Child Welfare: Federal Program Requirements for States
Released: 2007-08-02T00:00:00

Child welfare programs are intended to prevent child abuse and neglect, and to protect and improve the lives of children who have experienced maltreatment. As the U.S. Constitution has been interpreted, states exercise the greatest responsibility for administering these services. At the same time, the federal government plays a significant role in shaping these services by providing funding for services and by linking those federal funds to certain requirements.

Federal Child Welfare Funding

For FY2007, Congress provided more than $7.6 billion in funding dedicated to child welfare purposes and the bulk of this federal child welfare funding (98% or $6.5 billion of the funds made available for FY2007) was provided for state child welfare agencies. These funds are distributed based on the amount of eligible foster care or adoption assistance claims submitted by states (under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act), or via statutory formula for child welfare-related activities, including screening and investigation of child abuse and neglect reports; family support, preservation, and reunification services; adoption promotion and support services; and independent living services and other support for current and former foster care youths. (A portion of the funds are also made available to the highest court in each state to fund improvements in the handling of child welfare-related court proceedings.) Child welfare funds distributed to all states are administered by the Children's Bureau, within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

State Plan Requirements

In addition to providing non-federal matching funds, states must meet a set of program requirements in order to receive these federal child welfare dollars. Viewed together, these statutory program requirements comprise federal child welfare policy, and are the fundamental basis on which state compliance with federal child welfare requirements rests. State compliance with the majority of these requirements is checked as part of the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR), which was designed by HHS to meet the conformity review requirements mandated by Congress in 1994 ( P.L. 103-432 , as enacted at Section 1123A of the Social Security Act).

Changes Enacted by the 109th Congress

The 109 th Congress enacted six bills that amended federal child welfare policies included in Title IV-B or Title IV-E of the Social Security Act. Most of these included changes to state plan requirements. The amendments made by these bills are briefly discussed below. (The bills are listed in order of their enactment.)

Fair Access to Foster Care Act of 2005

As enacted, this bill ( S. 1894 , P.L. 109-113 ) permits states to claim Title IV-E foster care support on behalf of otherwise eligible foster children whose foster care maintenance payments are provided to foster parents or institutional foster care providers via a for-profit foster care placement agency. Prior law stipulated that if a state sought to claim federal Title IV-E support on behalf of a foster child, the child's maintenance payments could only be made by a public or non-profit agency.

Deficit Reduction Act of 2005

This omnibus budget reconciliation measure ( S. 1932 , P.L. 109-171 ) includes changes intended to clarify which children are eligible for federal foster care and adoption assistance support. It also places certain limitations on the ability of states to make claims for federal reimbursement of the costs of administering the foster care program (including limits on the length of time a child may be considered a "candidate" for foster care and new rules or restrictions on administrative claims related to foster children placed in unlicensed relative homes or other settings that are "ineligible" under Title IV-E). Separately, the legislation raised the mandatory funding authorization for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program (Title IV-B, Subpart 2 of the Social Security Act), and authorized two new grants intended to improve court handling of child welfare proceedings and appropriated $100 million ($20 million in each of FY2006-FY2010) for those grants.

Safe and Timely Interstate Placement Act of 2006

This bill ( H.R. 5403 , P.L. 109-239 ) amended Title IV-B and Title IV-E to encourage the expedited placement of foster children into safe and permanent homes across state lines. The law establishes a federal 60-day deadline for completing an interstate home study (necessary to determine the suitability and safety of the home) and a 14-day deadline for a state that requests this interstate home study to act on the information in the study. (For any home study begun before October 1, 2008, states may have up to 75 days to complete the study if they can document certain circumstances beyond their control that prevented a study's completion in 60 days.) The new law also authorizes $10 million in each of FY2007-FY2010, for incentive payments (valued at $1,500 each) to states for every interstate home study that is completed in 30 days. (As of August 2007, no funds have yet been appropriated for these payments.)

Further, the law prohibits states from restricting the ability of a state agency to contract with a private agency to conduct interstate home studies, and for children who will not be reunited with their parents, it encourages (or in some cases requires) identification and consideration of both in-state and out-of-state placement options as part of currently required case review and planning activities for children in foster care. Separately, the bill requires courts (as a condition of receiving certain funding intended to improve their handling of child welfare proceedings) to notify any foster parent, pre-adoptive parent, or relative caregiver of a foster child of any proceedings to be held regarding the child, and emphasizes the right of these individuals to be heard at permanency planning proceedings. Finally, it would require that youth leaving foster care custody because they have reached the age of majority must be given a free copy of their health and education record.

Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006

This omnibus bill ( H.R. 4472 , P.L. 109-248 ) establishes additional federal requirements related to criminal background checks of prospective foster and adoptive parents and also requires states to check child abuse and neglect registries for information about prospective foster or adoptive parents. The criminal records checks must include a check of national crime databases (i.e., an FBI check), and must be done before the placement of any foster child can be finally approved with prospective foster or adoptive parents. Under prior law, the kind of criminal record check (for example, state vs. FBI vs. local) was not specified, and the federal requirement for these checks extended only to children for whom a state intended to make federal Title IV-E foster care or adoption assistance claims. As was true with prior law, if a criminal record check reveals certain felony convictions of a prospective foster or adoptive parent, a state may not claim Title IV-E foster care or adoption assistance for a foster child placed in his or her home. However, this does not prohibit the state from placing a foster child in this same home if the state does not make Title IV-E claims on the child's behalf.

For most states, these criminal record check requirements became effective with the first day of FY2007. However, prior law allowed states to "opt out" of the federal criminal records check procedures, and P.L. 109-248 permits those "opt out states" to have until the first day of FY2009 to come into compliance with the new requirements. As of July 2006, HHS reported that there were eight opt-out states: Idaho, Oklahoma, Oregon, California, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Arizona.

Many child abuse and neglect cases are not the subject of criminal court proceedings, and information on these cases does not appear in a criminal records check. As of the first day of FY2007, P.L. 109-248 requires all states to check any child abuse and neglect registry they maintain for information about a prospective foster or adoptive parent (and any adult living in their household). The check must be made before approving placement of a foster child in the home (and without regard to whether the state plans to claim Title IV-E support for the child). States must also request (and all states must comply with) information from any other state's child abuse and neglect registry where the prospective foster or adoptive parent, or other adult, has lived in the past five years. There are no federal stipulations about how states must use the information from these registries.

Finally, P.L. 109-248 requires HHS, in consultation with the Justice Department, to create a national registry of substantiated cases of child abuse or neglect. Information in this national registry is to be accessible only to public entities (or agencies of those public entities) that needs the information "to carry out its responsibilities under law to protect children from child abuse and neglect." Separately, the law requires HHS to "conduct a study on the feasibility of establishing data collection standards for a national child abuse and neglect registry" and to make recommendations and findings on the costs and benefits of such data collection standards; data collection standards currently employed by states, tribes or other political subdivisions; and data collection standards that should be considered to establish a model of promising practices. The law authorized $500,000 in appropriations to carry out the study. (As of August 2007, no funds have been specifically appropriated for this purpose.) A report of this study is to be submitted to Congress by the end of July 2007.

Child and Family Services Improvement Act of 2006

This bill ( S. 3525 , P.L. 109-288 ) extends, through FY2011, annual funding authorization of $545 million for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program (Title IV-B, Subpart 2). For each of FY2006-FY2011 it provides that no less than $40 million of those funds are to be used for two purposes: to support monthly caseworker visits and to improve outcomes for children affected by methamphetamine or other substance abuse. Further the new law requires states to report on their actual use of funds under Title IV-B of the Social Security Act, increases the funding set-aside from the Safe and Stable Families program for tribal child and family services, and allows access to these funds for more tribes.

Separately, the bill amended the Child Welfare Services program (Title IV-B, Subpart 1 of the Social Security Act) to re-organize and update its provisions and to limit funding authorization for the program to FY2007-FY2011. Beginning with FY2008 the law limits the use of program funds for administrative purposes and also provides new restriction on the amount of these program funds that states may use for foster care maintenance payments, adoption assistance payments, or child care. Among several new state plan requirements for this program, P.L. 109-288 requires states to establish standards for the content and frequency of caseworker visits of children in foster care (providing that within a specified time frame 90% of children in foster care must be visited at least monthly and that most of these visits must occur in the place where the child lives). Additionally states are required to have procedures to respond to and maintain child welfare services in the wake of a disaster and must also describe in their state plan how they consult with medical professionals to assess the health of and provide medical treatment to children in foster care.

P.L. 109-288 also extended the authorization for five years (FY2007-FY2011) of the Mentoring Children of Prisoners program and includes authority for a project to demonstrate the effectiveness of vouchers as a method of delivering these services. Further it extends for the same five years grants to eligible state highest courts to assess and improve their handling of child welfare proceedings (under the Court Improvement Program).

Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006

This omnibus ( H.R. 6111 , P.L. 109-432 ) makes several changes related to new provisions enacted in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 ( P.L. 109-171 ) and which are related to foster care and Medicaid. Section 6036 of P.L. 109-171 generally prohibited a state from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement for individuals who do not provide satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship or nationality. Section 405(c) of P.L. 109-432 specifically exempts foster children (both Title IV-E eligible and those who are not eligible) from the Medicaid documentation requirement. This change is made effective as if it was included in the Deficit Reduction Act ( P.L. 109-171 ) which was enacted in February 2006.

P.L. 109-432 also amended Title IV-E to require states to have in effect procedures for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of each child in foster care (whether or not the state claims Title IV-E support for the child). Finally, P.L. 109-432 also amended Section 1123A of the Social Security Act to specifically require that state compliance with this new federal requirement be checked as part of periodic conformity reviews (e.g. the Child and Family Services Review). These changes are to be effective as of June 20, 2007 (6 months after the enactment of P.L. 109-432 ).

How the Tables in this Report Are Organized

State plan requirements generally apply to the state, or the state administering/supervising agency, and usually are contained in the statute as a list of items that must be included in the state's program plan. The plan requirements vary a great deal in their scope and kind and are difficult to categorize consistently. In this report they are grouped within a specific program (or section of the law) and by a rough kind/subject division. This division is somewhat arbitrary and not a part of federal statute. However, it is used in this report as a way to group basic concerns of federal child welfare policy and to better understand what is required of states. The kind/subject divisions used are:

Planning Services: Administration, Organization and Coordination ârequirements that direct how the state must administer, coordinate, or organize the program (e.g., what state agency must administer the program, and with what other programs it must be coordinated). Data Collection and Reportingâ requirements specifying the nature of data to be collected and/or reported to the federal government, and those related to cooperation with program evaluations or audits. Ensuring Safe and Appropriate Placement Optionsâ requirements designed to ensure diversity of prospective foster and adoptive parents, prohibit discrimination in placements, allow for cross-jurisdictional placements and otherwise serve to ensure safe and appropriate placements for children. Child Protections, Services, and Programs to Be Provided ârequirements that specify treatment of each child, and services and programs to be provided.

This report lists state eligibility requirements for federally funded child welfare programs within these kind/subject divisions. Three of these programs are authorized under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA): Basic State Grants, Community-Based Grants for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, and Children's Justice Act Grants. The remaining programs are a part of the Social Security Act: Child Welfare Services, the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program, Foster Care and Adoption Assistance, the John Chafee Foster Care Independence Program, and Education and Training Vouchers (for youth who age out of or are expected to age out of foster care).

Some of the state plan elements are simply given in the statute as requirements for the state to meet (e.g., describe services to be offered); others ask that the state assure or provide the Governor's certification that it is meeting a certain requirement (e.g., federal funds are not used to supplant existing non-federal funds for services with purpose similar to the federal program). This report does not distinguish between these different forms of requirement.

Federal funds for child welfare programs under the Social Security Act and for CAPTA's Basic State Grants and Community-Based Grants for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect are administered by the Children's Bureau within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Children's Bureau at HHS also awards CAPTA's Children Justice Act grants but does so in consultation with the Department of Justice.

Tables 1 , 2 , and 3 list elements required of states seeking Basic State Grants, Children's Justice Act Grants, or Community-Based Grants for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect under CAPTA. Tables 4, 5, 6 , and 7 contain state plan requirements for child welfare programs authorized under the Social Security Act.

Finally, Table 8 contains definitions critical to understanding state plan requirements for child welfare programs under the Social Security Act. For instance, a state is required to have a "case plan" for each child and to operate a "case review system." These and other related terms are given detailed definition in the law. Terms appearing in boldface in Tables 4, 5, 6 and 7 are defined by the statute and the term, and its definition, are included in Table 8 .

The information included in this report is intended as an accessible reference guide to state requirements, rather than a legal interpretation of those requirements. Requirements are believed to be current through changes made by the 109 th Congress.

Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act Programs

Basic State Grants

Table 1 lists state plan requirements to receive CAPTA's Basic State Grants. Section 106 of CAPTA provides grants to states for improvements to public child protective services. Funding is authorized on a discretionary basis. No matching funds are required. FY2007 funding: $27 million .

Children's Justice Act Grants

Table 2 lists requirements related to Children's Justice Act Grants. The program authority for these grants is included in Section 107 of CAPTA, however funding for the grants is made available via a set-aside from the Crime Victims' Fund. Grants are made to help states (and tribes) improve the handling, investigation and prosecution of child abuse and neglect casesâparticularly those involving child sexual abuse and exploitationâand to improve the handling of cases of suspected child maltreatment related deaths, and, finally, (as added by P.L. 108-36 ) to improve handling of those cases involving children with disabilities or serious health-related problems who are victims of child maltreatment. No matching funds required. FY2007 funding: $20 million .

Community-Based Grants for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect

Table 3 shows requirements related to CAPTA's Community-Based Grants for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. Title II of CAPTA authorizes grants (1) to support community-based efforts aimed at the prevention of child abuse and neglect, including support of networks of coordinated resources and activities that strengthen and support families; and (2) to foster an understanding and knowledge of diverse populations to be effective in preventing and treating child abuse and neglect. States must designate a lead entity to administer this money (which may or may not be a public agency) by making grants to community-based programs. Funding is authorized on a discretionary basis and a state must match at least 20% of the federal allotment under this program with non-federal dollars. The size of a state's program allotment is determined, in part, by the amount of non-federal funds obtained (leveraged) for these purposes by the lead entity. FY2007 funding: $42 million .

Social Security Act Programs

Child Welfare Services

Table 4 lists requirements related to funding of Child Welfare Services authorized under Title IV-B, Subpart 1 of the Social Security Act. The program provides matching grants to states (75% federal share) for (as amended by P.L. 109-288 ) five broad purposes: (1) to protect and promote the welfare of all children; (2) to prevent the neglect, abuse, or exploitation of children; (3) to support at-risk families through services which allow children, where appropriate to remain safely with their families or return to their families in a timely manner; (4) to promote safety, permanence, and well-being of children in foster care and adoptive families; and (5) to provide training, professional development and support to ensure a well-qualified child welfare workforce. Funds are authorized on a discretionary basis (through FY2011) at $325 million annually. FY2007 funding: $287 million .

Promoting Safe and Stable Families

Table 5 lists requirements for funding under Title IV-B, Subpart 2 of the Social Security Act, the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program. The program authorizes matching grants to states (75% federal share) for four kinds of services: family preservation, family support, time-limited family reunification, and adoption promotion and support. The statute also provides that certain amounts of the funds provided for this program are to be set aside each year to support tribal child and family services, grants to highest state courts to assess and improve their handling of child welfare proceedings, and funds for research, evaluation and technical assistance related to the service or activities funded by the program. In addition, P.L. 109-288 stipulates that for each of six years (FY2006-FY2011) $40 million of the funds are to be reserved for formula grants to states to support monthly caseworker visits of children in foster care and to provide discretionary grants to eligible applicants (regional partnerships, which much include the state child welfare agency) to respond to child welfare issues raised by parental/caretaker abuse of methamphetamine (or other substances). Program funds are authorized both on a discretionary basis (up to $200 million annually) and as a capped entitlement ($345 million annually) through FY2011. FY2007 funding: $434 million .

Foster Care and Adoption Assistance

Table 6 lists requirements under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act related to foster care maintenance payments and adoption assistance. These programs are authorized as open-ended entitlements; states may seek reimbursement for a specified percentage of the foster care maintenance payments, adoption assistance costs, and eligible administrative, training, and data collection costs for all eligible children. FY2007 appropriations: $6.5 billion (of which $4.5 billion is for foster care and $2.0 billion is for adoption assistance) .

Chafee Foster Care Independence Program and Education and Training Vouchers

Table 7 lists requirements related to funding for foster care independence services authorized under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act. These include a variety of services designed to enable youth who are expected to "age-out" of foster care and those who have recently aged out of foster care to make a successful transition from state foster care custody to independent living. Funds for a wide variety of services to these youth (including education and training) are authorized as a capped entitlement; funds specifically provided for education and training vouchers only are authorized on a discretionary basis. The federal government provides funds under these programs on a matching basis (80% federal share). FY2007 CFCIP: $140 million; FY2007 vouchers: $46 million .

Important Definitions

Table 8 includes definitions critical to understanding state responsibilities to children in its care. Most of these definitions are included in Section 475 of the Social Security Act and apply to both Title IV-E and Title IV-B child welfare programs. For instance, children in state-supervised foster care, who are receiving services under Title IV-B or Title IV-E, must be part of a state operated case review system and have their own case plan . These, and related terms, are given detailed definition in the statute. Please note that some of the terms included below are defined within the extensive definition given to case review system. They are listed separately in Table 8 for clarity and ease of reference.