Recruiting Families Using Data Act of 2025

This bill aims to help more children in foster care find and stay with stable families. It makes states create and update a “family partnership plan” that is built with input from birth, kinship, foster, and adoptive families, community groups, and youth who have lived in care. The plan must show how the state will find and support relatives and other trusted adults for each child, make a child-specific recruiting plan when a child needs a family, and involve the child in that effort. States must use data to set goals, reduce unnecessary group placements, improve stability and permanency, increase kinship placements, better recruit for teens and siblings, and align the mix of foster and adoptive families with the needs of children. States also must support foster family advisory boards and report each year on foster family capacity, use of group care, and feedback from parents and youth about licensing, training, support, and why placements end or struggle.

The federal annual report on child welfare will add new, state-by-state data on the number and characteristics of foster and adoptive families, how many are not being used and why, plus summaries of challenges to recruiting and keeping families, including efforts to recruit families that reflect the racial and ethnic backgrounds of children in care.

• Who is affected: State child welfare agencies; children in or entering foster care; foster, adoptive, and kinship families.
• What changes: States must build a data-driven plan with community and youth input; create child-specific recruitment; support foster family advisory boards; and report yearly on capacity, group care use, and feedback. The federal report will include new state-by-state data and summaries of barriers and unused family capacity .
• When: Most state plan requirements start October 1, 2026, with extra time allowed if a state needs new legislation. The added federal reporting begins with fiscal year 2025 or later .