Idaho health department seeks $14 million, pushes foster recruitment and prevention to curb rising child-welfare costs

Idaho Department of Health and Welfare leaders on Thursday told a legislative committee they will press a $14 million supplemental request and a targeted budget package that emphasizes foster-family recruitment and prevention services to blunt rising child-welfare costs.

Director Adams, who identified child welfare as the department’s strategic priority, told lawmakers the state is seeing growing costs driven by higher-acuity children and increasing use of congregate-care placements. "We have a $14,000,000 supplemental request this year," Adams said, and framed the department’s strategy around two aims: increasing the number of licensed foster families and keeping more children safely at home through prevention services.

The department laid out the scale of demand it faces: Idaho has about 463,000 children; the department receives roughly 24,000 hotline reports a year and responds to about 15,800 that require assessment. Adams said 89 percent of assessed children are judged safe, leaving roughly 11 percent—about 1,700 cases annually—where safety concerns remain. Of those committed to the department’s custody, he said about 300 are handled as prevention cases and about 1,400 result in placement outside the home.

Why it matters: prevention cases cost far less and generally produce better outcomes, the department said. Adams told the committee a prevention case costs about $1.80 per day (roughly $657 a year), while a typical foster placement is about $16 per day (roughly $5,800 a year). Congregate care, by contrast, averaged $385 per day in 2024 and has reached rates "upwards of $1,400 a day," which Adams said can exceed $140,000 per child per year for the most intensive settings.

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