President Donald Trump has nominated Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Director Alex Adams to lead the agency that handles child welfare services and federal funding and policy for many other family and child programs.
“I am grateful to President Trump for his nomination of yet another Idahoan to a key post, and I am excited to see the positive changes to come at HHS with Alex in such an important leadership position,” Idaho Gov. Brad Little wrote, in a statement announcing the nomination today.
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) oversees more than 60 programs and a budget of more than $70 billion, including Head Start, child care and family assistance. It also houses the U.S. Children’s Bureau, which administers billions of dollars for family preservation, foster care, adoption subsidies and other child welfare-related services.
Adams, who has a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Toledo and a Masters of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University, has not been in the child welfare space for long. He took over at the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in the summer of 2024 after five years heading up Little’s Division of Financial Management. Before that, he served as executive director of the Idaho State Board of Pharmacy for three years after six years with the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.
The administration recently appointed Andrew Gradison to serve as acting head of the ACF. A veteran policy expert on children and families who had spent time working in both the House and Senate, Youth Services Insider heard that Gradison might become the nominee himself. The time from nomination to confirmation has frequently taken close to a year for this position, so Gradison could still be in the role for awhile.
Two other key child welfare jobs within ACF — commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families and associate commissioner of the Children’s Bureau — are currently being filled by career staffers at the agency. The former requires Senate confirmation, and the latter does not.
During the Biden administration, ACF was first led on an interim basis by JooYeun Chang, now a managing director with Aviv Foundation. Biden’s only Senate-confirmed leader for the agency was January Contreras, who left after just a year to return to Arizona, and now serves as executive director of the Children’s Action Alliance.
