Foster Care to Adoption

Of the 428,000 children in foster care in the U.S., over 30% cannot be returned to their families and are waiting to be adopted. 135,000 children are adopted each year and there are currently 1.5 million adopted children in the United States. 59% are from the child welfare (or foster) system. Children enter foster care through no fault of their own because they have been abused, neglected or abandoned. These children are in the temporary custody of the state while their birth parents are given the opportunity to complete services that will allow the children to be returned to them if it is in the children’s best interest. Unfortunately, 30% of them never make it.

Somewhere along the line America's pop culture began to malign millennials. They became known as the narcissistic generation that would rather play video games than outdoor sports; craved YouTube fame; wanted only to be tech entrepreneurs; decorated with laptops and futons; were summed up as lazy and self-centered.

Social workers Dre’ Johnson and Renee Brean are part of a pioneering new approach to policing in Rochester, New York. They belong to the city's “person in crisis” team – a unit of mental health and behavioral professionals who attend police calls where a person may be suffering a mental health episode.

The premise behind the "person in crisis" team is simple: it contends that for all their training and skills, police are not equipped to deal with the complexities that a mental health crisis requires. By sending mental health professionals along to 911 calls that may involve potential psychological breakdowns, officials hope that these situations can be dealt with more sensitively, and more safely.

For survivors, Justice is more About healing and Preventing Future Trafficking!

Today is World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, when we to raise awareness about human trafficking, and promote and protect the rights of trafficking victims. 

Since reporting on the VA hospital scandals that plagued the Veteran’s Administration, this blog checks in with the VA healthcare system every year to report any improvements. This year, rather than rating the system based on metrics used to measure service efficiency, 2,400 veterans were asked about the care they were receiving at the VA hospitals.

The COVID-19 pandemic swept the nation, killing more than 184,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. The post pandemic response to this massacre has been confusion, doubt, and indecision on the part of the elderly and their caregivers about the use of long-term care facilities.

This week's Office of Justice grant writing tips, puts the focus on understanding the process of matching/cost-sharing requirements and how to account for them.  For additional tips about building a better budget for grant writing please see FamCare's blog, Funding Tips From the OJP...Building a Better Budget. 

As social workers keep their heads down tirelessly toiling away on individual case work, we thought it might be helpful to share with them the "big picture" perspective of their profession published by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) as its 2021 Blueprint of Federal Social Policy Priorities. It articulates meaningful actions our society should take to address the COVID-19 crisis, promote mental and behavioral health, eliminate systemic racism, and ensure civil and human rights for all. In case you missed it, here is a summary of your profession's "big picture" wish list for 2021.

We truly enjoy sharing with our readers not only grant funding opportunities but resources and information that might make the grant writing process seem less cumbersome. This week the OJP is highlighting their Glossary of Terms that are associated with the JustGrants system. 

Recent discussions with social workers from six different disciplines around the country centered around the lasting effects this dreadful pandemic has had on their constituents. Everyone agreed that the novel coronavirus and associated diseases have caused unprecedented - disruption.