Congress Renews and Increases Title IV-B Child Welfare Funds

Con­gress has reau­tho­rized and expand­ed Title IV‑B of the Social Secu­ri­ty Act, increas­ing child wel­fare fund­ing by $75 mil­lion annu­al­ly start­ing Oct. 2025. The bipar­ti­san over­haul com­bined pro­pos­als from 16 child wel­fare bills, result­ing in the Sup­port­ing America’s Chil­dren and Fam­i­lies Act. Signed into law on Jan. 4, 2025, the crit­i­cal leg­is­la­tion aims to make child wel­fare sys­tems more respon­sive to the needs of chil­dren and families.

Title IV‑B pro­vides flex­i­ble fund­ing for states and tribes to pre­vent chil­dren from enter­ing fos­ter care, sup­port care­givers and strength­en fam­i­ly con­nec­tions. Law­mak­ers incor­po­rat­ed feed­back from over 200 child wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions and lead­ers, reau­tho­riz­ing the law through 2029 with key updates. 

What’s New to Title IV‑B?

Youth Voic­es

Young peo­ple in fos­ter care will now have a rec­og­nized role in shap­ing child wel­fare policies. 

Expand­ed Services

Young adults up to age 26 are now eli­gi­ble for Title IV‑B ser­vices like men­tal health sup­port.

Basic Needs

Agen­cies can pro­vide short-term finan­cial sup­port for fam­i­lies to pre­vent unnec­es­sary child removal due to pover­ty.

Addi­tion­al changes in Title IV‑B include:

• enable states and tribes to offer more fam­i­ly sup­port ser­vices to try to keep chil­dren out of the fos­ter care sys­tem, such as address­ing sub­stance use and form­ing fam­i­ly resource cen­ters, peer sup­port and peer men­tor­ship programs;
• devel­op and eval­u­ate pro­grams that help facil­i­tate and sus­tain mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships between chil­dren in fos­ter care and their par­ents who are incarcerated;
• help states address case­work­er staffing issues, with funds to recruit, reduce case­loads and pro­vide train­ing and ser­vices that increase case­work­er retention;
• sup­port research to devel­op and test inno­v­a­tive fam­i­ly well-being ser­vices and inter­ven­tions that could even­tu­al­ly become eli­gi­ble for fed­er­al reim­burse­ment; and
• estab­lish a require­ment for inde­pen­dent legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for chil­dren and par­ents when a fam­i­ly must resolve a child wel­fare allegation.

Strength­en­ing Kin­ship Care

Title IV‑B bol­sters kin­ship care pro­grams and ser­vices that place chil­dren with extend­ed fam­i­ly, pro­mot­ing strong rela­tion­ships, sta­bil­i­ty and healthy out­comes. The updat­ed law also:

• clar­i­fies that kin­ship care­givers are eli­gi­ble for Title IV‑B sup­port; and
• allo­cates new fund­ing for kin­ship nav­i­ga­tion pro­grams, which con­nect care­givers to crit­i­cal resources and services.

A Mile­stone for Child Welfare

For the first time, Title IV‑B man­dates that states and tribes con­sult with those most affect­ed by child wel­fare poli­cies — youth, par­ents, fos­ter fam­i­lies and kin­ship care­givers. Pub­lic account­abil­i­ty mea­sures now require states to pub­lish their plans and report on how they incor­po­rate these per­spec­tives, equip­ping those affect­ed by child wel­fare to help shape poli­cies and practices.

“For many years, research and data have led the Foun­da­tion to rec­om­mend key poli­cies and prac­tices reflect­ed in the reau­tho­riza­tion of Title IV‑B, includ­ing expand­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of youth to age 26, focus­ing on pre­ven­tion and the impor­tance of show­cas­ing the needs of peo­ple with expe­ri­ence in child wel­fare,” said San­dra Gas­ca, vice pres­i­dent for Casey’s Cen­ter for Sys­tems Inno­va­tion. ​“We remain com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing efforts that ensure these resources are used to help chil­dren, young adults and fam­i­lies thrive.”