CDF submitted comments on the proposed rule on HUD's implementation of the Fair Housing Act's Disparate Impact Standard. We urged HUD to immediately withdraw the proposed rule and instead advance housing policies that strengthen - not undermine - the disparate impact theory that allows for stable, safe and affordable housing for all.
Earlier this school year, 6-year-old Kaia was handcuffed, arrested, and taken to a juvenile detention center where she was charged with battery for having a tantrum in her first grade class. How Kaia was treated is appalling, and yet the criminalization of our children is all too common: A child is arrested every 39 seconds in America and about 76,000 children are placed in the adult criminal justice system annually.
Coordination and partnership between school systems and child welfare systems is essential. Teachers, who in most states are mandatory reporters, often serve as the frontline when it comes to identifying children in their classrooms who might be suffering from abuse or neglect and filing reports with their local child welfare agencies. As a result, educators and other school staff make up the largest percentage of abuse and neglect reports, and protect countless children every year by. But recently we’ve seen several troubling cases of schools misusing—and thus endangering—this important relationship.
CDF joined three dozen organizations and leaders in filing a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to consider the impact of rescinding DACA on beneficiaries’ children, whose interests were glaringly absent in the Trump administration’s 2017 decision.
In February 2018, after many years of attempts, the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 was signed into law. Implemented properly, this landmark law has the potential to change the face of child welfare as we know it.