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. 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). 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). 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.) 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.