Child and Family Services Review

Hawaii is working to develop a plan to improve its child welfare system after a federal review found that the state for the third time had failed to meet several federal standards for children in its foster care system.

As part of its Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) strategy, the North Dakota Department of Human Services’ Children and Family Services (CFS) division will begin the process of conducting onsite case reviews (OCR) this week in meetings with licensed foster and adoptive families, as well as relative caregivers.

When Dana Murdock’s newborn niece entered Hawaii’s foster care system in 2016, she flew from Arkansas to Hawaii as quickly as possible. Having aged out of the child welfare system herself, Murdock knew she couldn’t let her sister’s child languish in the system, and she couldn’t blame her sister for spiraling into drug addiction and losing the child to foster care.

In June, the Trump administration hired Jerry Milner to lead the federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees federal child welfare funding and policy. The Administration for Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) was established in 1977 and oversees the Family and Youth Services Bureau as well as the much larger Children’s Bureau, which was created by President William Howard Taft back in 1912.

The Trump administration has nominated Lynn Johnson, head of the child welfare system in one of Colorado’s largest counties, to lead the Administration on Children and Families (ACF), the branch of the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees most spending on family services, foster care and adoption.