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Summary

Child welfare services seek to protect children who have been abused or neglected or are at risk of maltreatment. These services take many forms, ranging from counseling and other supports for parents ­ intended to prevent child abuse and neglect and improve child well-being ­ to removal of the children from home. At the most extreme, these services include termination of parental rights and placement of the children for adoption. States have the primary responsibility for designing and administering child welfare services. However, the federal government supports the services with significant funds and requires states to comply with federal standards. An estimated 903,000 children were the victims of child abuse or neglect in the year 2001. The majority of these children (59%) experienced neglect (alone or in combination with another form of maltreatment). Some children who experience maltreatment are removed from their homes with protective custody given to the state. On the last day of FY2001, an estimated 542,000 children were living in foster care (foster family, group, residential or other kind of home or placement setting). S. 342, the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003, passed the Senate on March 19 and on March 26 a different version of the legislation passed the House; (the original House bill number was H.R. 14). The bill would reauthorize the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), and several related programs. On February 13, the House passed H.R. 4, which includes provisions to extend and expand the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to approve child welfare demonstration projects (waivers). In his FY2004 budget, President Bush proposes an "alternative financing system for child welfare," under which states choosing to participate would "face fewer administrative burdens and would receive funds in the form of flexible grants." Language addressing aspects of federal child welfare financing in a variety of other ways is included in a number of bills that have been introduced. Proposals include allowing states to use TANF income and resource requirements to determine a child's eligibility for federal foster care and adoption assistance or removing income eligibility criteria entirely for these programs. Additional proposals would offer states new federal funds to implement required program improvements, enhance the quality of their child welfare workforce, offer substance abuse treatment services to families involved with child welfare agencies, and offer federal reimbursement to states for kinship guardianship payments. The Administration has also proposed to extend Adoption Incentive funding (now set to expire with FY2003) and to amend the program to especially reward adoptions of children age 9 or older. Additional child welfare related proposals have been introduced that would provide grants to support mentoring of children in foster care, grant tribes new authority to operate foster care and adoption assistance programs under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, seek to improve state foster care and adoption data collection, repeal the current "sunset" provision related to the adoption tax credit; and allow penalty-free withdrawal of Individual Retirement Account (IRA) funds for some qualified adoption expenses. This report describes child welfare legislative issues in the 108th Congress and will be updated as needed.

Related Legislation:
• S.342
• H.R.14
• H.R.4

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