Recruiting Families Using Data Act of 2025

Key Points

• States must develop a "family partnership plan" to identify, recruit, screen, license, support, and retain foster and adoptive families. These plans must be created in consultation with birth families, kinship families, foster and adoptive families, community providers, and youth with lived experience in foster care.
• The bill prioritizes placing children with relatives and requires states to create child-specific recruitment plans for every child in or entering foster care who needs a family. States must also use data to reduce unnecessary placements in congregate (group) care and increase kinship placements.
• States must report annually on the number, demographics, and characteristics of licensed foster families, including how many are not being utilized and why. They must also collect feedback from foster and adoptive parents on why parents stop fostering or why placements fail.
• States must analyze barriers to recruiting families that reflect the racial and ethnic backgrounds of children in foster care and report on their efforts to overcome those barriers. This information will also be included in an annual report to Congress.
• The new requirements take effect October 1, 2027, but states that need to pass new legislation get extra time. The annual federal report to Congress including this data begins with fiscal year 2028.

Votes

No votes have been recorded for this legislation yet.