The Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act ( H.R. 4980 , P.L. 113-183 ) is an omnibus bill, including child welfare and child support provisions. As enacted the bill seeks to ensure that child welfare agencies are responsive to particular issues for children and youth in foster care or those who otherwise have contact with the child welfare system, including identifying and determining appropriate services for child sex trafficking victims; supporting "normalcy" for children in foster care; and improving opportunities for older children in foster care to establish permanent connections and make a successful transition to adulthood. The law also reauthorizes two child welfare programs: Adoption Incentive Payments (for three years, FY2014-FY2016) and the Family Connection Grants program (for one year, FY2014). The child support provisions in the bill are intended primarily to increase the effectiveness of the Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program where a noncustodial parent lives in a foreign country. The bill also includes additional child support provisions to improve CSE operations by tribal governments, support standardized data exchange, and require electronic withholding of child support. Development of the bill's provisions was informed by input from multiple Congressional hearings and roundtables featuring the perspective of foster youth, foster parents, state child welfare agency administrators, private agencies, social service providers, and youth and child welfare advocates. Both the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committee also solicited and received public comments on draft versions of the legislation. The final bill ( H.R. 4980 ), which passed the House of Representatives by voice vote (under suspension of the rules) on July 23, 2014, and the Senate, by unanimous consent on September 18, 2014, represented a compromise between multiple bills acted on by the House of Representatives and the Senate Finance Committee earlier in the 113 th Congress. President Obama signed the bill into law on September 29, 2014, as P.L. 113-183 . This report begins with an overview and topical summary of the provisions of H.R. 4980 , as enacted, and follows this with a review of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) cost estimate for H.R. 4980 and the legislative origins of the enacted bill. As enacted, the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act ( P.L. 113-183 ) responds to concerns about sex trafficking of children in foster care, including responding to those who run away from that care and those who otherwise come into contact with the child welfare agency; encouraging "normalcy" for children in foster care; supporting successful transitions to adulthood for older children in foster care; ensuring strong, permanent families for children who enter or are at risk of entering foster care; and improving child support enforcement activities. The law establishes new requirements for state child welfare agencies, state child support enforcement agencies, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which administers federal programs providing funding to those agencies. Overall, the law addresses five basic topics: Addressing sex trafficking of children who are served by the child welfare agency and children who run away from foster care . The law requires state child welfare agencies to develop and implement procedures that respond to concerns about sex trafficking of children in foster care (including those who are not in foster care but are served by the agency), to separately develop protocols to locate and serve children who run away from foster care, to report information about victims of sex trafficking and those who run away from foster care to various entities; and directs HHS to provide information on the numbers of sex trafficking victims identified by state child welfare agencies, establish a national advisory committee concerning sex trafficking of children in the United States, and prepare a report on children who run away from foster care. " N ormalcy" for children in foster care. The law requires changes to state licensing laws intended to enable and ensure foster caregivers use a "reasonable and prudent parenting standard" when determining foster children's participation in age-appropriate social, extracurricular and other enrichment activities; requires state child welfare agencies to provide training on the standard for foster caregivers; and directs HHS to provide technical assistance to states on this issue. S uccessful transitions to adulthood for older children in foster care . For children in foster care under the age of 16, the law prohibits the use of the permanency plan "another planned permanent living arrangement" as an alternative to seeking reunification, adoption, legal guardianship, or placement with a fit and willing relative; requires state child welfare agencies to continue efforts to find permanent connections for youth age 16 or older who are assigned APPLA as their permanency plan; requires state child welfare agencies to involve children in foster care at age 14 or older in their own case and permanency planning and to inform these children of certain rights, including their right to specified key document (e.g., birth certificate, driver's license) when they are "aging out" of foster care. Extension of c hild welfare programs and other changes to support strong and permanent families for children . The law extends funding authorization for the Adoption Incentives Payment program for three years and revises the incentive payments to include incentives for achieving permanence via legal guardianship; extends funding for Family Connection grant program for one year; requires states to spend an amount equal to at least 30% of certain adoption assistance "savings" for services to strengthen families, including provision of post-adoption supports; ensures that children receiving federal guardianship assistance with a legal relative guardian can continue to do so if that guardian becomes ill or incapacitated and the child is placed with a previously named successor guardian; requires state child welfare agencies to notify the parent(s) of siblings of children who are entering foster care; and directs HHS to report on the number of children who are placed in foster care as a result of a legal guardianship or adoption that has been disrupted or has dissolved. Improv ed child support collections . The law provides for implementation of the Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance (and any other related treaties) to increase effectiveness of child support collections in cases where noncustodial parents live in foreign countries; seeks to improve child support collections involving tribal governments; requires state child support enforcement agencies to adopt certain data standardization measures and to implement electronic withholding of child support payments; and directs HHS to report on additional measures to improve child support enforcement. These provisions have various effective dates, mostly ranging from the date of enactment to one or more years after that date as described below. The Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act ( P.L. 113-183 ) includes new provisions in child welfare law that are designed to respond to sex trafficking of children in foster care or who are otherwise involved in the child welfare system. The experiences of children who enter foster care or are served in foster care, including those who run away from foster care, may place them at higher risk to become a victim of sex trafficking. Some but not all state child welfare agencies have begun to craft specific responses to this concern. At the same time, little definitive information on the scope of sex trafficking among children served by the child welfare agency is available. The provisions enacted in response to these concerns apply to state child welfare agencies and to HHS, which through the Children's Bureau (located within the HHS, Administration for Children and Families, ACF) administers federal funding provided to state child welfare agencies. P.L. 113-183 draws from Section 103 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) to define a "sex trafficking victim" as an individual subject to the "recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act" or who is a victim of a "severe form of trafficking in persons" in which "a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform the act is under 18 years of age." P.L. 113-183 amends the federal foster care program (authorized in Title IV-E of the Social Security Act) to require state child welfare agencies to develop and implement procedures to identify, document in agency records, and determine appropriate services for certain children or youth who are victims of sex trafficking, or at risk of being such victims. The procedures need to ensure relevant training for caseworkers and must be developed in consultation with state and local law enforcement, juvenile justice systems, health care providers, education agencies, and organizations with experience in dealing with at-risk children and youth. P.L. 113-183 provides that these procedures are to be developed within one year of the bill's enactment and implemented within two years of that date. The law further requires state child welfare agencies to report to law enforcement authorities immediately, or in no case later than 24 hours, after they receive information about child or youth victims of sex trafficking. This reporting provision is effective beginning no later than two years after the bill's enactment and applies to information received about any child or youth described below as part of the required "applicable population." Additionally, within three year of the law's enactment, state child welfare agencies are required to annually report to the HHS the total number of children and youth who are sex trafficking victims.