During a debate in January among Democratic Presidential candidates, Mr. Clinton said he would not sign the New Jersey welfare revision bill, a measure that has angered some child-welfare advocates.

Dorothy Pitman Hughes (born 1938) is a feminist, child-welfare advocate, African American activist, public speaker, author, pioneering African American small business owner, and mother of three daughters.

To mark the anniversary of her disappearance, state legislators, child-welfare advocates and people who knew Rilya held a news conference today in front of the house where she lived.

There are institutions with troubled child-care histories in both camps, they note, and even child-welfare advocates complain that tax-exempt status is often just an accounting device.

But child-welfare advocates have raised questions about the legality of the state's limiting payments for foster care.

But child-welfare advocates have strongly criticized it, saying it would harm the most vulnerable children.

Limit on Abortion Seen With the state's infant-mortality rate among the highest in the nation, child-welfare advocates hailed the accord as an overdue step.

Community leaders, union officials and child-welfare advocates praise Mrs. Sabol's enthusiasm and openness to changing agency policies and to seeking advice from outsiders.

Many child-welfare advocates recognize that the choices are seldom so stark.

But several child-welfare advocates, as well as officials with other nonprofit agencies that provide foster-care services, said that the killing raised questions about whether the city's child protection agency had done an adequate job of evaluating the teen-agers who were arrested.