Child Welfare

Join four wise writers—keen observers and learners from across the social policy spectrum—for a revealing exploration of what they’ve gleaned from public policies and programs that went awry, failed, or somehow fell short of the mark. From courtrooms to classrooms, child welfare to social welfare, this discussion will add light to the summer heat.

Kids' Share 2010: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2009, a fourth annual report, looks comprehensively at trends in federal spending and tax expenditures on children. Key findings suggest that historically children have not been a budget priority. In 2009, this trend continued, as children's spending accounted for less than one-tenth of federal outlays. While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides a temporary boost, children's spending will continue to be squeezed in the next decade.

Hispanics are the largest immigrant group in the United States and the largest ethnic minority group in the nation. One in five children in the U.S. has immigrant parents. These children face a range of challenges, often caught in their communities’ changing social, political, and economic forces.

State agencies finance and administer a range of services - from foster care for abused and neglected children to prisons to long-term care of the elderly. How can large public agencies and small community organizations plan better to meet the needs of the people they serve? Traditionally, useful and timely data for planning purposes have been in short supply. Recent research linking data across a number of public agencies has highlighted some significant findings about state services and the people who use them.

Nearly one in five U.S. youths will run away from home before age 18. Almost 30 percent of these youth will do so three or more times, greatly increasing their risk of violence, crime, drugs, prostitution, STDs, and many other problems. Employing new methodology to yield estimates not available elsewhere, this paper follows a nationally representative sample of 12-year olds through their 18th birthday to discover how many youth run away from home, the number of times they ran away, and the age they first run away. Female and black youth are found to run away the most often.