CHILD WELFARE & MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is the best site we've yet found for advocates of child mental health service reform. On their site, you'll find policy alerts on special education, SSI, managed care, and other issues. There are separate resource pages for child welfare, children's mental health services, children with disabilities, and SSI for children.

Center for Adolescent Health and the Law

The Center for Adolescent Health & the Law is a unique national organization that works exclusively to promote the health of adolescents and their access to comprehensive health care. The Center addresses a broad range of complex legal and policy issues that affect access to health care for the most vulnerable youth in the United States. The Center provides information and analysis, publications, consultation, and training to health professionals, policy makers, researchers and advocates who are working to protect the health of our adolescents.

Children's Defense Fund Child Health Page

The Children's Defense Fund has a voluminous website that most child advocates browsing the web have undoubtedly looked at. We wanted to mention here their excellent page on child health issues. This is the best source we've yet found on how the State Children's Health Program (also known as "CHIP") is being implemented around the country. This, and the NHLP site above, are two critical sites to check out if you are going to be involved in child health policy reform.

National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has produced one of the most important recent publications on improving the way that courts handle child abuse/neglect, foster care, and termination of parental rights cases. That book, Resource Guidelines: Improving Court Practice in Child Abuse & Neglect Cases, can be purchased from this site, but more importantly, you can click here to download the entire text of the book for free. Also on their site, a Child Victims Model Courts Initiative is described, and you can learn about other ways in which this organization is helping the nation's courts be more responsive to child maltreatment victims.

National Health Law Program

The National Health Law Program has posted on-line a range of useful materials related to child and adolescent health. This includes a summary of their 1988 report, Children's Health Under Medicaid: A National Review of Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment and lots of information on medicaid managed care. They have analyzed many of today's leading health law issues and have great links to other resources on the web. If you are involved with health law advocacy for a child, this is a critical website to look at.

National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition

The National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB) is a recognized leader and resource in maternal and child health. HMHB reaches an estimated ten million health care professionals, parents and policymakers through its membership of over 100 local, state and national organizations. Enhanced by a network of 90 Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies State and Local Coalitions, HMHB acts as a catalyst for change and creates partnerships among community groups, nonprofit organizations, professional associations, businesses and government agencies. By promoting optimal health for mom and baby, HMHB works to strengthen families and build healthy communities.

Take This Heart: The Foster Care Program

Take this Heart: The Foster Care Project is co-produced on-line by KCTS/Seattle and the Benton Foundation, and it is an outgrowth of an outstanding television documentary about the lives of children in foster care. The site has a wealth of information about foster care, the child welfare system, federal reforms, state data and other research survey findings, information on kinship care, children aging out of foster care, etc. If you want up-to-the-minute useful information on issues related to American foster care policy and how states are working to improve the "system", this is a great site.