From 2021 to 2023, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has taken administrative actions to prioritize the implementation of Family First prevention services. These actions minimize traumatic deployments of CPS, reduce the use of family separations, and bolster support for families providing kinship care. In this brief, the authors highlight where progress has been made—and where the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) could still take additional steps in 2024.

Relatives and family friends who step up when struggling parents can’t care for their children play an essential role in keeping countless kids out of foster care. In New York, hundreds of these caregivers receive monthly financial payments that amount to thousands of dollars a year, through the state’s Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program (KinGAP). But here and across the nation, the money is still tight, and not everyone who takes in foster children qualifies. 

Each year, over 250,000 U.S. children enter foster care. This forcible family separation – among the most extreme and intrusive government actions – occurs much more often than many realize, particularly among Black and Native American families. A staggering one in eleven Black children and one in nine Native American children will be placed in foster care by the age of 18.

Biden administration recently cleared states to create a separate pathway.

On September 28, 2023, the U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF) issued a final rule that explicitly gives all Title IV-E child welfare agencies the option to use kin-specific foster care licensing or approval standards and encourages them to limit those standards to federal safety requirements. This change will allow more children to be cared for by those they know and love and be financially supported like children with non-kin foster parents.

The Biden administration announced a mix of final and proposed rules on child welfare policy today that cover the placement of foster youth with relatives, legal representation for parents and children involved with the system, and the placement of LGBTQI+ youth in foster care. 

The origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States includes a dependency on slave labor and sales to sustain itself and build its institutions.

During this webinar, participants will explore the role of the Catholic Church in separating children from families during slavery in the United States.

For more than 150 years, spurred by federal assimilation policies beginning in the early 19th century, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were sent to boarding schools across the country. In many cases, they were forcibly removed from their homes.

In this Health Policy, the authors map the global variation in age restrictions and durations of stay in prison with a primary caregiver. They show a broad range of approaches and provisions for the placement of children in prison.