Youth

The Administration for Children and Families’ initiative, A Home for Every Child, is designed to help achieve at least a one-to-one ratio of foster homes available for children and youth in foster care, where the numerator is the number of foster homes available and the denominator is the number of children in care.

The goal of the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF’s) A Home for Every Child initiative is to have a safe and supportive home available for every child or youth in foster care. ACF measures the initiative’s success by a one-to-one home-to-child ratio, meaning there are as many foster homes available as there are children in foster care.

This brief synthesizes national caseload and expenditure data related to Title IV-E foster care eligibility and summarizes the Children’s Bureau’s published Title IV-E foster care eligibility review findings. Key findings include:

KEY POINTS

The Title IV-E Guardianship Assistance Program (GAP): Use of Guardianship is Growing, but Lags Adoption Assistance and is Unevenly Used Across States May 2026 Administration for Children and Families & Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation 

Children, youth, and families have unique health needs, which set the foundation for health across the life course; chronic conditions now affect nearly one in three U.S. children, with disproportionate prevalence in those enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP.

This brief explores how states are approaching kinship care by examining states’ definitions of kinship caregivers, the prevalence of children in foster care living with relatives or kin, states’ adoption of separate licensing standards for kinship homes, and states’ participation in kinship navigator programs through the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse. Key findings include:

This brief analyzes Title IV-E foster care program reported expenditures and reimbursements using the most recent years of publicly available claims data (from fiscal years 2019 to 2023). The content explores administrative costs, identifies how average monthly costs per child have changed over time, and provides a snapshot of the variation seen across states in FY2023.

This brief, focused on the Title IV-E Prevention Program, explores how states, territories, and Tribes have been engaging in the program since it began. The content highlights the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse process, as well as information from jurisdictions’ prevention plans and claimed expenditures. Key findings include:

Recent federal policy discussions have renewed focus on psychiatric medication use among children and adolescents. Psychiatric medications represent one evidence-based component within a spectrum of effective treatments for pediatric mental illness, alongside psychotherapy, family-based interventions, and school supports.