By Subject: Child Welfare | Early Childhood Education | Home Visiting | K-12 Education | Maternal and Child Health | Prenatal-to-Age-Three
Our 13th annual State of Child Welfare report provides a 5-year analysis of how Pennsylvania fares with practices around child safety, placement, and permanency and includes county-level data and statewide and geographic trends to improve the child welfare system. We continue to analyze racial disparity and disproportionality across the child welfare system’s population (age 0-20).
Transition age youth—age 14 to 21—are older youth in the foster care system transitioning to permanency with a caregiver or aging out of the system to adulthood. Transition age youth often struggle with this life transition due to unique circumstances with being a foster child.
In an effort to improve Pennsylvania’s child welfare system, our 12th annual State of Child Welfare – a five-year analysis of how Pennsylvania fares with practices around child safety, placement and permanency – raises concerns about the need to strengthen the child welfare system as it uses data from 2020 – only the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic – that shows decreases in child protective services reporting and the number of children placed in foster care statewide.
The Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) is historic child welfare legislation enacted in February 2018 as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act. This fact sheet provides an update on the state Family First Prevention Services Act plan, promoting the use of front-end, evidence-based services and aims to prevent out-of-home placements for children.
Front-line workers, those we think of as essential in our communities and across the Commonwealth, include the child welfare caseworkers who hold high-stress, low-reward jobs to help the children and families they serve. However, high rates of turnover in this field create long-term consequences in practice, policy and state and county budgets.
