "defunding" law enforcement. Read more.

OPINION: Former foster youth and current English teacher Ivory Bennett on her reluctant decision to vote in the 2020 election.

"I vote to honor my ancestors." Read more. 

In California, the election marked the end of the line for State Sen. Jim Beall (D), who was term-limited out after a career spent working to improve foster care.

There are two Democratic candidates vying for his seat. Read more. 

Succeeding Beall will be Dave Cortese, who helped spur an experiment in Santa Clara County involving universal basic income for former foster youth.

The margin of the vote was 53.9% to 46.1%. Read more.

One of Beall's former colleagues, State Sen. Holly Mitchell, has won a seat on the powerful Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, making that body an all-female one for the first time in its history.

The state Senator raced to a 32% advantage by early Wednesday morning. Read more. 

Meanwhile, in New York, progressive candidates will inherit the seats of two state legislators from Brooklyn who spent their political careers pushing for juvenile justice and child welfare reform.

Jabari Brisport, a New York City public school teacher and Democrat, will replace another Democrat, retiring state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, representing central Brooklyn and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Read more.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread in Los Angeles, the city will begin to bring homeless youth and those living in foster care back to school this week.

Los Angeles Unified School District will allow some students to return to campus starting this week. Read more. 

In May, California moved quickly to bring home dozens of teens that counties had placed in the care of Lakeside Academy, a Michigan facility where a youth had been killed after being restrained by staff.

The residential program was run by Sequel, a for-profit company that has raked in millions of dollars housing teens for whom child welfare and juvenile justice systems struggle to find willing caregivers.

A months-long investigation by The Imprint and The San Francisco Chronicle found that California has sent more than 1,000 youth to far-flung Sequel facilities. At these institutions in Michigan, Iowa, Wyoming, Arizona and Utah, the teenagers, who were disproportionately Black, suffered everything from broken bones to sexual assault at the hands of employees, records show.

Now, confronted with the reporters' findings, the state is bringing every child home and cutting its ties with Sequel and all other out-of-state providers. Read more.

Washington also recently announced it will cease to do future business with Sequel and is working to bring 13 children home who are currently placed outside the state.

The most damning scrutiny came earlier this year, following the death of 16-year-old Cornelius Fredericks, who died after being suffocated by staff members at a Sequel facility in Michigan. Read more.

Thaai Walker reports on the long, virtually managed effort by school officials and activists in Oakland, California, to craft a plan for what comes next after the school district's police force is disbanded, one of the nation's most significant efforts to end the school-to-prison pipeline.

Over Zoom, officials and activists negotiate a plan. Read more. 

While the plan is taking shape, activists are frustrated that the removal of the police force has been delayed.

"Any day beyond Dec. 31, 2020 is unacceptable and threatens to undermine the spirit of the George Floyd Resolution." Read more. 

OPINION: Richard Wexler on the value, and limitations, of the new family separation metric included in The Imprint's Who Cares project.

"The family separation metric should be seen as a supplement to other measures, not a substitute." Read more. 

It's been three years since New York raised the age of its juvenile justice system.

Michael Fitzgerald looks into the cases of teens who are still being treated as adults in the wake of the sweeping Raise the Age reform. Read more. 

Almost 70% of youth in Los Angeles County juvenile facilities are living under quarantine right now.

Coronavirus infections in California's juvenile lockups are growing at disturbing rates among young people and staff overseeing them, as cases reach new peaks nationwide during a deadly winter surge. Read more. 

OPINION: Lupe Ortiz-Tovar and Miguel Vieyra weigh in on the National Youth in Transition Database celebrating 10 years.

"We tend to think of legislation arising from rich data, influential advocates and persuasive policy arguments. But that hasn't always been the case." Read more. 

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For decades the conversation about child welfare has been dominated by ideas for fixing it.

For new entities like the Movement for Family Power and the #upEND Campaign, the goal is to end it and start again. Read more.
 

OPINION: Brianna M. Harvey and Kenyon Lee Whitman on the early steps needed to combat racism and other discrimination in a rethought child welfare construct.

"Dismantling systems of oppression and structures such as child welfare would give us the ability to redirect supports and funding directly to the communities most at risk." Read more.
 

A group of Senate Democrats has authored a bill that would send billions to states for help with child welfare costs, aid that many in the field hope will be included in any forthcoming stimulus plans.

The full bill has not been published yet, but the proposed relief includes billions for support to relative caregivers, $500 million to help older foster youth, and a suspension of age limits on federal funds to serve youth in extended foster care. Read more.
 

A look at how the only drop-in center for homeless youth in St. Paul, Minnesota, adapted during coronavirus.

"We have continued to provide all the services... It's just not in person." Read more. 

New York legal advocates are asking the state to ban certain dangerous restraint techniques in child welfare facilities after the horrific death of a teen in Michigan.

Juvenile justice systems have been using detention centers less since the coronavirus hit the United States, but they are also slowing the rate at which youth are released from those facilities.

OPINION: Vivek Sankaran has represented children and parents in court for decades, and can count on one hand how many times a foster care removal was preceded by substantive arguments in court.
 

Last year, as the pandemic crushed New York City, foster youth in the Dorm Project were abruptly booted from college housing.

As this school year begins, less than half have returned to campus. Read more.

OPINION: Chapin Hall Executive Director Bryan Samuels, a former top child welfare official in the Obama administration, on addressing racism in the system.

"The child welfare system shouldn't be a harbinger of family separation. It should, rather, be the means by which the needs of families are met." Read more.

A U.S. appeals court OK'd California''s process of keeping alleged, but unfounded abuse and neglect reports, visible to investigators.

A federal appellate court ruled that Los Angeles County did not violate a man's due process and privacy rights when it retained a closely held record of unfounded allegations of child sexual abuse against him. Read more. 
 

OPINION: The inability of CPS to engage in family stabilization makes the looming housing crisis even scarier, writes Vivek Sankaran.

"What our families need now more than ever are governmental agencies with the tools and relationship to support them, rather than the mandate to simply question their parental decision-making." Read more. 

Minnesota has planned for a new curriculum to train its child welfare workers on the special federal and state protections for Native American children and families involved in child welfare cases.

The Imprint sat down with three women who will help design and implement it. Read more. 

President-elect Joe Biden is starting to staff up his White House.

Youth Services Insider presents a look at some of the people in the child welfare and juvenile justice fields who would be qualified to lead on these issues for the new administration. Read more.

Vivek Sankaran: Biden should consider keeping on Jerry Milner, Trump's head of the U.S. Children's Bureau.

"So long as families view the child welfare system as their enemy, we will never realize the potential in our work. But if we can reposition the system as one in partnership with families that works to address the root causes of societal inequities, then the possibilities are endless." Read more.

Paul DiLorenzo: The new administration should set a "Day One" culture on family well-being.

As we consider a new federal child welfare team, we should recognize the exceptional work of the current Children's Bureau, especially its leaders Jerry Milner and David Kelly. Read more.

One in three foster parents in New York have lost a job or a major source of income since the coronavirus pandemic started, according to a recent survey.

The financial crunch is especially acute in New York City, which was under shelter-in-place orders for nearly three months as it was slammed by the virus this spring. Read more. 

New Jersey is providing stimulus relief checks to older youth in foster care and some of those who recently aged out of the system.

The Garden State's Department of Children and Family Services announced this week that $2.2 million in financial aid is on its way to foster youth ages 18 to 23, most of whom have little or no reliable family support. Read more.

Ohio is being sued for allegedly ignoring a federal court decision to pay relative caregivers on par with other foster parents.

Three years after a federal appeals court ordered Ohio to pay those who assume custody of relatives the same amount it pays licensed foster parents, the Buckeye State continues to severely shortchange kinship caregivers, according to a lawsuit seeking to enforce the order. Read more.

New York City's Commission on Human Rights is looking into whether some hospitals are inappropriately drug testing Black and Latino mothers, an action that can lead to child welfare system involvement.

"Achieving racial justice requires systemic change across all aspects of daily life, not least of all in the medical system." Read more. 

While California is moving toward closure of its state juvenile prisons, its counties are relying on such facilities more often.

A new report suggests that counties are increasingly relying on jail-like juvenile halls to hold youth for long periods of time on indeterminate sentences. Read more. 

The number of homeless children in Los Angeles County schools is up almost 50% this decade.

"Even in these tense and difficult times, the large and growing number of homeless students in our state is a crisis that should shock all of us," said Tyrone Howard, faculty director at UCLA's Center for Transforming Education. Read more. 

Washington's Anchor Community Initiative has a lofty goal, writes Elizabeth Amon: eradicating youth homelessness in four large counties.

She had been homeless and struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts over three difficult years, when Elsa St Clair was released in January from an Idaho psychiatric hospital. Read more. 

The Children''s Bureau, led by associate commissioner Jerry Milner, is spearheading a new initiative aimed at helping state and local child welfare systems focus more on prevention of abuse and neglect, and rely less on family separation.

Its partners on the initiative include two big grant-makers - Casey Family Programs and the Annie E. Casey Foundation - along with Prevent Child Abuse America. Read more.

New York''s Raise the Age law took effect, ending the state''s default treatment of all 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, nearly three dozen monitors have watched court proceedings to add real life context to what the data shows on reform.

Their observations reflect a system that is doing better by youth, but still offers a "dehumanizing and criminalizing environment." Read more.

The new school year has brought a fresh wave of uncertainty for youth in Minnesota''s foster care system.

"School is a place where fosters get to just be kids... Fosters do not get that option anymore to be social." Read more. 
 

What are we missing when school staff aren''t reporting to child maltreatment hotlines?

A look at what the statistics from one state shows. Read more. 
 

OPINION: Cassie Statuto Bevan argues in defense of the Adoption Safe Families Act, which includes timelines for terminating the rights of parents who have come under fire in recent months.

"It is time for communities, states and the federal government to move in the direction of making children's needs to be nurtured and safe within the family the paramount concern." Read more. 

New York''s attempts to fill a massive budget deficit may claim millions of dollars for one of the state''s most used programs to help young parents before a crisis hits.

Healthy Families - one of more than a half dozen home visiting models offered throughout New York state - is a free, voluntary service open to any expecting or new parents for up to five years. Read more. 

The majority of Texas'' residential care operations for youth in foster care have been recently exposed to COVID-19, according to documents revealed in the lawsuit-related oversight of the state''s child welfare agency.


As of August 28, there was a 20% positivity rate of children in long-term foster care, compared to the state's rate of 12% positivity. Read more. 

As projected by The Imprint''s research on foster care capacity, a federal report released last week shows the number of youth in foster care dropped last year after increasing for several years.

The data on exits from care shows two trends: a continuing uptick in adoptions, and lower rates of reunification with parents. Read more.

California judges fear that without more safeguards in place, the push to close the state''s juvenile prisons will lead to a spike in teens charged as adults.

"It's so important to bring our young people home... But if we don't do it right, it's not fair to our youth, families or our communities." Read more.
 

The California Legislature has conceived of a disincentive for trying youth in adult court that other states might consider: a transfer tax.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the legislature are working on plans to close the Department of Juvenile Justice. Read more. 
 

OPINION: One former foster youth''s journey to self-awareness, prompted in part by her cameo on Oprah Winfrey''s show.

Cary M. Shelby shares how experiences as a former foster youth have shaped her career trajectory, research and other related topics on her blog. Read more. 
 

What are schools doing to check in on kids during virtual learning?

The Imprint asked leadership from several big school districts. Read more. 

Advocates for LGBTQ and Native American youth are suing the Trump administration over its decision to limit the amount of new data collected about both populations in foster care.

Abby Abinanti, chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Court in Northern California, said tribes struggle to serve Native children in foster care because they lack information on who or where they are. Read more. 
 

Two prominent national organizations in youth and family services have announced tentative plans for a merger.

The organizations are in the fields of social, health and human services and have agreed in principle to a merger early next year. Read more. 
 

In an attempt to help families in crisis before a formal investigation is triggered, Kansas is embedding community specialists in law enforcement departments.

"It is an effort to identify issues before a family may need to have formal contact with law enforcement or DCF and to connect services to the family." Read more. 
 

OPINION: Paul DiLorenzo writes that the key to success for the Family First Prevention Services Act is building community trust.

"When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change." Read more.