DHW director seeks $14 million supplemental, pushes recruitment and prevention to cut congregate care

Director Adams, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, told a legislative committee that the department will ask for a $14 million supplemental and is prioritizing child welfare in its next budget cycle to reduce reliance on congregate care and increase prevention and foster-family capacity.

Adams said Idaho receives about 24,000 hotline calls a year reporting potential child abuse or neglect and that the department responds to about 15,800 of those. "Thank God, in 89 percent of the cases the child is deemed safe," Adams said, but "in 11 percent of the cases, or 1,700 times a year, the child is deemed unsafe." He said roughly 1,400 children a year are placed out of the home and about 300 a year remain in prevention cases.

The department is pressing several cost- and outcome-driven priorities. Adams gave line-item cost comparisons and outcomes: prevention services cost about $1.80 per day (roughly $657 per year) and generally produce better outcomes; foster-care placements average about $16 per day (about $5,800 per year); congregate care averaged $385 per day in 2024 and in some cases is costing up to $1,400 per day. "Congregate care is over $140,000 per kid, per year," Adams said, and he blamed a national shortage of placements and the closure of settings during COVID for driving prices and out-of-state placements.

Adam…