Child welfare services are intended to prevent the abuse or neglect of children; to ensure that children have safe, permanent homes; and to promote the well-being of children and their families. It discusses FY2013 appropriations for those programs, including the effect of the automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration. Dedicated Child Welfare Funding by Purpose

By far, the largest share of dedicated federal child welfare funding (roughly 88% in recent years) is provided to states to assist them in supporting, or otherwise administering aid to, children who have been removed from their birth families primarily due to abuse or neglect. Foster Care, Adoption Assistance, and Kinship Guardianship Assistance

Under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, funds are provided to support eligible children in foster care as well as those who leave foster care for permanent homes via adoption or guardianship. Accordingly, the share of funding needed to reimburse states for support of children in foster care has been in decline—although it still represents more than half of all federal dedicated child welfare funds—while the share provided to support children in permanent adoptive or guardianship homes has increased to nearly one-third of the total dedicated child welfare funding. Funds included in this category of child welfare spending are authorized under (1) Title IV-B of the Social Security Act (i.e., funding for Child Welfare, Research, Training and Demonstrations; Family Connection Grants; certain competitively awarded programs or grants included in the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program ; and the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW)); (2) Title IV-E of the Social Security Act (i.e., Adoption Incentives and Tribal technical assistance and IV-E Implementation grants); (3) the Victims of Child Abuse Act (i.e., Court-Appointed Special Advocates, Children's Advocacy Centers, and Child Abuse Training for Judges and Judicial Practitioner), as well as (4) additional acts authorizing funds for Adoption Opportunities and Abandoned Infants Assistance. Final FY2013 funding provided via P.L. By comparison, for FY2012 Congress provided $8.009 billion in funding for the child welfare programs discussed in this report, including $7.386 billion in mandatory funds and $623 million in discretionary program dollars. 112-74 ). The President's FY2013 budget included $250 million to provide financial incentives to states to improve the child welfare system and $2 million as part of early implementation of a policy to ensure that child support payments collected on behalf of children in foster care are used in the child's best interest. This funding was not provided in the final FY2013 funding measure ( P.L. Improve the Child Welfare System

As part of its FY2013 budget request, the Obama Administration sought additional annual mandatory funding authority of $2.5 billion across 10 years ($250 million in each of FY2013-FY2022) "for incentive payments to States that demonstrate real, meaningful improvements" on measures of child outcomes and service quality. Because this legislative proposal would end federal "cost recovery" of Title IV-E foster care maintenance payments, it was estimated to increase the federal cost of foster care by $2 million in FY2013—the first year proposed for implementation of this proposal—rising to roughly $34 million annually when the proposal is fully launched (total estimated 10-year federal cost to the Title IV-E program: $303 million). These proposals did not necessarily require congressional program authorization to be carried out. The Administration proposed FY2013 appropriations language that would cancel any of the appropriated Title V Abstinence Education funding for any state that did not submit an application to receive the funding (as of September 20, 2013) and would simultaneously re-appropriate these funds to HHS for support of "competitive contracts and grants to State and local governments to develop approaches to reduce pregnancy among youth in foster care and to fund age appropriate evidence-based programs that reduce pregnancy, behavioral risk factors underlying teen pregnancy, or other associated risk factors among youth in foster care and for the Federal costs associated with administering and evaluating such contracts and grants." 113-6 provides combined funding for each of these programs of $25 million after application of the March 1 sequestration order. Congress first authorized Title IV-E support for kinship guardianship assistance in FY2009. Although the number of children currently receiving this assistance remains small, it has grown from about 100 in FY2009 to 16,000 in FY2012.
Child welfare services are intended to prevent the abuse or neglect of children; ensure that children have safe, permanent homes; and promote the well-being of children and their families. The largest amount of federal child welfare funding is provided to states for assistance to children who have been removed from their homes (due primarily to abuse or neglect). In the past decade, the share of this support provided for children who remain in foster care has been on the decline, while the share provided for those who leave foster care for permanent homes (primarily via adoption) has increased. Congress first authorized Title IV-E support for kinship guardianship assistance in FY2009. Although the number of children receiving this assistance remains relatively small, it is growing.
Final FY2013 funding provided for child welfare programs was $7.868 billion (P.L. 113-6, and after application of the March 1 sequestration order). Final FY2012 funding provided for those same child welfare programs was $8.009 billion (P.L. 112-74).
Of the $141 million in reduced child welfare funding (compared to FY2012), about $55 million resulted from the automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration. Those cuts largely affected funding to states for child welfare-related services to children and their families, including the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services program, the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program, Education and Training Vouchers (for youth who age out of foster care), grants under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), funding for Adoption Incentives, and several competitive grant programs supporting child welfare purposes. The remaining roughly $86 million difference in appropriated funding authority is tied to a change in the expected cost of the program that provides federal support for foster care, adoption assistance, and kinship guardianship (authorized under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act). That program is exempt from sequestration and receives mandatory funding to meet a part of all eligible foster care, adoption assistance, and kinship guardianship assistance costs incurred by states.
The President's FY2013 budget sought $8.175 billion for the child welfare programs and related initiatives described in this report, including $250 million annually (beginning with FY2013) to provide incentives to states that improve their performance with regard to child outcomes and service quality. The Administration also sought legislative authority to end federal and state "cost recovery" of child support payments made on behalf of children in foster care and to instead require that these funds be spent in the child's best interest. This change to the Child Support Enforcement program was estimated to cost the federal treasury $2 million in FY2013, and a total of $303 million across 10 years.
As part of its FY2013 budget, the Administration also proposed continued funding of a national survey of well-being for children in foster care, sought increased research funds ($5 million in FY2013) for competitive grants to improve coordination between entities serving young victims of domestic sex trafficking, and proposed re-purposing certain previously appropriated funding that was expected to go unused (an estimated $12 million to $15 million in FY2013) for competitive grants to fund and evaluate programs to reduce pregnancy among youth in foster care. Congress did not authorize, fund, or otherwise enable any of these FY2013 proposals. Finally, the Administration sought to eliminate funding for three programs, authorized under the Victims of Child Abuse Act (Children's Advocacy Centers, Court Appointed Special Advocates, and Child Abuse Training for Judges and Judicial Practitioners). Congress did not follow this proposal, choosing instead to provide a combined $25 million for the programs.