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Our Mission
The National Center for Adoption Law & Policy seeks to improve the law, policies, and practices associated with child protection and adoption systems. Every day we work towards realizing the goal that all children -- especially those who have been abused or neglected or are dependent on the state for their care -- have safe, healthy, permanent homes. Our primary tools in this regard are education, advocacy, and research.
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Our research efforts seek to demonstrate the methods by which foster
care and adoption processes can be improved. Center advocacy
projects are aimed at bringing about those improvements through
changes in the law and the way the law is implemented. Finally,
our education programs are designed to assist judges, lawyers,
government managers, social workers and other process stakeholders
to know about strategies for making child welfare and adoption laws
work in ways that will provide kids the stable families they deserve
as quickly, efficiently and safely as possible.
Highlights from NCALP’s
Weekly News and Case Summaries
FEATURED NEWS STATE LAW/Foster Care/Budget Cuts
FLORIDA: “State budget brings ax down on children”
By: Anthony Westbury
The Florida State Legislature has proposed a budget which cuts services to children by $18.9 million below last year’s levels, and will cut $30.3 million more needed to pay for a growing number of adoptions and youths too old to stay in foster care. The proposed budget will force higher caseloads on social workers, making it more difficult in an already saturated system to ensure that kids are getting services they require and do not fall through the cracks. The budget also cuts subsidies to adoptive parents of special needs children by $3.8 million. “The Maintenance Adoption Subsidy provides more services for children and that has facilitated more adoptions. There's no greed on the part of parents here. We'll be losing nearly $900,000 a year in funding, " stated Christine Demetriades, the chief executive officer of United For Families. "We're trying to absorb as much as we can, but even looking at the numbers quickly I can foresee a more than $1 million deficit next year. We just cannot go on like this." Other Critics of the proposed budget note that Florida has one of the worst child abuse and neglect records in the nation, and believe the cuts cannot do anything but make a “disgraceful situation” worse.
TCPalm, May 1, 2008
Click HERE for full article
Click HERE for full edition of the National Center for Adoption Law & Policy’s Weekly News Summaries
FEATURED CASE
STATE LAW/Adoption Procedure/Investigation of Placement
CALIFORNIA: Dep’t. of Soc. Servs. v. Super. Ct.
The Court of Appeal of California, Third Appellate District, denied the petition for an extraordinary writ filed by petitioners State Department of Social Services, Adoption Services Bureau (DSS) and Siskiyou County Human Services Department (HSD), requesting that the orders of the respondent juvenile court returning two children to their prospective adoptive parent’s home be vacated. The children were removed from the home via emergency removal after the state discovered the parents had used corporal punishment on other children in the home. Three months later, the juvenile court found that the circumstances had changed and it would be in the children’s best interest to return the children to the prospective adoptive parents. The court of appeal ruled that the juvenile court had the authority to order the child returned to the home of the designated prospective adoptive parents, and that it was within the juvenile court’s discretion to look at the family’s changed circumstances since the time of removal to determine if return or permanent removal would be in the children’s best interest.
Cite: No. C057419; 2008 Cal. App. LEXIS 601 (Cal. Ct. App. April 23, 2008)
Click HERE for full opinion
Click HERE for full edition of the National Center for Adoption Law & Policy’s Weekly Case Summaries
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