Young people involved in the child welfare system do best in families.

Nearly half a million children are currently in foster care. After years of decline in numbers of children in foster care, the number has risen steadily since 2012, with anecdotal evidence and expert opinion linking this increase to the parallel rise in opioid addiction and overdoses. Family First provides struggling and overburdened child welfare agencies with the tools needed to help children and families in crisis, including families struggling with the opioid epidemic.

Young people involved in the child welfare system do best in families, in a safe and stable environment that supports their long-term well-being, according to research. The passage of Family First took a large step toward this vision by restructuring how the federal government spends money on child welfare to ensure that more children in foster care are placed with families. The law also provides more support for critical services, such as mental health and substance abuse treatment, in-home training and family therapy that can help prevent the need for foster care in the first place.

The Family First Prevention Services Act (as part of Division E in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (H.R. 1892):

• Supports preventions services. The law gives states and tribes the ability to target their existing federal resources into an array of prevention and early intervention services to keep children safe, strengthen families and reduce the need for foster care whenever it is safe to do so.
• Provides support for kinship (relative) caregivers. Provides federal funds for evidence-based Kinship Navigator programs that link relative caregivers to a broad range of services and supports to help children remain safely with them, and requiring states to document how their foster care licensing standards accommodate relative caregivers.
• Establishes requirements for placement in residential treatment programs and improves quality and oversight of services. Allows federal reimbursement for care in certain residential treatment programs for children with emotional and behavioral disturbance requiring special treatment
• Improves services to older youth. Allows states to offer services to youth who have aged out of foster care up to age 23, along with adding flexibility to the Education & Training Voucher (ETV) program.

QUICK LINKS

Learn more about the the Family First Prevention Services Act:

Full text of legislation (Social Security Act language amended with Family First provisions)

DOCUMENTING THE HISTORY

Read the thank-you letters submitted by national advocates to members of Congress for their support in the passage of the historical legislation:

“We know that federal policy shouldn’t create an incentive to rip these families apart. It should create incentives to keep families together.”

— Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon

The Family First Act provides a historic opportunity for stakeholders to re-envision the child welfare system and how it serves children and families.

Family First Implementation Timeline

​​​​​​​The Children's Defense Fund produced a timeline relating to the various provisions of implementation of the Family First Act. Click on each item to expand. Download the PDF from Children's Defense Fund here > ​​​​​​​

Effective Upon Enactment

HHS will provide technical assistance, disseminate best practices, establish a clearinghouse, and collect data and conduct evaluations for the prevention services and programs. There is $1 million appropriated to HHS to carry out these provisions beginning in FY2018 and each year afterwards. [Sec. 50711(d)]

Title IV-E is renamed “Part E—Federal Payments for Foster Care, Prevention, and Permanency” and the purpose of Title IV-E is amended to reflect the new use of federal funds for prevention services and programs. (Sec. 50733)

The Adoption and Legal Guardianship Incentive Payment program is reauthorized for an additional five years, from FY2017 through FY2021. This takes effect as if enacted on October 1, 2017. (Sec. 50761)

*We assume the following provisions go into effect upon enactment:

• Amends the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program by extending independent living services to assist former foster youth up to age 23 (previously for youth ages 18-21) and extends eligibility for education and training vouchers for these youth to age 26 (previously only available to youth up to age 23). (Sec. 50753)
• Amends the state plan requirement under Title IV-B, Subpart 1 to describe activities to reduce the length of time to permanency for children under age 5 and the activities the state undertakes to address the developmental needs of all vulnerable children under age 5 who receive services until Title IV-B or Title IV-E. (Sec. 50772)
• Requires the GAO to review states’ compliance with the various requirements of the Title IV-E Adoption Assistance “delink” and the savings and reinvestments that results from the federal reimbursement phase-in (Sec. 50782)
• Reauthorized a number of Title IV-B programs are for five years, from FY2017 through FY2021, including: The Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services Program (Title IV-B, Subpart 1), and the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program (Title IV-B, Subpart 2), funding reservations for supporting monthly caseworker visits, and state Court Improvement Program Grants (Sec. 50752)

HHS will provide $5 million under Promoting Safe and Stable Families to help states develop electronic interstate case-processing systems. The funds will remain available through FY2022; HHS is required not later than one year after the final year that funds are awarded to
submit a report to Congress (available to the public) on the impact of the electronic interstate
case-processing systems. (Sec. 50722)

$8 million in competitive grants will be available to states and tribes to support the recruitment and retention of high-quality foster families to help place more children in foster family homes. The grants will be focused on states and tribes with the highest percentage of children in non-family settings. The funds will remain available through
FY2022. (Sec. 50751)