QRTP

President Trump’s fiscal 2021 budget asks Congress to allow Medicaid dollars to be spent on a newly created class of residential foster care, a move that it expects to open up half a billion dollars for mental health treatment over the next decade.

Last month, we mentioned that an answer given by the federal Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to a question posed by Kentucky’s child welfare agency carried big implications for how other states implement the Family First Prevention Services Act.

Jerry Milner, the associate commissioner of the Children’s Bureau at the Department of Health and Human Services, recently recalled his initial excitement with federal child welfare finance reform back in the 1980s.

The Accreditation Guru has set up a resource page for group homes and congregate care providers seeking the necessary seal of approval for federal funding. The Family First Prevention Services Act, which passed last year and takes effect in October, limits federal funding for congregate care placements to two weeks.

When it passed the Family First Prevention Services Act last February, Congress aimed to change the face of child welfare, in part by implementing a funding shift that restricts the use of federal Title IV-E financing for out-of-home “congregate care”placements.