We have yet to see a full budget request from President Donald Trump; if his first term requests are any indication, his fiscal 2026 ask will include a healthy amount of spending cuts across government.
But a leaked document with details on plans for the Department of Health and Human Services portends far larger hacks into federal spending, including the elimination of major human services programs.
You can click here to see the outline. Below is a primer on what it projects for child and family services, primarily housed within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), based on Youth Services Insider’s read of it.
First, the leaked outline only covers discretionary spending plans, not the federal entitlements or even mandatory spending. So Title IV-E, the primary conduit of federal funds for child welfare activities, is not addressed, nor are funds for most of the Chafee independent living activities or the mandatory portion of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Act.
Also absent are Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the $17 billion federal welfare block grant, and the Social Social Services Block Grant, which provides about $1.7 billion in flexible funds to states. States have come to use both of these programs to pay for child welfare services, as was laid bare in a recent Government Accountability Office report.
This leaked plan would take discretionary programs at ACF to about $16 billion, down from $39 billion in 2024. All of the discretionary, child welfare-specific programs at ACF seem to be level-funded, with a few cuts. That includes the following:
- Child Abuse Grants-State ($105 million)
- Child Abuse-Discretionary ($36 million)
- Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention ($61 million, down $10 million)
- Child Welfare Services ($269 million)
- Child Welfare Training ($22 million)
- Adoption Opportunities ($53 million)
- Adoption Incentives ($75 million)
- Promoting Safe and Stable Families Discretionary ($63 million, down $10 million)
- Chafee Educational Training Vouchers ($44 million)
A few sizable programs aimed at supporting vulnerable parents are also level-funded, including the federal home visiting program ($613 million) and the Opioid State Response Grants ($1.5 billion). The Unaccompanied Children program, which provides shelter and support to youth arriving at the border alone in search of asylum, was funded at about a billion below its 2024 level.
So that is what appears to be in the Trump budget plan. Gone are Head Start, which in 2024 was appropriated $12 billion, Preschool Development Grants ($315 million), and the Community Services Block Grant ($805 million). The first two help to pay for early learning opportunities for low-income children, while also providing daytime child care to working parents.
The jury is decidedly out on the academic track record of Head Start, the education-oriented preschool program for low-income families invented in the 1960s and federally proliferated in the early 1980s. Critics will point to large impact studies that show early academic gains fade by third grade. Proponents will say those gains would stick if the students ended up in better public schools. But some research has also suggested that for children known to the child welfare system, Head Start participation is associated with lower rates of family separation.
