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Articles by Kelley Fong
ANNUAL REPORT: Kansas Continues to Fail Children in Foster Care, Leaving Vulnerable Youth Without Stability and Care
(Kansas City, KS)—Today, the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) released its annual report for 2025 reviewing the State of Kansas and the Department for Children and Families’ (DCF) contractors’ compliance with the terms of a 2021 Settlement Agreement concerning placement stability and services for children in the foster care system.The report shows that, despite improvements in crisis intervention and health screenings, the State is far from achieving the reforms it agreed to and...
How California reduced foster care without risking kids | Opinion Original
California now has about 18,000 fewer children in foster care than five years ago, with major declines in LA County and new reforms to protect families. Today, approximately 18,000 fewer California children are in foster care than five years ago — an astonishing 32% drop. In some places, the declines are even steeper: Los Angeles County, for example, has halved its foster care population. A common trope in child welfare is that foster care reductions come at the expense of child safety.
Annual Report Finds Kansas Foster Youth Still Facing Placement Instability and Gaps in Mental Health Care
(Kansas City, KS)—Today, the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) released its annual report reviewing the State of Kansas and its contractors’ 2024 compliance with their commitments regarding services for youth in the foster system. While the State has made some improvements in services and outcomes for children in DCF custody, it continues to face workforce challenges and an urgent need to address placement instability.
Tax Changes in the Federal Budget Bill Are a Disaster for Many Orange County Families
Anyone raising children in Orange County knows that it’s expensive. In fact, we have the distinction of being one of the top 10 most expensive places to live in the country. Many jobs—especially the service jobs that do essential work caring for our children and elders, bringing us food, cleaning our office buildings, and so much more—don’t pay enough to cover basic needs.
Investigating Families
Hardcover Price: $32.00/£28.00 ISBN: Published (US): Oct 10, 2023 Published (UK): Dec 5, 2023 Copyright: 2023 Pages: 296 Size: 6.13 x 9.25 in. Illus: 2 b/w illus. 1 table. ebook Price: $32.00/£28.00 ISBN: Published (US): Oct 10, 2023 Published (UK): Dec 5, 2023 Copyright: 2023 Pages: 296 Size: 6.13 x 9.25 in. Illus: 2 b/w illus. 1 table.
- The Imprint
The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) — bipartisan legislation signed into law by President Bill Clinton to great fanfare —– recently turned 25. The law sought to expedite adoptions from foster care at a time when children spent years on average in foster care, and it garnered support by portraying their parents as irredeemable, forever unfit for parenting.
Administrative Burdens in Child Welfare Systems
COMPLIANCE COSTS Child protection agencies and family courts require parents to participate in services from allied providers, attend visits and court hearings at a specified time and place, and submit to surveillance and monitoring. In the child welfare context, compliance in these activities becomes the way of measuring not only parents’ commitment to their children, but also the extent to which they have “taken responsibility” for the factors that brought them to the attention of the system.
“The Tool We Have”: Why Child Protective Services Investigates So Many Families and How Even Good Intentions Backfire
A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families. In recent months, conversations around the role of the police have drawn mainstream attention to what contemporary policing actually encompasses. Responding to violent crime constitutes only a small share of police work; instead, we often call on armed officers to address homelessness, mental illness, addiction, and other social adversities.
Let’s Redouble Our Efforts to End Incarceration for Girls
By Hannah Green and Jessica Nowlan As advocates for community-based alternatives to incarceration and policing, we’re pleased to see how Santa Clara County and some other jurisdictions are acting with surprising speed and resolve to reduce the populations in their juvenile justice facilities, especially for girls and gender expansive youth of color. But counties could easily return to their dependence on incarceration once this crisis has passed.
Los Angeles to Settle Court Case on Mental Heatlh of Foster Youth
After 17 years of operating under a consent decree, Los Angeles County has reached an agreement to extricate itself from a long-running federal lawsuit that sought to address gaps in mental health care services for children in foster care in California. The plaintiffs announced the agreement Wednesday in Katie A. v.
Foster Youth and Alumni Speak Up for Special Groups Among Them
Foster youth often feel misunderstood and marginalized by society as a whole. Within the larger foster youth community, however, certain groups must deal with even more stress. Those groups, and how to help them build fulfilling lives, are the subjects of the latest set of policy recommendations by the National Foster Care Youth and Alumni Policy Council.
Quiet Brooklyn Senator Montgomery Led On Juvenile Justice
‘Velmanette builds the wagons, puts them on the road, and then everybody else jumps on them’ Brooklyn State Senator Velmanette Montgomery. Credit: Christine Ongjoco There’s a poorly lit, windowless courtroom in lower Manhattan that rarely attracts an audience. It hears child abuse and neglect cases and other family matters. Few who aren’t party to the proceedings could bear watching them — even the judges assigned there burn out quickly from the stress and anguish.
‘Forgotten Students’ Calls on Congress to Aid Foster Youth on Campus
The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening to crush the college dreams of thousands of people who will soon be aging out of foster care, and Congress must take urgent steps to avoid these devastating outcomes, according to a report being released this week.
Missouri Tigers Football Players Tackle Foster Care Prevention
Missouri’s football team will help Care Portal steer support to families in crisis. Photo courtesy of Athlon Sports This weekend’s football season opener against the Alabama Crimson Tide hasn’t been the only thing on the minds of the Missouri Tigers of late. That’s because Mizzou recently became the second NCAA Division I football program to partner with the Global Orphan Project to help keep kids out of foster care in Missouri and beyond if possible.
Texas Prepares for $26 Million Hit on Residential Foster Care
Texas State Capitol in Austin. Despite being mired in a federal lawsuit largely focused on children in group placements, the state’s child welfare agency seems likely to give up federal funds rather than meet new requirements on residential foster care. The Family First Prevention Services Act is slated to take effect in the state next fall, just months after Texas’s legislative session.
‘Forgotten Students’ Calls on Congress to Aid Foster Youth on Campus
The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening to crush the college dreams of thousands of people who will soon be aging out of foster care, and Congress must take urgent steps to avoid these devastating outcomes, according to a report being released this week.
Washington Program Prevented Student Homelessness on Campuses
Brianna Franco, a communications major at Seattle Pacific University, has received assistance from a state-funded program to prevent homelessness, Passport to College. Photo courtesy of Franco. In March, as college campuses nationwide began shutting down to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus and students fled home to their childhood bedrooms, foster youth and the homeless had potentially everything to lose if they were forced to turn in their dorm keys.
We Shouldn’t Rely on CPS To Address Family Adversity
Researcher Kelley Fong, Georgia Tech University For many parents, it’s their worst fear: a knock on the door from a state social worker with the power to take their children. With 1 in 3 children nationwide experiencing a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation during childhood following a report of child maltreatment, this experience is all too common for U.S. families, especially Black and Native American families.
Children of Incarcerated Parents Struggle To Be Seen
Members of the Osborne Association’s Youth Action Council met with New York State Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie this summer in support of a bill to keep incarcerated New Yorkers closer to their families. Photo courtesy of the Osborne Association. As the crippling coronavirus shutdown heads into its seventh month, children of incarcerated parents remain even more isolated from their loved ones behind bars – a still largely invisible population under special strain during COVID-19.
What Do Schools Report to CPS? One State's Experience
The vast majority of reports of child abuse and neglect emanate from adults outside a child’s family or neighborhood. Most calls come from so-called “mandated reporters,” who are required to disclose any concerns about child safety with protection officials. Some states classify all adults as mandated reporters, but generally, the term refers to professionals in the community such as police officers, doctors and nurses, or mental health counselors.
Getting Eyes in the Home: Child Protective Services Investigations and State Surveillance of Family Life
Abramovitz, Mimi . 1988. Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present. Boston: South End Press. Google Scholar Annie, E . Casey Foundation . 2015. The Connecticut Turnaround. Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation. Google Scholar Arendell, Terry . 2000. “Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade’s Scholarship.” Journal of Marriage and Family 62(4):1192–20. Google Scholar | Crossref Asad, Asad L. 2020.
Getting Eyes in the Home: Child Protective Services Investigations and State Surveillance of Family Life
Abramovitz, Mimi . 1988. Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present. Boston: South End Press. Google Scholar Annie, E . Casey Foundation . 2015. The Connecticut Turnaround. Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation. Google Scholar Arendell, Terry . 2000. “Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade’s Scholarship.” Journal of Marriage and Family 62(4):1192–20. Google Scholar | Crossref Asad, Asad L. 2020.
Timing Is Everything: Late Registration and Stratified Access to School Choice
André-Bechely, Lois . 2005. Could It Be Otherwise? Parents and the Inequities of Public School Choice. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Archbald, Douglas A. 2004. “School Choice, Magnet Schools, and the Liberation Model: An Empirical Study.” Sociology of Education 77(4):283–310. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Bell, Courtney . 2009. “Geography in Parental Choice.” American Journal of Education 115(4):493–521. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Bifulco, Robert, Ladd, Helen F., Ross, Stephen L. 2009.
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