Eight years ago, a three-year-old boy entered foster care and was placed in our home. At our dining room table, his caseworker told us that his mother was “bad,” they had not identified or contacted his father, and he had no known extended family.
He needed a loving, safe, permanent home — as every child deserves — and we eagerly welcomed him into ours.
This little boy would spend the next seven years spiraling through the system across four counties, six foster homes, a dozen schools and more than 50 caseworkers, supervisors and attorneys. All despite having a father searching for him and a large extended family waiting to embrace him, literally minutes down the road. We have made important steps in federal policy toward a better system, starting with the Family First Prevention Services Act in 2018. But this child’s story exemplifies the significant gaps between child welfare policy and practice that exist in human terms.
Unrealized Potential
When the Family First Prevention Services Act was passed in 2018, the policy intent was clear: incentivize states to organize more around keeping families together and, when separation is necessary, bring children back home safely as quickly as possible. Federal funds opened up for foster care prevention, and were limited for congregate care. States could unlock resources for prevention and legal representation.
The work on this is far from done. Transformation in these systems will require more than just shifts in federal funding: it means re-aligning our people, practices, and technologies with our policies and strategies.
The “Fostering the Future” Executive Order named this gap, even emphasizing the need to modernize outdated state-run child welfare information systems. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) recently released a brief highlighting that more than $2.3 billion has been spent so far attempting to modernize these systems. But instead of innovation, investments were used to prop up a legacy infrastructure older than many of the people using it. Large consulting firms, system integrators and private-equity backed companies billed for projects that never delivered.
The path home starts with the family
It is time to redirect our resources to the problem we actually want to solve: how to engage and support families so they can stay together safely or reunify as quickly as possible. As ACF launches its Innovation Challenge, we advocate for three interventions that are proven, deployable now and operate within existing systems.
1. Find and engage family first. As Jennifer Jacobs puts it: “Finding family is only the start; true engagement is the real goal.”
Before a petition is filed, engaging parents or existing caregivers in a genuine and compassionate way can help avoid removals and minimize system-inflicted harm. When needed, family network mapping — especially deployed pre-petition — can give attorneys, families and caseworkers a more complete picture of existing support and safe-placement options before a removal decision is made, creating conditions for informed legal counsel at the moment it matters most. This approach already has been operationalized at various levels in more than 40 states.
2. Ensure early, high-quality legal representation. Early appointment of counsel for all parties at or before the initial hearing, in every jurisdiction, is the highest-leverage structural change that research supports.
David Kelly and Jerry Milner oversaw ACF’s early implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act , while warning of its gaps, limitations and challenges it would pose. In 2018, they changed federal policy to allow funding for legal representation for children and parents to ensure their voices are heard and prevent unnecessary separation. They speak with authority about what is lost when the system stops treating that voice as structural.
The policy change was backed by an abundance of compelling research. According to a memo authored by Kelly for ACF, “Children represented by attorneys trained and practicing under the QIC-ChildRep model in Washington State were 40 percent more likely to experience permanency within the first six months of placement than children represented by non QIC-ChildRep attorneys.”
The Imprint reported on a key study out of New York City that found interdisciplinary parent representation reduced children’s time in foster care by nearly four months (compared to panel attorney representation), expedited reunification, and increased permanency with kin, saving nearly $40 million annually in the cost of days in foster care.
Every parent and child deserve zealous legal advocacy at all stages of child protection proceedings, including pre-petition. For children, it is a matter of safety; for young people, a matter of developing agency; and for parents, a fundamental liberty interest recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States. For each, something sacred is at stake: the integrity of their family.
3. Deploy modular technology. I came to this work as a foster parent, but I also bring a decade of experience building and scaling technology tools. What I saw in the child welfare system was primarily a coordination and communication problem, not a data problem. Purpose-built, modular tools can bridge these gaps.
Timely reminders avoid missed hearings. Securely logged communication improves coordination and preparedness to reduce continuances.
New child welfare information systems should guarantee the timely reminders that prevent missed hearings, and securely logged communication that can improve coordination and preparedness to reduce court continuances. And when paired with trained attorneys and interdisciplinary teams, such capabilities can accelerate the path to permanency.
These three levers work to shift the paradigm from decisions made about families to decisions made with them. They create a foundation that reduces unnecessary foster care, achieves timely permanency and sets up youth for independence and success.
The challenge is on the table
The ACF’s $7 million “A Home for Every Child” challenge creates a powerful, fresh opportunity for change. States can compete to see who can close the gap. Our challenge is simple: Invest in families, act quickly and scale what works.
Envision it working: A child’s extended family is found and engaged before a removal decision. A pre-petition attorney, equipped to coordinate and communicate, builds the case for keeping a family safely together, with the parent at the table, informed, engaged and able to advocate for themselves and their children. And when separation cannot be avoided, counsel is connected immediately, building the foundation for a safe return home.
That little boy’s family was minutes away the whole time. Connecting with his family, and then connecting them with the legal representation and support they needed to stay together should have taken seven days instead of seven years.
A fuller analysis from the authors is available in a white paper,“The Path Home: How High-Quality Legal Representation and Purpose-Built Technologies Can Finally Deliver on the Promise of Family Preservation.”
David Kelly and Jerry Milner, co-founders of the Family Justice Group, and Jennifer Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of Connect Our Kids, contributed to this column.
