Decades of policy advocacy have led to numerous changes in our child welfare system. Some have said the current changes to public child welfare harken back to reform in 80s that workers hoped would have a longer lasting effect than it has. In order to really understand the policies that impact child welfare, it is helpful to understand the funding streams that sustain it.

Child Welfare Funding at the National Level

Child welfare funds are provided on federal, state, and county levels of government with the majority coming from state and federal funds. Of the federally funded programs that support state and tribal child welfare, foster care, and adoption services, Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act are the most generous:

Title IV-B, subpart 1, also known as the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services Program, provides grants to States and Tribes for programs that promote family preservation. They include measures to keep children safe within their homes such as preventive interventions, kinship care, and adoption and reunification services.

Title IV-B, subpart 2, also known as the Promoting Safe and Stable Families , funds family support services to improve parenting and strengthen relationships, family preservation services, time-limited family reunification services, and adoption promotion and support services.

Title IV-E has four main components:

  • Foster Care Assistance: allows for reimbursement by the federal government of money spent by the state or county to provide shelter, food, and clothing for children in foster care. The costs for training staff and foster parents, recruitment of foster parents, and collection of data are also reimbursed by the federal government.
  • Adoption Assistance: used for the placement of children with adoptive families, provision of financial and medical assistance, and costs for training staff and adoptive parents.
  • Guardianship Assistance: provides reimbursement to kinship guardians or relatives who had previously fostered the child for providing shelter, food, and clothing to the children in their care.
  • John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence programs: assists youth who are or who have been in foster care with the challenging transition into adulthood. The program aims to help youth that are on the path to aging out of foster care, those 16 years or older who have left foster care for kinship guardian care or adoption, and those who have aged out of foster care without permanency. States and Tribes are awarded funds for programs that will help with education, employment, housing, relational and emotional support, and more.

Another major source of federal funding that aims to prevent and treat child abuse comes from the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) and its amendments. The federal government distributes CAPTA grants to the states, who must include in their Child and Family Services Plan how the state is incorporating certain programmatic requirements into their statewide child protection system in order to receive the funding. For example, Minnesota’s Reporting of Maltreatment of Minors Act was developed in order to comply with CAPTA and receive CAPTA funding.

Minnesota Child Welfare Funding

Minnesota is the second highest state (after Ohio) that is most heavily funded by the county. Federal funding comes to counties via the State, and programs are administered on a county level. The State itself provides the least amount of funding for child welfare while the counties contribute nearly half. According to the 2013 Annual Human Service Cost Report, the revenue sources for Children’s Services are:

  • 29% Federal,
  • 22% State,
  • 45% County, and
  • 4% miscellaneous (which includes private grants or donations as well as client fees).

According to Ralph McQuarter at DHS (who presented at one of the Task Force meetings on this topic), local property taxes cover about half of all child welfare expenditures statewide. Counties use these local funds as well as dedicated state dollars and a portion of state and federal block grants to fund child welfare in Minnesota.

The 2013 Social Services Expenditure and Grant Reconciliation Report (SEAGR) details the breakdown of services within children’s programs. Of the many programs supported by this funding, general case management receives the most funding at $90,143,219. The next highest program area is child family foster care, at $58,536,281, then information and referral at $19,143,219, family assessment response at $16,852,049, and child protection investigation at $14,764,957. The least funded programs are respite care ($1,739,516) and adoptions ($3,512,786).

These numbers provide insight into the child welfare funding priorities. Based on what we’ve been hearing from the child protection task force, it is likely there will be an increase in funding from the state to help offset the county costs to administer child protection. Because there is a push at the task force for more cases to enter the investigation track over the family assessment track, it is likely that there will need to be quite a bit more funding dedicated for child protection investigation, considering that family assessment currently accounts for 70% of all child protection cases, yet its funding level is only slightly higher than the funding level for family investigation. Based on trends over the years, preventive services may continue to be underfunded. We’ll be keeping a watchful eye to see how things change with the recommendations from the task force and the budgetary surplus.