Child Welfare: Purposes, Federal Programs, and Funding
Children depend on adults—usually their parents—to protect and support them. The broadest mission of public child welfare agencies is to strengthen families so that children can depend on their parents to provide them with a safe and loving home. Child welfare agencies also aim to prevent abuse or neglect of children in their own homes. If this has already occurred, the agencies are expected to identify and offer needed services or referrals to ensure children do not reexperience maltreatment. For some children, this means placement in foster care.
Foster care is understood as a temporary living situation. When a child enters care, the first task of the child welfare agency is to provide services to enable the child to safely reunite with family. If that is not possible, then the agency must work to find a new permanent adoptive or legal guardianship family for the child. Youth in care who are neither reunited nor placed with a new permanent family are typically emancipated at their state’s legal age of majority. These youth are said to have aged out of care.
Children Served
During FY2023, public child protective services (CPS) agencies screened abuse or neglect allegations involving 7.9 million children and carried out investigations or other responses involving 3.1 million of those children. Among children receiving CPS services after such responses, most (an estimated 84%) received them while living at home.
Some 175,000 children entered foster care during FY2023. Neglect and/or parental drug abuse are the concerns most often linked with entry. Among the more than 343,000 children in care on the last day of FY2023, most (79%) lived in foster family homes, including with kin or nonrelatives providing regular, shelter, or therapeutic care. Some (11%) were in group, institutional, or residential care.
More than 184,000 children left foster care during FY2023. About half (51%) returned to their parent(s) or went to live informally with a relative; 37% left care for a new family via adoption or legal guardianship. Most of the remainder (9%) aged out; some went to another agency or ran away.
Who Bears Public Responsibility for This Work?
Under the U.S. Constitution, states are considered to bear the primary public responsibility for ensuring the well-being of children and their families. State and local public child welfare agencies work with an array of private and public entities—including the courts and health, mental health, education, social service, and law enforcement agencies—to carry out child welfare activities. This work is done consistent with state laws and policies. At the same time, the federal government has long provided technical support and funding that is intended to improve state child welfare work. As part of accepting this funding, states must meet federal program rules, such as permanency planning for children in foster care. Compliance is monitored via federal plan approvals, audits, and reviews.
The Children’s Bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) administers most federal child welfare programs. At the state level, administration is often within a human services department. Some states’ programs are county-administered with state agency supervision.