The leadership of the House Ways and Means Committee has unveiled a broad reauthorization of Title IV-B, a federal funding stream that contributes to an array of child welfare costs including family preservation, reunifications from foster care and post-adoption support.
Work and Welfare Subcommittee Chairman Darin LaHood (R-Illinois) and Ranking Member Danny Davis (D-Illinois) introduced the Protecting America’s Children by Strengthening Families Act, which folds in 16 different legislative efforts tied to Title IV-B.
“We have found that the child welfare system has taken its eye off the ball and is focused too much on bureaucratic paperwork and too little on solutions that keep families together,” said Missouri Republican Jason Smith, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee and recently introduced one of the 16 bills incorporated into this package. “The solutions in this bill came from listening to Americans involved in child welfare, like caseworkers and former foster youth, as well as the concerns for America’s kids shared by Republicans and Democrats on this Committee.”
Title IV-B is made up of two programs: the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services program and the MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families program. The funds from both parts can be used in a similar fashion, and most years total up to between $500 million and $600 million.
Overall, the new bill introduced this week would reauthorize Title IV-B for five years, a significant development since the program has been overdue for a full renewal, and many expect domestic spending negotiations to become tougher in the years ahead. It also makes several amendments to IV-B that would take effect in October, 2025. Following is a summary of some key new proposals:
Poverty Prevention
Youth Services Insider already reported on one of the more prominent changes in this package: the inclusion of concrete support such as housing, transportation or nutrition assistance as allowable expenses under IV-B. This was offered up by Chairman Smith and longtime Congressional child welfare expert Gwen Moore (D-Wis.).
“Spending even a fraction of those funds at the front end could have provided this family with adequate housing, laundry and bathroom facilities, and assistance in obtaining and maintaining employment,” Smith said about one case at a recent hearing on child welfare. “It also would have kept the children with their mother and spared them the trauma caused by separation.”
Family First Prevention Services Act
The package makes $5 million available each year for grants to conduct evaluations of services approved by the clearinghouse that Congress created in connection with the Family First Act. That clearinghouse reviews and rates potential models and programs as candidates for Title IV-E funding, which under Family First was expanded to include efforts to prevent the use of foster care in some child welfare cases. The cost and work involved in conducting evaluations — a requirement under Family First — has been cited as a reason why many states have been slow to make use of the new funds for foster care prevention.
Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)
By October of 2025, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services would be responsible for providing technical assistance to states to help them live up to ICWA, which was passed in 1978 at a time when up to one-third of Indigenous children were separated from their families. The bill will also require biennial reports on state compliance with ICWA. For more on this, read Nancy Marie Spears’ coverage in The Imprint.
Lived Experience
States must have their child welfare plans approved periodically by the Department of Health and Human Services, and it is already a requirement that they consult with community-based organizations in the child welfare space in developing those plans. This package would add two other groups to the list that states must elicit input from: caregivers (and that includes birth parents, kin and foster or adoptive parents), and youth and young adults who have experienced the child welfare system.
Another point of inclusion: Title IV-B includes a definition of what “family preservation services” means in terms of possible ways to spend the money. This bill would add to the list “peer-to-peer mentoring,” which is defined to mean support programs with a reputation for building constructive relationships between children and their caregivers, led by mentors who have lived experience with the child welfare system.
Supporting Caseworkers
The package includes $26 million per year to efforts to improve the experience of child welfare caseworkers, at a time when many states, counties and nonprofits are struggling to recruit and retain them. The funds can be spent on lowering caseloads, technology that streamlines the administrative side of the job, caseworker safety, recruitment and wellness resources.
Incarcerated Parents
The package includes $35 million per year for grants to help develop “meaningful relationships” between youth in foster care and incarcerated parents. The grants can be used for things that include what is described as “enhanced visitation,” training of both child welfare and correctional staff, and changes to both child welfare and correctional policy that improve the ability to build family connections.
Regulating Residential Care
As The Imprint’s Michael Fitzgerald reported, the Senate Finance Committee recently wrapped up and released a fairly scathing report on the quality of care and safety within residential treatment facilities, or at least those operated by four of the nation’s largest providers.
“The risk of harm to children in RTFs is endemic to the operating model,” the Senate investigation concluded.
Leaders of that committee may soon introduce legislation to require more and better monitoring of residential care for youth in foster care as well as other teens sent to them. This IV-B package gets the ball rolling with a requirement that the Department of Health and Human Services develops guidance around how states should collect data on well-being and alleged maltreatment in residential care, and also best practices on improving oversight of such programs.