Hidden foster care
There is a silent epidemic in this country affecting an untold number of children and families. Children are being removed from their families by child protective agencies and placed into informal living arrangements with family members or community members without the protection and services offered by foster care. This is known as “hidden foster care.”
These arrangements place children and their caregivers at risk. In an attempt to avoid the strict licensing requirements of foster care, investigators place children with adults close to the child or their parents. These undocumented arrangements are made without judicial involvement, which offers swift placement for children but denies the children and their caregivers access to the funds, health care and social support offered to licensed foster parents.
There is a bill before the 118th Congress that proposes to rectify these hidden placements. The Foster Care Placement Transparency Act (Senate Bill 5214) is sitting in the Committee on Finance. It is vital that constituents reach out to their lawmakers to advance this bill.
The bill requires states to document the placement, services offered and outcomes of these informal placements. Further, a mandatory annual report to Congress detailing the cases and the outcomes will be required. This oversight will force states to follow the existing legal pathways for abused and neglected children, and stop circumventing the system, which risks the lives of children. Contact your lawmakers today to support S5214.
Justine Wills, Virginia Beach
Trump’s disruptions
Things are going to get difficult in the next four years. President-elect Donald Trump wants to hollow out top agencies and put inexperienced people to head them. Our allies won’t be sharing sensitive information with us anymore because they have to protect themselves and their sources. If I were an undercover overseas CIA agent, I’d be quitting now.
With agencies cleared out of career professionals, our FBI won’t be able to protect us like it has in the past. Nefarious plots to harm Americans will not be found and stopped at the rate that they are currently.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control is going to be hollowed out of talent and the new leader may not have a medical education. New vaccine recommendations will not reflect sound, time-tested science. Localities follow the advice of the CDC and insurance companies take note of that also. The immunization rates of children will wane even more than during and after COVID because of the politicization of vaccines.
Chances of another pandemic are possible at some point. We’ve already experienced the president-elect’s shockingly bad approach to COVID. Estimates of people who died in the U.S. of COVID but should not have hovered around 320,000. Plans for a pandemic situation that the Obama administration devised were put on the shelf and not used during the Trump administration.
Georgette Constant, Norfolk
Predictions
I predict that the U.S. House will return to Democratic Party control after the 2026 elections and President-elect Donald Trump will be impeached for the third time. However, the Senate will not vote to remove Trump from the presidency.
Trump can’t help himself. He’s egotistical, arrogant, selfish, crude, vain, cruel, disruptive, narrow-minded, divisive and the like.
Furthermore, I predict Trump will not be able to deconstruct the administrative state. Trump reminds me of the Greek gods Narcissus (fell in love with himself) and Daedalus (flew too close to the sun).
Therefore, I predict and project that Trump will overshoot, vindictively and instinctively, what his so-called “mandate” is truly all about.
As I say, Trump can’t help himself when it comes to matters (personally, psychologically and professionally) such as these. Trump is mostly all about Trump and what benefits and rewards him, first and foremost.
John L. Horton, Norfolk