By Connie Reguli June 28 2020

Don’t y’all ever say your voice does not matter. I have worked with an amazing group of citizen lobbyists since 2016 who have sacrificed their time and money to traipse to DC and their state capitols for reform of the child welfare / family court dysfunction in this country.

We started in 2016 and every year we would go to DC sometimes two three and four times just to hold signs on the street or walk the halls of the legislative offices. We would tell legislative aids and service employees and policy makers and congressmen and senators about the destruction of families and the perversion of federal funding. We carried personal stories and courtroom horrors. We left flyers and I even made a three hundred page book of stories told by families across this country.

In Feb 2018 the Family First Preservation and Services Act passed but was not implemented. So we kept at it. In December 2018, ACF Jerry Milner issued a letter to enhance funding for parent representation. In 2019 we supported and followed the Family First Support Act and it was signed by Pres Trump In December 2019.

In June 2020 President Trump signed an executive order demanding that HIS federal agency HHS get the best practices guidelines completed to accomplished the goals of The Family First Act and more. He demanded that states report to the agency data that will allow new metrics in the federal funding requirements. He supports family preservation, kinship care, and more support services for families. The entire order is covered in a previous blog.

The states must do their part. I prepared a state level Family First Act for Tennessee but no legislator would carry it because it was too overwhelming for them to process and made such dramatic changes to the child welfare system that they knew the governor’s state agencies would push back. The bureaucratic slugs 🐌 would not want to change their practices.

Now, more than ever, your citizen voice matters. Contact your legislators in DC and let them know that this is not enough. We need to ban Adoption and Safe Families Act bonus dollars that the states receive for stranger adoptions which favor rehoming children over maintaining connections to their family of origin.

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