Sponsors (5)
The bill would likely improve foster/adoptive family matching, racial equity analysis, and public transparency through mandatory recruitment plans and state reporting, but it imposes new administrative costs, implementation challenges for under-resourced States, and privacy risks unless paired with funding and strong data safeguards.
Children in foster care (especially those actively needing placements) are more likely to get individualized recruitment efforts, greater outreach to relatives/people already connected to them, and reduced reliance on congregate care because States must create child-specific recruitment and outreach plans.
Children from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds may experience better‑matched placements and fewer placement mismatches because States must analyze and report barriers to recruiting families who reflect children's racial and ethnic backgrounds.
State governments, HHS, policymakers, and the public will get improved transparency through required State-by-State data and expanded annual reports on foster and adoptive family capacity and congregate care use, enabling more targeted policy and funding decisions.
State governments will incur new administrative and reporting costs to develop child-specific recruitment plans, collect survey and demographic data, convene consultations/advisory boards, and produce expanded annual reports.
Mandates for extensive consultation, planning, and data collection could divert caseworker time and attention away from direct child welfare services unless new resources are provided.
Smaller or under-resourced States may face implementation delays, need new state legislation or staffing changes, and could have uneven compliance, reducing the policy’s effectiveness and creating geographic disparities in benefits.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Introduced January 21, 2025 by Charles Ernest Grassley · Last progress January 21, 2025
Requires every State child welfare plan to create a family partnership plan that documents how the State will find, notify, engage, and support relatives and other potential foster or adoptive families, and to collect and report detailed data on foster and adoptive family capacity and use. Also adds new, state-by-state data and parent/family survey summaries to the federal annual child welfare outcomes report starting with the FY2025 report. States must set recruitment goals using data, involve youth and families in planning, and update summaries of barriers and parent feedback each year. Most requirements take effect October 1, 2026, with extra time for States that need new state law to comply.