WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a senior member and former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, today participated in a hearing to examine the impacts of the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act. Before questioning, Grassley thanked committee leaders for calling attention to the challenges and opportunities facing America’s child welfare system during National Foster Care Month. He is the co-founder and co-chair of the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth.
“We must continue discussing how to serve vulnerable children and families who are at-risk of entering the child welfare system and finding permanency for children in foster care,” Grassley said. “Dealing with foster care over a long period of time – maybe 25 or 30 years – I’ve found when you ask these kids who go from foster care to foster care home maybe two or three times a year what they want, they want permanency. They want to have a home, and they’d like to have a mom and dad.”
Grassley’s Child Welfare Record and Priorities:
- Last week, Grassley met with Casey Family Programs about ways to support families and children, as well as prevention services for at-risk youth.
- Grassley is advancing a bipartisan bill to enhance care and interagency information-sharing on missing and runaway foster youth.
- This Congress, Grassley is spearheading bipartisan legislation to strengthen recruitment, retention and support for foster parents by fixing the feedback process and bolstering data collection.
- In 2019, Grassley penned an op-ed in The Gazette regarding strains across the foster care system and highlighting the value of community engagement.
- Each year since 2014, Grassley has authored a resolution marking May as National Foster Care Month, which recognizes the resiliency of children in foster care and all who work to improve their circumstances.
- In 2011, Grassley worked to?reauthorize grants?that support families struggling with substance abuse and better ensure kids’ safety and well-being. He first established the grants in 2006 through his Child and Family Services Improvement Act.
- In 2008, Grassley led the bipartisan effort to pass the?Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoption Act. The law provided federal incentives for states to move children from foster care to adoptive homes and included Grassley’s legislation to make it easier for foster children to stay in their home communities. It also created an extended foster care option to help kids who would be required to leave foster care at age 18.
- In 1997, Grassley worked to advance the?Adoption and Safe Families Act, which drastically increased the numbers of adoptions from foster care across the country.
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