Current Childhood Welfare Policy, with Dr. Mical Raz

Dr. Mical Raz is a professor of Public Health & Policy, History, and Clinical Medicine at the University of Rochester. Mical earned her PhD and MD from Tel Aviv University in 2007 and 2009, respectively, and has since completed her residency and post-doctoral fellowships at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. She has written numerous journal articles on child welfare and is the author of four books. 

Today’s conversation revolves around her conclusions from her most recently released book, Breaking Families, Making Families: Adoption & Child Welfare in the 1990s. Starting from the early 1970s and onwards, she discusses the state of our child welfare system and how we have found ourselves here today. Evaluating the effectiveness of policies such as Termination of Parental Rights (TPR), Families First Movement, and Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), Mical encourages the audience to think critically about how we have gotten to where we are today and what changes can be made to better support families going forward.