A flurry of youth- and family-related legislation made it through both chambers of Congress in the waning weeks of 2024, and were signed into law by President Joe Biden. An effort to rewrite one of the nation’s largest investments in youth work opportunities, however, may fall victim to a late fight over temporary spending to keep the government open.
First, a rundown of the action from December, with links in most places to The Imprint’s previous coverage of these bills.
Protecting America’s Children by Strengthening Families Act
This is the long-sought reauthorization of the Title IV-B program, which distributes funds to states each year for all kinds of child welfare pursuits, including family preservation, court administration, reunification services and post-adoption support.
In addition to a boost in annual funding for the program, the legislation initiates several policy shifts that you can read about here. The highest profile of those: a bipartisan bill that was rolled into this reauthorization that permits IV-B funds to be spent on concrete support such as housing, transportation or nutrition assistance. This is a win for advocates who have pushed for greater acceptance of fiscal support as a child welfare strategy, as opposed to a more isolated fidelity to supporting services.
Among the other issues addressed in the act: residential care regulation, state compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), the incorporation of lived experience experts into federal policymaking, and support for child welfare caseworkers.
Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act
Championed by celebrity Paris Hilton, who spent time in an institution herself, this bill and the residential care provision in the IV-B reauthorization constitute at least a growing interest in what’s happening in this arena.
The IV-B package requires that the Department of Health and Human Services develops guidance around how states should collect data on well-being and alleged maltreatment in residential care, and also best practices on improving oversight of such programs.
The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct “a study to examine the state of youth in youth residential programs and make recommendations.” The study is to be carried out within three years by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
This original study is to be followed by new reports to Congress produced every other year for a decade. The bill lists the parties that must be part of a working group consulted for the study, which includes people with lived experience in institutional care, parents, educators, child advocates and others.
Both measures stop short of building a regular national collection of information about maltreatment cases that initiate inside residential programs, which can stem from youth-on-youth behavior or actions by workers. Hopefully the probes into residential care surface some way for the Centers on Medicare and Medicaid Services to play more of a role in quality assurance; a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing featured experts and Members of Congress expressing frustration with the lack of action by that agency when they are made aware of problems inside such facilities.
Native American Child Protection Act
With a major Supreme Court case upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act in the rearview mirror, Congress and the Biden administration moved on a handful of actions related to the landmark law from 1978. Biden issued final rules around collecting state data about the use of ICWA, and the IV-B reauthorization includes requirements for the feds to help states comply more fully with the law while also reporting on compliance every two years.
This bill simply rejiggers an existing federal resource center to expand its scope. The National Indian Child Resource and Family Services, once focused on sexual abuse, will now provide technical assistance to tribes and urban Indian organizations on treatment and prevention of maltreatment and family violence.
It has become standard operating procedure in the past decade for Congress to pass a continuing resolution around December to avoid a holiday government shutdown. And since that is often viewed as a must-pass, there is always a scramble to tack on various reauthorizations of existing programs and other legislative desires.
Workforce Re-Up Halted
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or WIOA, was set on that path, and included some significant changes to the youth portion of the law. Among the changes in this reauthorization:
- Local workforce boards are currently required to spend 75% of their youth funds on “out-of-school” youth; this would shift to the term “opportunity youth,” which would enable a foster youth who was in school to be served under WIOA and count toward that 75%.
- It would offer provisional eligibility for youth seeking to enroll in a WIOA program. Right now, by way of example, a youth in foster care who shows up to a workforce center might be asked for a letter identifying them as a ward of the court; when they don’t have it on them, maybe they may walk out frustrated and never come back. This change gives them assumed status for 40 days, buying some time to get the necessary documentation in place.
- $65 million in new funding for youth apprenticeship programs and, just as importantly, programs that help get a young person ready to even qualify for an apprenticeship.
But the effort to update WIOA was derailed, at least for now, when a faction of Congress (along with President-Elect Donald Trump and his highest profile adviser, Elon Musk) decried the effort to go beyond a simple continuing resolution. Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) did not criticize WIOA explicitly, but in a long Twitter thread critiquing the continuing resolution, she called the switch from out-of-school to opportunity youth as “woke nonsense.”
The continuing resolution did pass, but WIOA reauthorization was not included in the final product.
There is still theoretically time for it to move as a standalone bill. The House has already passed it, so likely it would need to gain unanimous consent from the Senate through a process called hotlining, where any of the 100 senators could stop it in its tracks by placing a hold on the bill. More likely, it will come up again early in the next session, after inauguration.
NOTE: This article was updated to reflect that with the exception of the workforce legislation that did not pass Congress, President Biden signed all of the bills mentioned in this article.