US states scramble to pay for child welfare services-GAO, Reuters, January 30, 2013, Chicago Tribune: “U.S. states are patching together funds from a variety of sources to care for thousands of children who have been abused or neglected, but they are still struggling to meet demand for services, a federal watchdog agency said on Wednesday. ‘Child welfare agencies, like other state agencies, operate in an environment of ongoing fiscal constraint,’ the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a special report. ‘They must make difficult choices about how to allocate their limited resources.’ In 2011, an estimated 6.2 million children were referred to child welfare agencies because they showed signs of possible maltreatment, GAO said…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty