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 [...]
As Kentucky has seen an increase in the number of children in foster care, many agencies, organizations, and individuals are working in innovative and collaborative ways to respond to the needs of children who’ve experienced abuse or neglect. Below are a few examples of work that is underway in Frankfort and around the state. We’re also sharing five ways you can get involved in the new year to help ensure every kid is safe and [...]
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 [...]
As a practicing social worker and a supervisor to social work students, I take a lot of pride in the profession. Social workers play the role of researchers, advocates, mediators, therapists, brokers, and many, many more identities that involve empowering individuals and groups. As we consider the role social workers play in Kentucky, consider where you see social workers in action: schools, hospitals, substance abuse treatment centers, universities, and in the halls of our state [...]
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 [...]
Every year, the first Sunday after Labor Day, the United States recognizes and celebrates Grandparents. Grandparents are important members of our families as they are the keepers of our family history, provide insight and advice on life’s milestones, and help keep family connected. In Kentucky, there are tens of thousands of grandparents who have also stepped up to raise their grandchildren. There are several reasons for grandparents to raise their grandchildren, including parental death, parental substance abuse, military [...]
Every kid needs a family and a safe place to call home. On January 27, 2017, the Sixth Circuit Court ruled that the Cabinet for Health and Family Services (Cabinet) must provide foster care maintenance payments to “approved” relatives caring for children placed by the Cabinet, affirming that core belief in the importance of family. When kids can’t live safely with their parents, the next best alternative is to live with a family member. Placement [...]
