All Featured Highlights
- Mar 25, 2011 | CLASP Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program Guidance from HHS Read Online
- Mar 30, 2011 | Stephanie Schmit Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program: February 2011 SIR Analysis Download PDF
- Sep 29, 2010 Relative Foster Care Licensing Waivers in the States: Policies and Possibilities This report, a joint project of CLASP and the ABA Center on Children and the Law, prepared in collaboration with ChildFocus, the Children's Defense Fund, Generations United and the Grandfamilies State Law and Policy Resource Center. This document presents background information on foster care licensing for relatives. It also includes an overview of Title IV-E reimbursement for relative foster homes and information on the current landscape of waivers of foster home licensing standards, as well as recommendations for licensing standards that can help further the goal of maintaining family connections for children in foster care. Download PDF
- Aug 18, 2010 | Rutledge Q. Hutson & Tiffany Conway Perrin Comments on Proposed Criteria for Evidence of Effectiveness of Home Visiting Program Models These comments, submitted to the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Administration for Children and Families, were submitted in response to the proposed criteria for evidence of effectiveness of home visiting program models to be implemented by states under the new home visiting program established in the Affordable Care Act. CLASP's comments include recommendations for strengthening the final criteria so that they better reflect the law's goal of helping states build the capacity to implement a coordinated system of early childhood home visitation. The recommendations also encourage strengthening the final criteria by providing much needed information, particularly as related to process, so that states are well-prepared to update their state plans and dialogue with HRSA/ACF as appropriate. Download PDF
- Aug 09, 2010 | Rutledge Q. Hutson Comments to Office of Child Support Enforcement: Proposed Rulemaking on Safeguarding Child Support Information These comments address proposed changes to the sharing of child support information specifically as related to information sharing with child welfare agencies for child welfare purposes. CLASP hopes that the final regulations more clearly identify what information can be shared to help child welfare agencies carry out their responsibilities under Titles IV-B and IV-E and that, in particular, they clarify how information regarding family violence can be shared in a safe and appropriate manner. Download PDF
- Mar 19, 2010 | Tiffany Conway Perrin Detailed Summary of Home Visitation Program in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act included, among other critical provisions, $1.5 billion in mandatory funding over 5 years for high quality, evidence-based, voluntary early childhood home visitation services. This investment will significantly expand home visitation services, helping to ensure that more children have the opportunity to grow up healthy, safe, ready to learn and able to become productive members of society. This summary details the provisions of the new program. Download PDF
- Feb 04, 2010 | Rutledge Q. Hutson President’s Budget Calls for Key Investments in our Most Vulnerable Children and Families Our nation's children will be safe and well cared for only when we invest in a continuum of services including: prevention and early intervention services that help prevent child abuse and neglect whenever possible; effective treatment services for children who experience maltreatment and their families; and aftercare services that support children and their families once a crisis is stabilized so that further abuse and neglect do not occur. President Obama's 2011 budget takes a number of positive steps towards supporting this continuum, but The Administration and the Congress must take additional steps to make up for years of underinvestment in critical services for our nation's most vulnerable children. Read Online
- Jan 21, 2010 State Fact Sheets on Child Welfare Funding These fact sheets, compiled as part of a joint project of CLASP and the Children's Defense Fund, are designed to help policymakers, advocates, and the public better understand the complex financing structure of child welfare services in the states, and to enable them to work effectively toward national, state and local reforms that will promote a child welfare system that helps keep children and families out of crisis, provides specialized treatment services for those that do experience crisis and provides supportive services to families after a crisis has stabilized. Read Online
- Dec 11, 2009 | Rutledge Q. Hutson Poverty and Child Maltreatment: Common Challenges and Solutions This presentation looks at the connections between child maltreatment and poverty and explores common challenges and solutions to addressing both issues. In particular, the presentation focuses on the opportunities for TANF and child welfare agencies to work together under current law to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families and begins to examine enhancements that could be made when the TANF program is reauthorized (the current program will expire in 2010). Download PDF
- Oct 03, 2008 | Rutledge Q. Hutson Protecting Children and Strengthening Families Too many children experience abuse and neglect with negative lifelong consequences. Too few children get the services and supports they need to heal. Yet, proven and promising practices can reduce maltreatment and ameliorate harm. Taking these practices to scale will require federal investment and leadership in five strategic areas. We must: (1) increase prevention and early intervention services that help keep children and families out of crisis; (2) increase specialized treatment services for those children and families that do experience crisis; (3) increase services to support families after a crisis has stabilized (including birth families, as well as kinship and adoptive families created when parents are unable to care for their children); (4) enhance the quality of the workforce providing services to children and families; and (5) improve accountability both for dollars spent and outcomes achieved. Together these efforts will improve the lives of millions of children across the nation. Download PDF
- Mar 02, 2007 | Tiffany Conway and Rutledge Q. Hutson Is Kinship Care Good For Kids? More than 2.5 million children are being raised by grandparents and other relatives because their parents are unable--for a variety of reasons--to care for them. A number of states have utilized subsidized guardianship programs as a way of supporting these "kinship families." Some wonder whether kinship care is a good thing--and how we know this. This fact sheet addresses these often unasked but crucial questions. Download PDF
- Jan 15, 2003 | Rutledge Q. Hutson A Vision for Eliminating Poverty and Family Violence: Transforming Child Welfare and TANF in El Paso County, Colorado Download PDF