Title IV-B

Last week, national TV news was filled with images of newly elected Members of Congress descending on Capitol Hill for their “freshman orientation.” My hope is that this change – and momentum on the heels of a major federal foster care law signed earlier this year – will create a new opportunity to get child welfare financing closer to what advocates, practitioners and lawmakers have long said they want, but have failed to deliver: True child maltreatment prevention.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration is speaking out against a proposed federal bill that protects faith-based foster care agencies that refuse to place adoptive or foster children with qualified LGBT adults.

Hawaii is working to develop a plan to improve its child welfare system after a federal review found that the state for the third time had failed to meet several federal standards for children in its foster care system.

The slightly re-named Family First Prevention Services Act, an overhaul of federal child welfare financing aimed at supporting more efforts to prevent foster care placements, will likely be introduced next week in both the House and Senate.

As I mentioned in a prior piece in this series, the federal child welfare advocacy community increasingly seems myopically focused on increasing federal funding for “prevention.” Unfortunately, few, if any, are able to paint a picture of what increased investment in prevention would look like.

This analysis is part of The Imprint’s series entitled: “Dollars and Priorities: The Financing of Child Welfare.” As I begin this series analyzing efforts to change how the federal government finances the country’s child welfare systems, the Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration (“waiver”) program seems like a natural place to start.