The Department for Community Based Services’ annual report on child fatalities and near fatalities due to abuse and neglect was released last month. This report is mandated by law and provides information on the fatalities and near fatalities due to the maltreatment of children under the age of 18 in Kentucky. The report details data on fatalities and near fatalities and discusses demographic information as well as perpetrator information and risk factors present in the [...]

There are nearly 100,000 Kentucky kids living in kinship care. While beneficial for children, kinship care can pose considerable financial, legal, and emotional challenges for caregivers. Research has shown that kinship caregivers go to great lengths to meet the needs of the relative children, however, their efforts often come at the expense of their own personal care. Social support contributes to caregivers’ ability to provide a nurturing environment for the children in their care [...]

When children cannot remain safely with their parents, grandparents, other relatives, and close family friends often step up to help raise them. There have been a lot of changes over the last few months in Kentucky around services and supports related to relatives and close family friends raising children, also known as kinship care and fictive kin care. To learn more, check out the Cabinet for Health and Family Services’ new KY FACES website. If [...]

*Many venues for the regional convenings are at capacity. Please review the list below for those not yet sold out as well as links to view the presentations live via Facebook. Find resources from past convenings here. The Federal Family First Prevention Services Act can be implemented as early as October of 2019, and Kentucky is committed to being one of the first states to implement it. Kentucky Youth Advocates, in partnership with the Department [...]

There are a lot of changes happening within the child welfare system in Kentucky due to recent state policy changes, agency commitments from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, and both state and federal funding that will have a profound impact on how our child welfare system functions and supports Kentucky children and families. The Cabinet has begun work on implementing House Bill 1, along with other needed reforms to transform the way our [...]

May is National Foster Care Month and we’re celebrating state and federal legislative changes that will positively impact youth in foster care in 2018 and beyond. Two major legislative reforms happened in recent months, first in Congress, and then in the Kentucky legislature. We discussed here how House Bill 1, which received bipartisan support by the Kentucky Senators and Representatives, will help ensure more kids in Kentucky have safe, permanent homes. These changes will be [...]

As House Bill 1 moves through the Kentucky legislature, we wanted to take a deeper look into the specifics of the bill and its components. HB 1, which is co-sponsored by Representatives David Meade and Joni Jenkins, seeks to keep kids safe and improve how Kentucky responds to and supports families. The bill is a big step toward getting us to a place where all the parts of the child welfare system and related policies [...]

All Kentucky kids deserve to be in safe, loving, and stable homes. Last year, the House Working Group on Adoptions began formally meeting with the goal of bringing innovative reforms to the adoption process in Kentucky. However, the Working Group moved well beyond the scope of adoptions and took a comprehensive look at the whole continuum of care within the child welfare system. With the bipartisan leadership of Representatives David Meade and Joni Jenkins, the [...]