With the new administration taking over officially (and off to an already questionable start) our nation is at a critical and uncertain juncture. Only time will tell which proposals the new White House and Congress will actually follow through with. According to the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), one such proposal, repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) including Medicaid expansion, would have disastrous effects on the child welfare system. Per CLASP the top five threats of this proposal are (1) ending health coverage for young adults aging out of foster care up to age 26, (2) undermining health coverage for children in foster care, (3) threatening health and mental health coverage parents which is a key to prevention and reunification, (4) potentially destabilizing adoptions by endangering commitment to health coverage through Medicaid for children with special needs who are adopted with federal subsidies, and (5) state budgets as a whole could be destabilized should Medicaid be turned into a block grant as proposed. Trump has already signed an executive order scaling back certain parts of the ACA. It remains to be seen what else will be done, but it seems a safe bet that many changes will soon follow, some of which will take away resources and protections for our nation’s most vulnerable children.
