Child welfare experts say the new Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 represents the most significant federal reforms for children in foster care in more than a decade. This guidebook can help ensure full and prompt implementation of the improvements in the new law for children being raised by grandparents and other relatives.

Children's Rights reports that Wisconsin officials have agreed to an aggressive new plan aimed at fixing persistent problems in the state-run system responsible for providing care and protection to abused and neglected children in Milwaukee.

Only about 10 percent of students from foster care enroll in higher education -- with less than 2 percent earning bachelor's degrees. This Casey Family Programs resource can assist colleges in improving their support for students coming from foster care.

A child under the age of five is twice as likely to die in a residential fire as the rest of the population. Here are tools and information for parents and caregivers on improving fire safety.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that at least 44 states are facing budget shortfalls -- the budget gaps for the remainder of this fiscal year to 2011 are estimated to more than $350 billion. At least 30 states have made or proposed budget cuts that threaten vital services, including public health, education and state workforce reductions.

On October 7, 2008, President Bush signed into law the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-351). It delinks adoption assistance from the old AFDC program, enables federal payments for kinship care guardians, and will allow states to extend foster care services to young people up to age 21. The Child Welfare League of America has the details.

The Maryland-based Kennedy Krieger Institute is actively recruiting foster, respite and adoptive parents. The Institute offers specialized training, emergency coverage, 24-hour assistance, monthly support groups and more. (If you like the model but don't live in Maryland, here's a chance to learn more and get something started in your state.)

October 2008, President Bush signed into law two bills aimed at keeping children safer and healthier: the Protect Our Children Act and the Reconnecting Homeless Youth Act. The latter provides a funding increase for programs serving homeless youth and "mandates a study on runaway and homeless youth every five years in order know how to serve this group properly," Youth Today reports.

In this October 2008 blog entry, Hershel Sarbin reacts to a recent CFK article on Hope Meadows, an intergenerational community launched in 1993, and how “smartly its founders have adapted to changing conditions over the years.” Therein lies a model for all of us, he says.

A new report from Global Issues Resource Center documents the status of youth and teen courts, a juvenile justice prevention and intervention program that uses volunteer youth to help sentence their peers. In 1993, fewer than 75 local youth and teen courts existed in a dozen states -- in 2008, more than 1,000 communities operate these local juvenile justice programs.