This June 29, 2021 Annie E. Casey Foundation webinar presented findings from a study of 26 young parents with foster care experience. The webinar explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their lives and covered multiple themes: employment disruptions, economic hardships, educational challenges, mental health challenges, insufficient resources, barriers to receiving services, and silver linings.

This Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation brief summarizes findings of a Youth At-Risk of Homelessness (YARH) grantee peer-learning experience held in summer 2020. Six YARH grantees shared their experiences, challenges, lessons learned, and solutions to engaging youth.

The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network will host a webinar on February 11 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET to focus on how kinship and family support programs are building and sustaining multi-state navigator initiatives. The session will share real-world lessons about effective partnership structures, staffing strategies, data sharing, and funding approaches as well as examples of promising models that have expanded across regions. This is a chance to learn how navigator services can expand for broader reach, strengthen cross-state collaboration, and help connect families to benefits and supports.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is hosting a webinar on February 25, 2026 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET to introduce Functional Family Therapy (FFT) and its use in foster care to improve outcomes for children, youth, and foster parents. FFT is an evidence-based, family-centered approach that helps strengthen relationships and increase placement stability, with research suggesting it can lead to better experiences for kids in care and higher satisfaction for caregivers. For TANF programs, understanding FFT can be useful when considering cross-system partnerships with child welfare and behavioral health providers, especially where family engagement and stability connect to participants’ broader economic and social well-being.

Alex J. Adams, Assistant Secretary for Family Support at the Administration for Children and Families, explains in this City Journal article that a major issue in foster care is a shortage of licensed foster homes relative to the number of children entering care. This shortage leads to children being placed in emergency settings, group facilities, or temporary housing without good long-term fits.

Many families who want to foster face burdens: complicated paperwork, trainings, court involvement, and costs. Streamlining licensing would increase the pool of available foster homes. And by licensing broadly and matching carefully, the system can have “homes waiting for children, not children waiting for homes.”

The Administration for Children and Families announced the launch of “A Home for Every Child,” a national initiative aimed at right-sizing the ratio of foster homes to the number of kids in the foster care system. The initiative will focus on both sides of the equation — increasing the availability of safe homes through diligent recruitment, prioritizing kin, and improving retention of existing caregivers while reducing entries into foster care through effective prevention and faster pathways to permanency. ACF plans to leverage all $11.4 billion of its annual federal funding for foster care and child welfare to advance this mission and will come alongside state agencies to give broad latitude, flexibility, and technical support to reimagine community-specific interventions. ACF will eliminate outdated bureaucratic barriers that discourage families from stepping forward, including streamlining foster family licensing, supporting kinship caregivers, and encouraging faith-based partnerships to expand the network of caring families.

This Executive Order by the Trump-Vance administration announces that they will dedicate Federal support, technology, and strategic partnerships to provide young Americans in or transitioning out of the foster care system with the tools they need to become successful adults.

Every child deserves a safe and nurturing home where they can learn, grow, and reach their full potential. Adoption makes that possible by opening the door to stability and belonging for children who need a family. This proclamation by the Trump-Vance administration declares November 2025 as National Adoption Month throughout the United States and encourages all Americans to support children in need of a safe and loving home, uplift the families who welcome them, and help strengthen the bonds of family and community.

Alex J. Adams, PharmD, MPH, serves as Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families. Assistant Secretary Adams brings years of health, human services, education, and regulatory expertise to advance President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s broader vision to Make America Healthy Again. Prior to leading ACF, Dr. Adams spent more than ten years in Idaho State Government. He led the Governor’s zero-based regulation initiative, which resulted in Idaho becoming the least regulated state in the nation. Dr. Adams also made significant efforts to improve Idaho’s child welfare system, enacting kin-specific licensing standards, announcing paid family leave for foster parents, extending foster care to age 23, and overseeing record recruitment and retention of foster homes. This webpage showcases resources that support the priorities identified by Assistant Secretary Adams.