Research & Reports

The federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act provides a minimum definition of child maltreatment that includes imminent risk of serious harm. Yet, in practice, many state and county child welfare jurisdictions impose [...]

Asserting, Arguing, and Appealing the Constitutional Rights of Children in Foster Care. Read more here.

In a searing new memo released today, Lives in the Balance: A Bold Plan to Fix America’s Broken Child Protection System, the Center for the Rights of Abused Children lays bare an unflinching truth:

Last year an estimated 20,000 American children went missing from their foster care placements and group homes. Join us on zoom to learn more about the reforms we’ve helped advance including such basic [...]

Problem Nationally, over 90% of children in foster care leave the child welfare system via reunification with biological parents, guardianship, kinship placements, or adoption.1 The remaining children – approximately 9% of teens and [...]

We are driven to ensure the safety of the tens of thousands of children who go missing from foster care every year. The Center successfully passed state legislation requiring child welfare agencies to [...]

We believe every child deserves a safe and loving home. When asked by lawmakers across the country for the single reform that will help protect the most abused and neglected children in foster [...]

Center for the Rights of Abused Children Releases a Model Executive Order Protecting Social Security, Disability, and Survivor Benefits for Children in Foster Care.

Sample Executive Order An order prohibiting the state department of child safety (department) from taking rightful federal benefits away from a child in foster care and requiring the department to preserve the child’s [...]

Through our work with children, we learned that states throughout the country proactively apply for federal benefits on behalf of eligible children and then keep it, considering it a reimbursement for the child’s [...]