Over the coming year, the Stuart Foundation will provide in-kind support to Daniel Heimpel as he launches Fostering Media Connections, a project of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, is focused on the implementation of the Fostering Connections legislation.
Over the coming year, the Stuart Foundation will provide in-kind support to Daniel Heimpel as he launches
Fostering Media Connections, a project of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, is focused on the implementation of the Fostering Connections legislation.
Heimpel has covered child welfare issues for the Los Angeles Daily News, Newsweek, the Huffington Post, the Siskiyou Daily News, and the San Jose Mercury News. This year, Heimpel won the Child Welfare League of America’s Anna Quindlen Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Behalf of Children and Families. Heimpel has been resolute in finding media outlets that will accept stories on child welfare issues.
Heimpel’s latest project is shedding light on the implementation of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which was signed into federal law on October 7, 2008. Fostering Connections represents the most significant child welfare reform legislation in more than a decade. The act’s numerous improvements are all intended to achieve better outcomes for children and youth who are at risk of entering or have spent time in foster care, and a number will help reduce the racial disparities in the treatment of children that plague child welfare systems.
But for the Fostering Connections legislation to be fully effective, individual states must pass implementation legislation to access federal funds. Understanding that speedy implementation requires political will, Heimpel is working to engender such will through the media.
For more information and ways to get involved, please visit the
Fostering Media Connections website.