Mind the GAP: Why States Pay for Guardianships Washington Won’t
By: Laura Radel, MPP, Senior Contributor
Mind the GAP: Why States Pay for Guardianships Washington Won’t
Subsidized guardianship is often a successful permanency option for relatives not interested in adoption, but financing policy impedes its deployment federally.
By Laura Radel, MPP, Senior Contributor
States fund nearly half of all guardianship subsidies out of their own pockets, even though Congress created a federal match program in 2008.
As states increasingly rely on kinship care to keep children connected to family, it’s critical to understand why there’s a gap between what federal law versus states fund and why.
GAP 101
The Guardianship Assistance Program (GAP) was added to the Title IV-E statute by the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-351).
GAP allows states to receive federal reimbursement for monthly subsidies when a child in foster care exits to a legal guardian, often a relative, who was their licensed foster parent.
By 2023, 42 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 11 Indian tribes operated GAPs and claimed federal match for guardianship subsidies on behalf of over 45,000 children.
That same year, states also reported they served an additional almost 36,000 children in subsidized guardianships outside the IV-E program.
For those guardianships, the state paid 100% of the guardianship payment.
That means 45 percent of states’ guardianship payments did not include a federal match. In addition, states’ use of the program is quite variable.
Why is that the case?
Guardianship is a permanency path states want, but federal eligibility cuts it off for thousands of kids.
States’ Use of the Title IV-E GAP Program
Unlike foster care and adoption programs that are required by federal law, guardianship programs are optional.
Most states have decided to use subsidized guardianships as a strategy to keep children in their birth families.
However, several states–including Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Utah– have chosen not to operate GAPs.
Ohio has an approved GAP plan but, as of 2023, had not submitted any program claims.
Of those operating IV-E GAP programs, nearly all report both matched IV-E guardianships and unmatched guardianships that are not part of the IV-E program.
How States Stack Up
The national picture is split: just over half of subsidized guardianships get a federal match (56%), while nearly as many (46%) are on the state’s dime.
But the caseload isn’t evenly spread. California (25%), Missouri (12%), and Texas (9%) alone account for almost half of all IV-E GAP kids nationwide.
Missouri stands out in particular — it has a much smaller foster care population than other large states, yet it leans heavily on guardianship as a permanency path.
At the other end of the spectrum, some states barely use the federal program.
Wyoming (3%) and Nebraska (5%) rely almost entirely on state dollars, while Idaho (94%) and Nevada (85%) go nearly all-in on GAP.
A handful of states — Alabama, North Carolina, Washington, and Vermont — report no state-only guardianships, meaning every child in guardianship gets a federal match.
New York and Illinois, by contrast, operate GAP but post surprisingly small caseloads given the size of their foster care systems. See the Figure below for more information.
Unmatched Guardianships
State-only subsidies fill the gap for children who can’t qualify for federal guardianship assistance. Who gets left out?
Grandfathered Out.
Children who entered guardianship before the state participated in the federal IV-E Guardianship program.
This population is getting smaller as the GAP program matures.
Income Excluded.
Children whose birth families were not income-eligible for title IV-E when the child entered foster care.
As has been described in previous issues of The Wonk, this population has grown in recent years because of the lookback date which locks states into outdated income rules from 1996 that do not adjust with inflation.
States can do nothing to affect this eligibility criterion.
Unlicensed Kin
Children whose prospective guardian is not a licensed foster parent are ineligible.
Regulations finalized in 2023 allow states to develop specialized licensing criteria for these families to streamline the licensing process without sacrificing safety, and more are seeking this pathway.
Lower-Rate Workaround.
Keeping relatives unlicensed allows a lower state-only subsidy rate than the federal GAP program — a budget reality that leaves some kin with less.
Too Quick To Exit?
Federal law requires six months in licensed relative foster care before GAP kicks in.
Families ready to step up sooner — often before the system is even involved — must either wait it out in foster care or make do with TANF child-only payments, which are often half the size of a guardianship subsidy.
This creates a perverse incentive: keep kids in foster care longer to secure funding, or push for faster permanency and lose federal support.
Either way, children and kin caregivers pay the price.
Bottom Lines
Many states’ guardianship programs continue to be relatively small and have room to grow over time as they develop their capacities working with kin.
For states that begin using the increased flexibility in licensing relative foster homes, eligibility for Title IV-E guardianship subsidies is likely to increase, making guardianship a more attractive option financially for states.
But federal financing remains the rate limiting step; without change to either the lookback date or time in care requirements, there will continue to be a significant population of children living stably with kin who are not eligible for the IV-E GAP program.
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