The Imprint

09/25/2025

Wendy Young of Kids in Need of Defense writes about the pay-to-play nature of new rules for unaccompanied children in the latest Imprint op-ed.

Wendy Young of Kids in Need of Defense writes about the pay-to-play nature of new rules for unaccompanied children

09/25/2025

Sacramento State University President Luke Wood was adopted out of foster care with his twin brother as a kid. Today, he makes the campus welcoming for foster youth.

Sacramento State University President Luke Wood was adopted out of foster care as a kid. Now he makes the campus welcoming for foster youth.

09/24/2025

🎧 Journalist and author Claudia Rowe discusses the current media attention to child welfare and youth justice.

Click the link below for more from this episode of The Imprint Weekly podcast.
https://imprintnews.org/podcast/wards-of-the-state-author-journalist-claudia-rowe

09/24/2025

Each year across Georgia, hundreds of thousands of students are continually marked absent from school, including foster youth who miss class for reasons beyond their control. Under a new state law, they cannot be expelled.

Georgia Students will no longer be expelled for missing class. Instead, schools must ask where the kids are, and why they're absent.

09/19/2025

In Ramsey County — in exchange for lesser charges and a possible clean record — some teenagers can now turn to restorative justice.

09/19/2025

Washington's well-regarded Early Childhood Education and Assessment Program (ECEAP) endures cuts amid a multi-billion-dollar budget deficit.

09/18/2025

Although youth crime in Washington, D.C. is at a 30-year low, the Trump administration is pushing several bills that would reverse recent juvenile justice reforms, including allowing 14-year-olds to be tried as adults, rolling back protections that keep people in juvenile and family courts through age 24, and repealing the “second look” Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act.

Crime is at a 30-year low in Washington, DC. Yet echoing the past, the fear-inducing rhetoric has heated up.

09/17/2025

On Monday, a panel of Georgia lawmakers met with child welfare workers, mental health providers and others to discuss the issue of kids left in psychiatric care.

09/16/2025

Tom Morton, founder of the Child Welfare Institute who spent his entire career working to improve the child welfare system, has passed away at the age of 77.

Tom Morton, a child welfare expert and occasional columnist for The Imprint, has passed away at the age of 77

09/15/2025

Opinion: In child welfare, investing in integrated and collaborative systems is not just a fiscal necessity — it’s a moral imperative.

09/12/2025

Legislation that would have limited childhood s*xual assault survivors’ ability to sue their perpetrators met a decisive end this week.

“The majority of our legislators understand that survivors of child s*x assault — particularly survivors who have experienced that abuse in state, county and city-funded programs — deserve a chance of justice.”

— Assemblymember Dawn Addis

Legislation that would have limited childhood s*xual assault survivors’ ability to sue their perpetrators met a decisive end this week.

09/11/2025

As he announced the deployment of National Guard troops to the streets of our nation’s capital, despite crime being at historic lows in Washington, President Trump also called for prosecuting 14-year-olds as adults in the city.

The Trump administration’s views on youth justice include things that will make society less safe, writes Vinny Schiraldi