Four states join federal tech initiative to improve foster care ratios

A federal child welfare initiative aimed at increasing foster home capacity is beginning to take shape across the country, with several states already opting into the pilot program.

The effort, called “A Home for Every Child,” launched late last year by the Administration for Children and Families, aims to ensure states have at least one available foster home for each child in foster care. The program aims to accomplish this by updating child welfare IT systems, reducing unnecessary placements and connecting more vulnerable families with government services.

Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana and Tennessee have signed on to participate in the program’s first phase and will display data on their foster home capacity on the ACF’s data dashboard. The states will also participate in performance improvement plans, focused on monthly measures like placement stability and repeat maltreatment.

Alex Adams, ACF’s assistant secretary, said that while nearly every state has been placed on an improvement plan within the past 25 years, they failed to “move to the needle” on measurable progress. He expects roughly 10 additional states to join the initial cohort by the end of March.

“It was compliance for compliance sake. It was not compliance for the purposes of improving child welfare outcomes,” Adams said in an interview. “Rather than drowning them in paperwork, [states] would be able to spend their walking around time and liberated energy on actually improving child welfare outcomes.”

‘Chart their own path’

ACF last year published a report showing that only 57 licensed foster homes are available for every 100 children in care. By tracking states’ progress on improving that ratio, Adams said, the initiative could hold states more accountable and reduce the number of children placed in temporary settings such as offices, hotels or other emergency placements.

He acknowledged that there is no “one-size-fits-all solution” across states.

“We’re entrusting states to chart their own path,” Adams said. “Some states might focus on retention, others so might focus a little bit more on prevention and permanence. What Tennessee might focus on might be a little bit different than Oklahoma.”

In 2023, the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth found that the state had one the highest recorded rates of foster care instability in the nation: Nearly 34% of cases had experienced three or more home placements within their first year. As part of the its participation in the ACF initiative, Tennessee plans to connect more families with government services so that fewer children need to enter foster care.

Michael Williams, director of child welfare for Oklahoma Human Services, said his state is adopting kinship care as the first placement option and working to procure new software so relative caregivers can obtain caregiver licenses faster, potentially allowing more foster youth to remain with family. He said Oklahoma aims to have at least 70% of children in foster care placed with kin.

“This gives us an opportunity to articulate what many other jurisdictions have been struggling with, that a high acuity of children are coming into foster care — kids with intellectual disabilities, children with serious psychiatric, mental health problems, and children who have juvenile delinquency issues — where parents have pretty much given up,” Williams said. “They’re coming in at the age of 13, 14, and these are the ones who are sleeping in offices, living in group homes. We have to develop strategies for how to get homes for those children.”

In Missouri, which has roughly 7,300 foster homes to support more than 11,000 foster youth, the Department of Social Services can’t remove children from their homes without first filing petitions through the juvenile office and working through the courts.

“It’s kind of a bifurcated system,” Sarah Smith, Missouri’s children’s division director, said in February, shortly after the state had joined the initiative.

Since multiple agencies are involved in Missouri’s foster care system, Smith said, the department is exploring how to improve its data sharing and transparency, such as through the use of public dashboards showing the metrics of case management partners and the children’s division, because “child welfare doesn’t happen in a silo.”

In Louisiana, Adams said ACF is working to end the diversion of Social Security survivors’ benefits from foster youth whose parents have passed away, but have contributed to the social insurance program.

“In 36 states, they just take it from the kids, sometimes without their notice, to offset state costs of providing foster care. We think it’s morally wrong,” Adams said. “The child, through no fault of their own, is in foster care. Orphans should not be asked to pay taxes for their own care.”

‘Essential’ technology

ACF last week published a brief outlining steps states can take to update child welfare program technologies, which “function primarily as digital filing cabinets.” The brief said many state systems still mainly store data, rather than help caseworkers analyze it. States need newer software, that includes data analytics capabilities, it concluded, to improve child welfare outcomes.

Adams said many states still rely on outdated or overly complex systems that make it harder for caseworkers to do their jobs and for agencies to track outcomes for children and families.

ACF in its brief urged states to move away from large, one-time technology projects and to instead build smaller systems that can be more easily updated and patched. The agency also recommended designing systems with input from frontline workers so they can better support day-to-day casework.

“Modern technology and analytics infrastructure are essential for better decisions and outcomes for children and families,” the report read.

The brief also suggested state agencies adopt predictive risk models to identify patterns that may signal when families need support. Such software can help agencies flag cases when children may be at higher risk of harm or when early services might prevent a child from entering foster care. Allegheny County, Pennsylvania’s human services agency, for instance, began using predictive risk models in 2016 to inform high-stakes decisions, such as whether to investigate cases of potential child abuse or neglect.

But ACF warned that such algorithms should only support decision-making, not replace caseworkers. The brief also urged states to test models for bias, ensure transparency in how they work and maintain strong oversight to avoid unfair or inaccurate outcomes. It also recommended improving data sharing across agencies, strengthening cybersecurity protections and fostering more federal-state collaboration to help states more efficiently adopt modern platforms.