Foster Care Licensing

HHS brief that describes the benefits of kinship care and recent steps that states and the federal government have taken to promote kinship care. The brief also identifies further opportunities for states to promote kinship care, including by adopting kin-specific licensing standards, participating in Title IV-E kinship navigator programs, and broadening their definition of relative/kin.

Chapin Hall policy brief that outlines key considerations for states considering implementing kin-specific licensing standards. Contains questions and discussion guides for topics including Planning and Readiness, Implementation and Change Management, and Evaluating and Improving Quality.

A brief article written by Ana Beltran for the National Association of Counsel for Children explaining the 2023 federal rule allowing for separate, tailored, commonsense foster care licensing standards for kin. 

• View the webinar recording

This webinar with ABA Center on Children and the Law and Generations United examines how child welfare agencies follow the requirements in the long-standing federal Adam Walsh law. This law sensibly bars individuals who have been convicted of violent felonies from ever becoming licensed or approved as foster parents. But, most jurisdictions go well beyond federal requirements and prevent individuals from becoming foster parents for minor, non-violent crimes. 

On February 4, 2019, the Children’s Bureau released final National Model Foster Family Home Licensing Standards (National Model), as required by the Family First Prevention Services Act.

This guidebook, developed by our partners at the National Indian Child Welfare Association, particularly Subject Matter Expert Terry L. Cross, MSW, ACSW, LCSW and Mariah Meyerholz, MSW, discusses several important considerations and suggests a process through which tribes can develop locally appropriate standards. It is based on the premise that foster care standards, including care by relatives, are most useful when developed by the tribal community in which they will be used and when a broad segment of that community participates in the development and implementation process.