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This Information Memorandum (IM) urges all state and tribal title IV-E agencies, courts, administrative offices of the courts, and Court Improvement Programs to work together to ensure that parents, children and youth, and child welfare agencies, receive high quality legal representation at all stages of child welfare proceedings, and to maximize allowable title IV-E administrative reimbursement for children who are candidates for title IV-E foster care or who are in title IV-E foster care and their parent(s) in foster care legal proceedings.
This Information Memoranda (IM) informs title IV-E agencies that the Children’s Bureau (CB) published a final rule to revise the AFCARS data elements in the Federal Register on May 12, 2020.
This Information Memoranda (IM) provides information on best practices, resources, and recommendations for using foster care as a support for families in a way that mitigates the trauma of removal for the child and parents, expedites safe and successful reunification, and improves parent and child well-being outcomes. This Information Memorandum (IM) emphasizes the importance of state and tribal child welfare communities building and supporting relationships between resource families and parents to facilitate improved engagement of parents, promote timely reunification, build protective capacities in parents, and strengthen overall child and family well-being, while ensuring child safety.
This information memorandum provides information on research, best practices, resources and recommendations for providing children and youth in out-of-home care safe, meaningful and high frequency family time that strengthens the family, expedites reunification and improves parent and child well-being outcomes.
The purpose of this Information Memorandum (IM) is to demonstrate that family and youth voice are critical to a well-functioning child welfare system and to strongly encourage all public child welfare agencies, dependency courts, and Court Improvement Programs to work together to ensure that family and youth voice are central in child welfare program planning and improvement efforts.
This Information Memorandum (IM) notifies states that the Children’s Bureau is disbursing funding provided under section 437(g) of the Act as an increase in the title IV-B subpart 2 Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program allocation to support an electronic interstate case-processing system to expedite interstate placements of children in foster, guardianship or adoptive homes, and to provide an example of such an electronic interstate system.
This Information Memorandum (IM) informs States and Tribes of the enactment of the Family First Prevention Services Act and provides basic information on the new law.
This Information Memorandum (IM) informs title IV-E agencies that for adoption assistance agreements entered into on or after October 1, 2017, eligibility for title IV-E adoption assistance must be determined using the “applicable child” eligibility criteria described in section 473(a)(2)(C)(ii) of the Social Security Act.
This IM alerts title IV-E agencies to updated and streamlined procedures that the Department of Health and Human Services will follow in considering requests to extend child welfare waiver demonstration projects approved under the authority of section 1130 of the Social Security Act.