Current Issues & Priorities

Current as of:

The Children’s Bureau prioritizes improving child safety, permanency, and well‑being by strengthening prevention services, supporting families, and reducing the need for foster care. It advances these priorities by partnering with states, tribes, and communities to build fair, responsive systems that meet families where they are. Its work is centered on reducing child abuse and neglect, expanding quality foster care and adoption options, and promoting data-informed, community-driven improvements across child welfare systems.

A Home for Every Child

A Home for Every Child graphic

 

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at HHS has launched A Home for Every Child, a national initiative to ensure every child who enters foster care can live in a safe, stable family. The effort advances President Trump’s Executive Order Fostering the Future for American Children and Families and supports the First Lady’s focus on improving foster care outcomes.

Today, the nation faces a severe shortage of foster homes: for every 100 children entering care, only 57 licensed homes are available. This gap forces children to sleep in offices, places teens in hotels, and separates siblings simply because there is nowhere for them to stay.
 

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Child Welfare Technology Incubator

Banner for the Child Welfare Technology Incubator featuring the CCWIS logo, a digital technology‑themed background, and a photo of three smiling children sitting together.

 

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is strengthening support for states as they modernize Child Welfare Technology and Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS), with a simple goal: build systems that improve safety, permanency, and well-being for children and families across America.
 

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Child and Family Services Review Technical Bulletin #14

Computer screen with charts shown

 

Technical Bulletin (TB) #14 is now available. The changes outlined in this TB aim to maintain state accountability for achieving meaningful outcomes for children and families, enhance transparency and public accountability, reduce administrative burden, and provide states with greater flexibility to innovate and build capacity to manage and improve child welfare systems and outcomes, centered around the goal of A Home for Every Child.
 

Read the Technical Bulletin

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