Biden-⁠Harris Administration Actions to Keep Children and Families Safely Together and Supported

 Today, the White House hosted a convening on transforming child welfare to announce new policies that focus on preventing family separation and supporting and creating opportunities for families and youth. The convening brought together policymakers across federal, state, local, and tribal governments, philanthropy, child welfare and family support organizations, and young people and families who have personal experiences, to encourage further innovation, build new partnerships, and exchange best practices. The new announcements focus on four key areas:

Separating Poverty and Neglect

Children should not be separated from their families due to financial hardship alone. Several states, like Kentucky, Indiana, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Kansas have already clarified that poverty alone should not cause child removal. And there is emerging evidence connecting these actions to improvements in family outcomes. The Biden-Harris Administration is encouraging states to follow their lead and make clear the distinctions between child maltreatment and financial hardship. Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is:

  • Issuing new policy guidance that encourages states to update their maltreatment definitions under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act to exclude the inability to provide adequate housing, child care and other material needs if the family has insufficient financial means to do so from the definition of child neglect. The state should first seek to help the family. 
  • Committing to develop guidance on training mandated reporters so that they recognize the need to connect economically fragile families to supports and know these changes to neglect definitions.

Prevention Services

Prevention services, including services to help families economically and provide parenting and behavioral health treatment, need to be well resourced, tailored to best meet the needs of families and grounded in evidence. New Biden-Harris actions will expand how states and Tribes can use federal funding for prevention activities to provide greater assistance to children and families before a crisis point. These actions include new policies to:  

  • Provide more flexibility to Tribal governments to use Tribally accepted prevention services when they collaborate with state child welfare agencies.
  • Permit federal administrative funding to help families get to and engage with prevention programs, such as case management, peer navigation and transportation to help families engage with services. Policy will also clarify how federal funds can support evaluations of interventions and activities that improve service implementation.
  • As well as, forthcoming new guidance on ways to integrate and leverage the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to prevent involvement in the child welfare system.

Prioritizing Kin and Youth Needs

Children who cannot be with their parents but live with relatives and other kin have better outcomes than those who are not, including in stability, behavioral health, and education. New Biden-Harris actions will incentivize jurisdictions to do more to ensure children can live with kin, and meet youth needs by:

  • Allowing child welfare agencies to draw on federal funds to finance background check operations to facilitate quicker licensing for kin and others who provide foster care.
  • Rolling out a new website spotlights states and Tribes that have adopted new kinship licensing rules, as well as data on their kinship placement rates.
  • Publishing a resource guide on federal programs that provide supports to grandparents and kin in their caregiving roles. 
  • Conducting a series of listening sessions to identify federal flexibilities needed for states and Tribes to adopt kinship licensing rules and kinship first approaches.

Innovations and Research

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to further developing actionable research on the intersection between prevention, family support and child well-being outcomes. HHS announced several projects that:

  • Highlight innovative prevention approaches that rely on service integration and agency collaboration to prevent homelessness among youth aging out of foster care and to build family resilience.
  • Enable researchers to study linked Medicaid and child welfare data to understand the health needs of children and parents involved in child welfare.
  • Examine the characteristics and experiences of certain families who relinquished or voluntarily placed their children in child welfare custody to better identify the needs for community-based behavioral health and disability services.