Sponsors (5)
The bill aims to improve foster family recruitment, placement matching, youth engagement, and transparency to increase permanency for children, but it requires new data collection and planning that raise costs, implementation unevenness, privacy risks, and administrative burdens for states and families.
Children in foster care will have more placement options and higher chances of permanency because States must create child-specific recruitment plans and prioritize kinship and family placements.
State child welfare agencies, policymakers, and advocates will get standardized, comparable State-by-State data and transparency to better target recruitment, identify capacity gaps, and design programs to improve family matching and retention.
Foster and adoptive families will likely receive stronger supports and retention efforts because States must plan for recruitment, engagement, retention, and establish foster family advisory boards to inform practice.
State governments and taxpayers will face increased administrative and implementation costs to collect, standardize, and report new data and to convene advisory boards and recruitment efforts.
Smaller or resource-constrained States and agencies may experience uneven or delayed implementation (using the compliance delay), causing slower realization of benefits for children and families.
Public collection and reporting of demographic, family, and feedback data could raise privacy risks for foster and adoptive parents and youth if not properly anonymized and protected.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires State IV‑B plans to add a Family Partnership Plan to recruit, engage, and retain foster/adoptive families and adds new federal annual reporting on family capacity and barriers.
Requires State child welfare plans to include a Family Partnership Plan that lays out how states will recruit, engage, and retain foster and adoptive families, using data, youth input, and community consultation. Also adds new federally required annual reporting about the number, characteristics, and barriers related to foster and adoptive families, beginning with the FY2025 report.
Introduced January 21, 2025 by Charles Ernest Grassley · Last progress June 11, 2026