Albert Reyes, Buckner president and CEO, and Samela Macon, vice president of Buckner domestic programs, discuss the new executive order issued by the White House to strengthen child welfare programs nationwise and the need to work together to address the evolution of needs for foster children achieving permanency through adoption and permanent kinship. This article was origianlly published in The Dallas Morning News. 

The Associated Press called it a “lower-profile issue,” but to more than 400,000 children in America’s foster care system, the state of child welfare in the U.S. is anything but low profile. An executive ordered issued by the White House June 25 aims to strengthen child welfare programs nationwide.

Let’s hope it’s not too late.

The executive order came just days after court-appointed monitors for a federal judge issued a sometimes-scathing report on the state of foster care in Texas, saying the state’s child welfare system “continues to expose children to an unreasonable risk of serious harm.” The cases pointed out by the monitors included serious injuries, child-on-child sexual abuse, sexual abuse by caregivers, child fatalities in licensed facilities, and systematic errors that occurred prior to the incidents as well as the errors that took place after the incidents.

Continue reading on The Dallas Morning News.