Social workers and child welfare systems are helping to preserve and strengthen families.
Social workers have worked for decades to strengthen families and identify permanent connections for children in the child welfare system.
The number of children in foster care in the United States dropped to 397,000 in 2012, down more than 20 percent in just a decade, according to the Children's Bureau.
Part of the reason for this sharp decline is that more social workers and other social services professionals and child welfare systems are helping to preserve and strengthen families.
Despite these gains, much serious work remains to improve our nation's foster care system.
Approximately 24,000 young people transition out of foster care each year without permanent family. These young adults, who often leave care with limited life skills and supports, are more likely to experience unhealthy outcomes such as poverty, homelessness, incarceration and poor health.
Source: Department of Health and Human Services
Anderson, director of planning and sustainability at the Children's Home Society of North Carolina, is an expert on the plight children who transition out of foster care. He is producer of "From Place to Place," an award-winning documentary that follows six Montana young adults who aged out of foster care.
An associate professor at Louisiana State University, Maccio is an expert on LGBT youth who may be homeless or runaways. Some of these youth may also have been in the foster care system.
An NASW Senior Practice Associate, Torrico Meruvia can comment on the challenges of youth aging out of the foster care system and how to effectively support their transitions into adulthood. She authored a chapter, "Ensuring a Successful Transition to Adulthood for Foster Youths," in The Children's Bureau: Shaping a Century of Child Welfare Practices, Programs and Policies by NASW Press.
Schagrin, assistant director of children's services at the Baltimore County Department of Social Services, can talk about the state of the foster care system in the United States. Schagrin also runs a summer camp that reunites siblings who may have been separated when placed in foster care.
Testa is a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Social Work. He is a nationally recognized foster care expert and has done innovative reforms in the fields of child protection and foster care.
Zlotnik is director of NASW's Social Work Policy Institute. and author of Preparing the Workforce for Family-Centered Practice: Social Work Education and Public Human Services Partnerships . She can talk about the recruitment and retention of social workers in the child welfare workforce.
NASW Standards for Social Work Practice in Child Welfare
Adoptions and Foster Care — HelpStartsHere.org
FosterMore.org
Strengthening Health Outcomes for Foster Care Children
How to Screen Adoptive and Foster Parents By James L. Dickerson, Mardi Allen, and Daniel Pollack This publication offers guidance to social workers on how to ensure prospective adoptive and foster parents are capable of caring for children and teenagers. It includes steps needed to ensure a proper home study and to detect signs an applicant could be a child predator.
Macro Perspectives on Youths Aging Out of Foster Care Mary E. Collins Macro Perspectives on Youths Aging Out of Foster Care offers an extensive look at the issue through a macro orientation, providing a greater emphasis on the larger macro systems of society, policy, organization, and community.
The Children’s Bureau: Shaping a Century of Child Welfare Practices, Programs and Policies By Katharine Briar-Lawson, Mary McCarthy, and Nancy Dickinson Social workers launched the Children’s Bureau in 1912 and this book looks at how that agency has influenced child welfare policy over the past century.
For more information or to arrange an interview with one of our experts, contact NASW Communications Director Greg Wright at gwright@naswdc.org.