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1 [1] (February 3, 2020)

handle is hein.crs/govbdyz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 01;0i E~$~ & Updated February 3, 2020 Child Welfare: Purposes, Federal Programs, and Funding Children depend on adults-usually their parents-to protect and support them. The broadest mission of child welfare agencies is to strengthen families so that children can depend on their parents to nurture them, keep them safe, and provide them with a permanent, stable home. More specifically, child welfare agencies are expected to act to prevent abuse or neglect of children by their parents/caregivers. If abuse or neglect has already happened, the agencies are expected to provide assistance, services, or referrals as needed to ensure children do not re-experience maltreatment. For some children, this means placement in foster care. Federal child welfare policy has three primary goals: ensuring children's safety, enabling permanency for children, and promoting the w l-teing of children and their families. Foster care is understood as a temporary living situation, and a primary task of a child welfare agency is to find children in foster care a permanent home. Most often this is done by offering services that enable children to safely reunite with their parents or relatives. If that is not possible, then the child welfare agency works to find a new permanent family for the child via adoption or legal guardianship. Foster youth who are not reunited or placed with a new permanent family are usually emancipated when they reach their state's legal age of majority. These youth are said to have aged out of care. During FY2018, public child protection agencies screened allegations of abuse or neglect involving some 7.8 million children, carried out investigations or other protective responses involving 3.5 million of those children, and provided services following that investigation or response in the homes of some 1.1 million of those children. Also during FY2018, some 263,000 children entered foster care. The circumstances most often associated with a child's entry to foster care were neglect and/or parental drug abuse. Among the 437,000 children who were in foster care on the last day of FY2018 (including those who entered in any year), the median length of stay was just over 13 months. The majority (81%) lived in family homes (non- relative or relative foster family homes and pre-adoptive homes), while close to 11 % lived in a group home or institution, about 7% were on trial home visits, or in supervised independent living; close to 1 % had run away. Among the 250,100 children who formally exited foster care during FY2018, more than half returned to their parents or went to live informally with a relative (55%), while 35% left care for a new permanent family via adoption or legal guardianship (including with kin). At the same time, 7% aged out of care while most of the remainder (1%) were transferred to the care of another agency. As the U.S. Constitution has been understood, states are considered to bear the primary public responsibility for ensuring the well-being of children and their families. Public child welfare agencies at the state and local levels work with an array of private and public entities-including the courts and social service, health, mental health, education, and law enforcement agencies-to carry out child welfare activities. This work is done consistent with state laws and policies. At the same time, the federal government has long provided technical support and funding intended to improve state child welfare work. Further, by providing funding for this work, the federal government compels states to meet program rules, such as requiring permanency planning protections for all children in foster care. Compliance with these requirements is monitored via federal plan approvals, audits, and reviews. At the federal level, child welfare programs are administered by the Children's Bureau within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). At the state level, federal child welfare programs are often administered within the state human services department, or by an independent, state-level child and family services agency. However, some states have county-administered programs supervised by the state agency. O,,,H,d W'e',-f.'r- Spen dkng-,, -,,.,-d' , ,-., . State child welfare agencies spent about $30 billion on child welfare purposes during state FY2016, according to a survey by the research group Child Trends. Most of that spending drew from state and local coffers (56%). Of the remainder, 27% was supplied by federal programs solely dedicated to child welfare-including those authorized in Title IV-E and Tile IV-B of the Social Security Act (SSA) and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA)-and 17% from other federal programs not solely child welfare-focused (principally, these are Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)). Federal child welfare policy requirements are linked only to programs that are dedicated solely to child welfare purposes. For FY2020, Congress provided funding for such programs of about $10.2 billion (mostly in Div. A of P.L. 116-94) and as part of the Family First Transition Act (FFTA, Sec. 602, Div. N of P.L. 116-94). FFTA provides one-time funds and temporary policy changes to help implement the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA, Title VII, Div. E of P.L. 115-123). T it: - ,,°V. E Title IV-E of the SSA primarily supports provision of foster care, adoption assistance, and (at state option) guardianship assistance to children who meet federal IV-E eligibility criteria. Under Title IV-E, states are required to provide foster care and certain adoption aid to eligible children, and the federal government is committed to paying a part of the cost of that aid (50% to 83%, depending on the state), as well as a part of the cost of administering the program (50% in all states) and for training (75% in all states). States may opt to provide Title .O 'T p\w -- , gn'a', goo mppm qq\ a , q 'S I 11LULANJILiN,

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