Arizona drops U.S. foster-care grant, By Mary K. Reinhart, February 3, 2013, Arizona Republic: “Blaming requirements they agreed to in the first place, state officials are canceling an $11.5 million federal grant program intended to help find homes for older, hard-to-place foster children. The Department of Economic Security, less than halfway through the five-year program, said it couldn’t comply with rigorous federal requirements to receive the grant money and adequately serve the growing number of Arizona children in foster care. The Fostering Readiness and Permanency grant was intended to get kids out of foster care more quickly, particularly children who have spent years there and are at risk of aging out of the system. And it held the promise of providing critical research data to improve the prospects for children who spend their formative years in foster care…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty