What Is Child Welfare Policy?
Wait…First, What is Child Welfare Policy?
Child welfare policy is…complicated. But also, it’s not!
The simple version: child welfare policy is the laws and funding to prevent and respond to child abuse and neglect, support families to avoid unnecessary foster care, and provide care when children can’t remain safely with their family.
The complicated version: child welfare policy is an interlocking thicket of federal, state, tribal, and local laws and funds. While state and local funding is over half (~$15.9 billion1) of total annual child welfare spending (~$31.4 billion2), there are key federal laws and financing tools that drive policy, practice, and pecuniary details:
Title IV-E of the Social Security Act: This is the biggie, about 57% of federal child welfare spending. It covers foster/kinship care for certain children (more on that to come!), adoption assistance & subsidized guardianship, prevention services, kinship navigator programs, supports for older youth, and more.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): TANF is 19% of federal child welfare spending, including supports for kinship caregivers, foster care (for children not covered by IV-E, more on that later), and other child welfare services.
Social Services Block Grant: This incredibly flexible funding source is 10% of federal child welfare spending, supporting an array of services.
Medicaid: Nearly all children in foster care are eligible for Medicaid. Medicaid also provides 7% of federal child welfare financing, funding child welfare agencies for services they provide directly (e.g. targeted case management).
Title IV-B of the Social Security Act: 4% of federal funding, but with key policy requirements. See more below!
Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA): A rounding error when it comes to funds, but a key policy driver of child protective services.
And so much more!
Child Welfare Wonk offers you more detail on all these and more, but for now, you have a sense of the breadth of relevant policy.
See more from ChildTrends here, at page 1, and a great chart on page 16 for federal funding by %. If you can’t already tell, ChildTrends has excellent writing and research on child welfare policy, particularly their biennial state financing survey