Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this new law has the power to better the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and their families. It will for the first time allow States to invest Federal foster care dollars in evidence-based services, like substance use treatment and mental health and parenting programs, to prevent the need for foster care by keeping families safely together. It will provide critical new opportunities for families adopting children and relatives caring for kin by making these same services available when a child is at risk of reentering foster care. It will also support investments in Kinship Navigator programs to help grandparents and other relative caregivers who often take on the parenting role at a moment's notice. The opioid crisis is showing why these investments are absolutely critical. After years of decline in the number of children in foster care, we have begun to see a steady increase, which many attribute to the opioid crisis. According to Federal data, at least 34 percent of foster care entries are attributed to parental substance use. Family First will be a game changer when it comes to fighting addiction, as States will now have many more tools to address these issues without breaking families apart. These tools will not only help with the current opioid epidemic, but they will position our Nation's child welfare system to respond to this crisis and any others that families may face in the future.”