A condensed history of ISS-USA For almost 100 years, ISS-USA has helped to reunite families separated by borders. Our early history addressed the needs of women traveling alone or with children from Europe to the Americas following World War I....
Author: ISS USA
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Jena Martin's preface to her own article: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - A New Way of Looking at the Intercountry Adoption Debate It’s funny how things work out. Seventeen years ago, I wrote an article. My original ...
Remote. Resilient. Reunited.
An Insight into the Challenges and Changes of 2020-21
ISS-USA…The best job I have ever had.
Allison Blake, ISS-USA Board member, former Commissioner for the New Jersey Department of Children and Families and currently CEO of Child and Family Agency of SE CT sat down to lunch at a local community organization in Madison, Connecticut and started chatting with the woman on her left. To her surprise, she too was also a social worker, an alum of the very same place where Allison had earned her PhD in social work, and most intriguing of all, Joan talked about the “best social work job she had ever had.”
The Role of the ISS in the History of Private International Law
The ISS has been hiding in plain sight in the history of private international law since the 1920s. Anyone lucky enough to visit ISS-USA’s archives at the University of Minnesota would be astonished by ISS’s extensive engagement with virtually every aspect of transnational family law. During the first half of the 20th century the ISS left no stone untouched in an effort to devise an international socio-legal framework for cross-border family maintenance claims.
Righting the wrongs of putting kids in cages: A child welfare and child rights approach to cross border families
In its next report to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, due in January 2022, the United States must address its treatment of children at the border since 2016. Over the past four years, cross-border families have...
Advocacy for Equity: Getting Access to Services Upon Return
In a society fueled by division, Case Managers exemplify the power of unity and equity. Collaboration is fundamental to case managers’ empowering their clients to achieve the best possible outcome. They devise a plan together with their client to support...
Successful Family Reunification Takes Preparation and Hard Work
June marks National Reunification Month, a time when agencies are celebrating successful efforts to reunify children with their families. It’s widely recognized that whenever possible and safe, the best home for a child is with his or her family. International...
Is the Pandemic Failing Foster Children?
May is National Foster Care Month, and we have been turning our attention to how the current pandemic is affecting children in the system. There is a myriad of challenges to the foster care system on its best days, and...
What if International Social Service, USA Ceased to Exist?
Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?[i] In 1946, George Bailey, portrayed by Jimmy Stewart in the film, It's A Wonderful Life, contemplates ending his...