Idaho health department seeks $14 million supplemental, aims to shift foster-care mix toward prevention and family placements

Director Adams, head of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, told an interim legislative committee that the department will request a $14,000,000 supplemental and is centering child welfare as a strategic priority aimed at keeping more children safely at home and reducing expensive congregate placements.

Adams said the department responds to about 15,800 hotline reports a year and that 11% of assessed cases — roughly 1,700 annually — are found unsafe. "We have a $14,000,000 supplemental request this year," Adams said, adding that the department is betting on prevention and foster-family recruitment to bend the program's cost curve.

The request follows several years of supplemental requests and sharp budget increases driven by more placements in congregate care and higher acuity among children entering the system. Adams told the committee that congregate-care rates have risen from an average of $385 per day in 2024 to as much as $1,400 per day in some placements, while keeping a child in a prevention case costs about $1.80 per day. "It's one of the rare instances where the budget and the outcomes are perfectly aligned," he said.

Why it matters: prevention cases (where children remain with their parents and receive services) produce better outcomes at much lower cost than congregate care, the department says. Adams described a goal to flip the current mix so 85% of cases are prevention rather than…