LANSING, Mich. — Michigan children in the welfare system will benefit from a $4 million grant. The money was awarded to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Children's Services Agency to help meet its goals to benefit the kids.
"We need to do whatever we can to protect the safety and well-being of Michigan children,” said JooYeun Chang, executive director of the MDHHS Children’s Services Agency in a press release.
“That means keeping children safe and providing them with loving, permanent homes where they can enjoy stability and connections with relatives and their communities," Chang said.
The MDHHS Children's Services Agency received the funding from the Federal Adoption and Legal Guardianship Incentive Payments Program. The money will be used to support MDHHS in working with private partner child-placing agencies from around the state to improve the welfare system.
MDHHS will work to improve the system by:
- Increasing safe and stable placements with relatives.
- Reducing the maltreatment of children placed in foster care.
- Shortening the amount of time it takes to find a permanent home for children in foster care – either through safe reunification with their families or adoption if it’s not safe for them to return home.
- Improving Children’s Protective Services responses to reports made to the toll-free Centralized Intake phone number for reporting suspected child abuse or neglect.
- Placing a greater share of children in family home settings and decreasing the use of congregate care facilities for children in foster care.
- Developing a new training curriculum for foster, adoptive and relative parents.
Michigan was first awarded this Adoption and Legal Guardianship grant for fiscal year 2016. Grants are awarded to states based on their ability to increase adoptions and legal guardianships of children in foster care, according to MDHHS.
The state uses the funds for services related to adoption from foster care and legal guardianship of children in foster care – with a focus on adoptions and legal guardianships for older children in foster care from ages 14 and up, and for pre-adolescent children ages 9-13, according to MDHHS.
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