Strengthening the Child Welfare System for America's Children
The order directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to overhaul data collection, agency partnerships, and caregiver support in the federal child welfare system, with the goal of reducing the number of children in foster care and speeding up adoptions.
Establishes more than a dozen specific deadlines for new guidance, studies, metrics, and data systems — reaching the roughly 400,000 children currently in foster care, the 124,000 awaiting adoption, and the roughly 20,000 who age out of the system each year.
What this order does
What it orders
The order directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take a series of concrete steps across four areas: publishing annual data on foster care and adoption to help recruit community support; collecting new data on sibling placements and foster home availability; issuing guidance on partnerships with faith-based and community organizations; and expanding free, web-based trauma-informed training for child welfare practitioners. It also requires the Secretary to initiate a study on racial nondiscrimination requirements, update related guidance, and publish guidance on the rights of parents and children with disabilities.
On process reform, the order directs the Secretary to require that federal reviews of state child welfare programs specifically assess whether states are meeting statutory timelines for termination of parental rights and permanency planning — and to use existing disallowance authority when states fall short. It also directs collection of state risk-and-safety-assessment standards and development of best-practice standards. The order expressly preserves the Indian Child Welfare Act and tribal consultation processes, and includes a standard clause that no new legal rights are created.
Who it affects
Children in foster care and awaiting adoption nationwide, including those 9 and older, sibling groups, and children with disabilities; foster, kinship, and adoptive families; state and local child welfare agencies; faith-based and community organizations that partner with those agencies; and child welfare and mental health practitioners who use HHS training resources.
Why it matters
States that fail to meet statutory timelines for permanency and parental-rights terminations could face federal fund disallowances for the first time under more systematic federal review. Foster and adoptive families will gain clearer access to training, guardianship support, and legal representation resources — changes that directly affect how quickly children find permanent homes.
What must happen and when
How the order is supposed to work
HHS is the sole implementing agency. Most deadlines run 6 months to 3 years from signing. Enforcement teeth exist where HHS uses existing disallowance authority against states that miss statutory timelines under the Social Security Act — but most directives produce guidance, data systems, studies, or metrics rather than direct mandates. Implementation depends on the availability of appropriations, and the order creates no judicially enforceable rights. The Indian Child Welfare Act carve-out in Section 6 explicitly insulates tribal processes from any of these changes.
Actions and deadlines
- Issue guidance to federal, state, and local agencies on partnering with nongovernmental organizations for foster care and adoption support
- Submit annual report to the President on foster care entry patterns, children in care, and children waiting for adoption
- Use technical assistance resources to promote the National Training and Development Curriculum for caregivers
- Provide enhanced web-based platform for the National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative, free of charge
- Provide states with information on the title IV-E Guardianship Assistance Program and which states have opted in
- Establish a plan to address barriers to accessing federal assistance for kinship caregivers and youth exiting foster care
- Update guidance on implementation of the Multiethnic Placement Act's nondiscrimination requirements
- Publish guidance on rights of parents, prospective parents, and children with disabilities in foster and adoptive placement
- Provide guidance to states on using federal funds for legal representation of parents and children in child welfare proceedings
- Initiate study on nationwide implementation of Multiethnic Placement Act requirements
- Collect data from states on number of foster children not placed with their siblings
- Develop more rigorous data collection on foster home availability and recruitment as part of Child and Family Services Reviews
- Require federal title IV-E and Child and Family Services Reviews to specifically assess reasonable-effort and timeliness requirements
- Develop state-level metrics to track and compare permanency outcomes over time
- Collect individual state standards for conducting child abuse risk and safety assessments
- Outline best-practice standards for risk and safety assessments, including domestic violence and substance abuse
- Develop data analysis methods to report on sibling groups entering care and whether they achieve permanency together