History
In 1909. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt convened a While House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children. For the first time, this brought together child welfare advocates from across the United States. In 1915, Carl Christian Carstens, the executive officer of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, presented a report at the National Conference of Charities and Correction (NCCC) meeting in Baltimore, detailing the need for cooperation among child welfare groups, the need for community planning, and the need for standards of child care. This resulted in the creation of the Bureau for the Exchange of Information among Child Helping Agencies (BEI) under the auspices and funding of the Russell Sage Foundation. In 1917, the BEI became an independent non-profit association. Following a series of national conferences, the BEI sought to create a permanent national organization for all aspects of child welfare. With the financial assistance of the Commonwealth Fund the CWLA was organized in 1920 [3] with Carl Carstens as its CEO, and formally began work on January 2, 1921 in New York City. [6] [7]
While originally founded as a federation of sixty-five service-providing organizations, Carstens, among the most prominent of national child welfare leaders and an opponent of orphanages, wielded it into a force for the development of regulations, especially with regard to child-placement and adoption. [8]
In 1985, the CWLA moved its headquarters from New York City to Washington, D.C. [8] In 2008, the organization had Rep. Chaka Fattah introduce a bill in the U.S. Congress that would have created the White House Conference on Children and Youth for 2010; [9] however, the bill did not pass. [10]
The Indian Adoption Project
From 1958 to 1967, the CCWLA ran the Indian Adoption Project together with the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the U.S. Department of Interior. Its mission was to place Native American children, primarily from poor households, with mainstream American families. [11] It was criticized by Margaret Atwood and others [12] as "the kidnapping of indigenous children", although most children were removed from their parents care through legal process, [13] [14] The Child Welfare League of America continued to assist in the adoption of Native American children even after 1967 when the program was ended. [13] [14] In 1978, Congressional Hearings found that “the wholesale separation of Indian children from their families is perhaps the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today.” [15] This resulted in the Indian Child Welfare Act. [16] In June 2001, Child Welfare League Executive Director Shay Bilchik formally apologized for the Indian Adoption Project saying “No matter how well intentioned and how squarely in the mainstream this was at the time, it was wrong; it was hurtful; and it reflected a kind of bias that surfaces feelings of shame.” [17]
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.
Closed adoption is a process by which an infant is adopted by another family, and the record of the biological parent(s) is kept sealed. Often, the biological father is not recorded—even on the original birth certificate. An adoption of an older child who already knows their biological parent(s) cannot be made closed or secret. This used to be the most traditional and popular type of adoption, peaking in the decades of the post-World War II Baby Scoop Era. It still exists today, but it exists alongside the practice of open adoption. The sealed records effectively prevent the adoptee and the biological parents from finding, or even knowing anything about each other. However, the emergence of non-profit organizations and private companies to assist individuals with their sealed records has been effective in helping people who want to connect with biological relatives to do so.
The United States Children's Bureau is a federal agency founded in 1912, organized under the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families. Today, the bureau's operations involve improving child abuse prevention, foster care, and adoption. Historically, its work was much broader, as shown by the 1912 act which created and funded it:
The said bureau shall investigate and report to [the Department of Commerce and Labor] upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people, and shall especially investigate the questions of infant mortality, the birth-rate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dangerous occupations, accidents and diseases of children, employment, legislation affecting children in the several states and territories.
In the United States, adoption is the process of creating a legal parent–child relationship between a child and a parent who was not automatically recognized as the child's parent at birth.
Beulah George "Georgia" Tann was an American social worker and child trafficker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an unlicensed adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s to 1950. Young children were kidnapped and then sold to wealthy families, abused, or—in some instances—murdered. A state investigation into numerous cases of adoption fraud led to the institution's closure in 1950. Tann died of cancer before the investigation made its findings public.
Catholic Charities USA is the national voluntary membership organization for Catholic Charities agencies throughout the United States and its territories. Catholic Charities USA is a member of Caritas Internationalis, an international federation of Catholic social service organizations. Catholic Charities USA is the national office of 167 local Catholic Charities agencies nationwide.
Child protective services (CPS) is the name of an agency responsible for providing child protection, which includes responding to reports of child abuse or neglect. Some countries and US states use other names, often attempting to reflect more family-centered practices, such as department of children and family services (DCFS). CPS is also sometimes known by the name of department of social services, though these terms more often have a broader meaning.
The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that governs jurisdiction over the removal of American Indian children from their families in custody, foster care and adoption cases.
Casey Family Programs (CFP) is a national operating foundation focused on foster care and child welfare.
The White House Conference on Children and Youth was a series of meetings hosted over 60 years by the President of the United States of America, and the first White House conference ever held. Under the leadership of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon, the Conferences involved thousands of delegates from around the country. According to the Child Welfare League of America, "the conferences were devoted to improving the lives of children across the Nation." Each conference focused on issues relevant to the decade in which the conference was held.
Adoption in Australia deals with the adoption process in the various parts of Australia, whereby a person assumes or acquires the permanent, legal status of parenthood in relation to a child under the age of 18 in place of the child's birth or biological parents. Australia classifies adoptions as local adoptions, and intercountry adoptions. Known child adoptions are a form of local adoptions.
The Association on American Indian Affairs is a nonprofit human rights charity located in Rockville, Maryland. Founded in 1922, it is dedicated to protecting the rights of Native Americans.
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, 490 U.S. 30 (1989), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Indian Child Welfare Act governed adoptions of Indian children. It ruled that a tribal court had jurisdiction over a state court, regardless of the location of birth of the child, if the child or the natural parents resided on the reservation.
The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 was an Act of Congress in the United States signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 7, 2008. It was previously unanimously passed in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate. The law made numerous changes to the child welfare system, mostly to Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, which covers federal payments to states for foster care and adoption assistance. According to child welfare experts and advocates, the law made the most significant federal improvements to the child welfare system in over a decade.
The Sixties Scoop, also known as The Scoop, was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.
Until 2017, laws related to LGBTQ+ couples adopting children varied by state. Some states granted full adoption rights to same-sex couples, while others banned same-sex adoption or only allowed one partner in a same-sex relationship to adopt the biological child of the other.
Foster care is the term used for a system in which a minor who has been made a ward or a non-minor, typically aged 18–21, who volunteers for placement, is placed in a relative placement, a non-related extended family (NREFM) placement, a community family home, an institution, a group home (residential child care community, residential treatment center, etc. Relative, NREFM, and community caregivers certified by the state are typically referred to as "foster parents," "kin caregivers," "resource parents," or other local terms. The placement of the child is usually arranged through state or county social services. The institution, group home, or caregiver is reimbursed for the expenses related to caring for the child. The state via the family court and child protection agency stand in loco parentis to the minor, making all legal decisions, while the caregiver is responsible for the day-to-day care of the minor. Even while their child is in Care, typically birth parents retain Education and Medical rights and the right to contact with their child unless parental rights are terminated by the Court.
The Child Welfare Information Gateway is the congressionally mandated and funded information service of the United States Children's Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, United States Department of Health and Human Services. It was established in 2006 to replace the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information and the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse. The Child Welfare Information Gateway covers child-welfare topics, including family-centered practice, child abuse and neglect, abuse and neglect prevention, child protection, family preservation and support, foster care, achieving and maintaining permanency, adoption, management of child welfare agencies and related topics such as child and family assessment, laws and policies, statistics and coincident family issues. Its website links to sources of print and electronic publications, websites, databases and online learning tools on these topics.
The Interethnic Placement Act, also known as IEPA or the Interethnic Placement Provisions, was enacted as title I, subtitle H, section 1808, Removal of Barriers to Interethnic Adoption, as part of the Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996 in the United States. Advocates of the amendments argued that it strengthened and clarified the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act of 1994.
Emma Octavia Lundberg was a Swedish-American child welfare advocate.
