Describes development of guidelines to expand understanding of and compliance with both the reasonable efforts requirement of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act 1980 (P.L. 96-272) and active efforts requirement of the Indian Child Welfare Act 1978 (P.L. 95-608) to help keep Indian families together. (Author/BB)

A hearing was held to explore issues of foster care, child welfare, and adoption reforms, and to examine the implementation of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Amendments of 1980. The Amendments were designed to emphasize preventive services that would strengthen families, prevent the unnecessary placement of children in foster care,…

The standards presented here, a revision of the standards published in 1975, are intended to serve as uniform, national criteria by which public agencies can develop and assess the adequacy of their foster family services system. Major changes from the earlier standards include reduction of the number of standards, combination of the basic and…

This handbook presents standards for kinship foster care services. The handbook begins with introductory sections describing standards development, detailing how to use the standards, and differentiating standards of excellence; Council on Accreditation of Services for Families and Children, Inc. (COA) standards for accreditation; and state…