qualified residential treatment program

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.

The Family First Prevention Services Act offers states the chance to tap federal funds to prevent the need for foster care in some child welfare cases. At the same time, it greatly limits the amount of federal money that can be used to put foster youth in group homes, institutions and other “congregate care” options.

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.

Note: This column has been updated When the Family First Prevention Services Act breezed through the House Ways and Means Committee and on to passage from the full body, Youth Services Insider noted that many of the bill’s supporters had stayed on board.