HHS lays out child-welfare budget priorities: prevention, kinship and fewer out‑of‑state placements

BISMARCK — The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday told the House Appropriations Human Services Division it will use the 2025‑27 budget to push prevention services, expand kinship care and keep more children in North Dakota rather than sending them to out‑of‑state placements.

Corey Peterson, director of the Children and Family Services section at HHS, said the department’s approach is to “facilitate and deliver the services that support children’s safety, children’s permanency and well‑being,” and to prevent entries to foster care whenever possible.

The department said several changes since 2018 — a child protection redesign, a centralized intake, a foster‑care licensing redesign and an adoption redesign — have been intended to move the system toward family and community‑based care. Peterson said HHS has prioritized keeping children close to home and has had no children placed out of state in residential facilities for the last two and a half years, which the department called a notable accomplishment.

Why it matters: HHS told lawmakers that parental substance use and family economic hardship remain the two largest drivers of foster‑care entries. Officials said investing more in evidence‑based, in‑home prevention services can reduce long‑term costs and reduce trauma to children by preventing removal when safe alternatives exist.

Key budget and program items described

- Families First prevention funding and Title IV‑E flexibility: Peterson said federal Families First rules and Title IV‑E funding let North Dakota expand prevention services rather than reserving federal money solely for placements and deep‑end care. He described an executive‑budget request that increases Families First prevention spending and related state matching funds.

- Adoption savings (delinked funds): HHS asked to move a portion of adoption savings (sometimes called “delinked” or adoption savings dollars) from grant lines to operations to support post‑adoption services, legal work for kinship guardianships and stipends for social‑work students who return to tribal communities. The department described an amount in the budget documents labeled as adoption savings but did not detail exact annual carry‑forward rules in committee.

- Legal representation pilot: The department seeks $700,000 (dollar‑for‑dollar matched with federal Title IV‑E/“4E” funds) to pilot a program that pairs an attorney, a social worker and a parent with lived experience to provide ongoing legal representation for families in child‑welfare court. Peterson said the program would be run with North Dakota Indigent Defense and the Supreme Court and would follow cases past court to provide continuity.

- Qualified residential treatment programs (QRTPs): Peterson said North Dakota currently licenses 36 QRTP beds: 24 at Home on the Range in Beach and 12 at a DBGR campus in Minot. He described utilization that at times reached 116 children in a month in 2024 and noted both programs reduced bed counts from earlier decades because of staffing constraints.

- Adoption redesign and guardianship: HHS reported an increase in successful adoptions after a 2023 redesign and said the agency is pursuing contracts to help kinship caregivers convert temporary arrangements into final guardianships or adoptions so children don’t linger in care.

What officials said about data and performance

Peterson pointed to trend data showing a downward direction in total foster‑care caseloads over several years and said the department hopes to reach fewer than 1,000 children in foster care in the future. He emphasized that a “reduction” goal does not eliminate the need for residential levels of care when clinically appropriate.

Quotes and attribution rules

All quoted material below is drawn from the transcript and attributed to staff who appeared before the committee. For example, Peterson said: “We facilitate and deliver the services that support children’s safety, children’s permanency and well‑being,” and later described the department’s aim to “keep kids close to home and in our state, serving them whenever safely possible.” Jessica Thomason, HHS, added factual placement context for non‑foster placements: “LSTC would fall in nonfoster.”

Ending

The department asked lawmakers to consider funding increases that largely leverage federal Title IV‑E/Families First flexibility, match federal grant dollars and expand community‑based prevention. HHS staff said they would supply additional fiscal detail to the committee on request and will return to answer budget follow‑ups.