[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 119 (Tuesday, July 19, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E752-E753]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        RECOGNIZING JUNE AS NATIONAL FAMILY REUNIFICATION MONTH

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. RAUL M. GRIJALVA

                               of arizona

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 19, 2022

  Mr. GRIJALVA. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize June as 
National Reunification Month, and to honor the tremendous 
reunifications efforts of individuals across the country who work 
tirelessly to ensure that safe, timely, and healthy reunification 
continues to be prioritized for the 400,000 youth in the U.S. foster 
care system. Each June, states and jurisdictions celebrate these 
efforts and extend their commitments to working to strengthen pathways 
to ensuring thriving, supportive families, and communities.
  Federal initiatives including Preventing Sex Trafficking and 
Strengthening Families Act, the Family First Prevention Services Act, 
Victims of Child Abuse Act Reauthorization of 2018 and the Supporting 
Foster Youth and Families through the Pandemic Act, have improved 
services and reunification for children and families in the foster care 
system, but there is more to be done.
  Since 2020, four National partners of the U.S. Children's Bureau, 
Annie E. Casey Foundation, Prevent Child Abuse America, Casey Family 
Programs and now recently the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention have joined the Thriving Families, Safer Children Movement 
within the child welfare community to bring a first-of-its-kind 
national, multiyear effort that spans the public, private and 
philanthropic sectors. It will create and enhance networks of 
community-based programming while also aligning government resources to 
offer a full continuum of prevention supports and services. Beyond 
building stronger families and communities, the movement seeks to end 
the harmful practice of family separation in child welfare systems. 
This work involves closely collaborating with children and families 
within the child welfare system and leveraging resources to create a 
more just, equitable, and humane well-being system. Twenty-two states 
and jurisdictions have committed to moving this work forward, including 
Arizona.
  With that in mind, I want to thank all those involved for making this 
much-needed investment into our youth and families' futures including: 
biological and kinship parents, family members, social workers, foster 
parents, service providers, attorneys, courts, court appointed special 
advocates (CASAs), advocates, public child welfare professionals and 
the greater child welfare community at large.
  And when honoring National Reunification Month, we must push to 
further assist migrant families that were separated at our southern 
border due to cruel and inhumane border policies denying them their 
right to seek asylum. I commend the Biden-Harris administration for 
fully repealing the Trump-era ``zero tolerance'' policy and 
establishing the President's Interagency Task Force on the 
Reunification of Families aimed at bringing families back together. 
Thousands of children were cruelly separated from their families, and I 
applaud the work of the President's Taskforce who is working to reunite 
hundreds of children that remain separated from their families to this 
day. More must be done to ensure all migrant families are reunited and 
no more families are

[[Page E753]]

separated at the southern border. Their safety, well-being and 
reunification must be an uttermost urgency for the Biden-Harris 
administration and its officials.
  It is time as a Nation to commit to providing the resources and 
programs necessary for the reunification of families, both for children 
in our domestic foster care system and for those who entered our 
country for refuge.

                          ____________________