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.

Adams said the department has set a "wildly important goal" to double the rate of foster families within 24 months and described a two-pronged approach: recruit more foster families and reduce the number of children entering care through prevention. He said the department's current ratio of foster families is 0.94 (up from 0.74 when he started) and that the goal gives two targets — raise family counts and reduce foster children — to improve placement fit and stability.

Monte Pro, deputy director who oversees Children, Youth and Family Services, told the committee the department is trying to reduce social-worker caseloads toward the national standard of 12 to 15 cases, acknowledging regional variation. "On average, they have a little higher caseload than maybe a region in 2 does," Pro said, noting some regions run much higher caseloads.

Adams and Pro outlined specific actions already taken and proposed: streamlining licensure and making recent rule changes permanent to cut red tape; creating a faith-initiative office and conducting public-relations recruitment campaigns (including movie and yard-sign outreach); waiving adoption fees and some home-study costs; investing in software to identify kinship placements earlier; proposing a targeted 5% rate increase for foster families focused on hard-to-place children; and proposing a 24/7 warm line to give foster families clinician-backed support outside normal hours. Adams said the department has also instituted maximum-transparency rules for vested parties and created a foster-family newsletter and forum.

Adams asked legislators to treat most of the department as maintenance-budget while directing growth to child welfare to allow those targeted investments. "We're betting on prevention," he said. He described a "flywheel" effect: keeping a hundred kids in prevention frees beds that can move children out of congregate care into family settings, creating recurring budget savings and better outcomes.

Committee members asked for details about specific items referenced by Adams. Senator Wintrow asked about out-of-state placements; Adams said the number of out-of-state placements has declined and attributed the change to recruiting and retention, and to supporting in-state providers to expand services for children with complex needs. Senator Zetterfeld asked about prior use of Airbnbs; Adams said the department has closed the last Airbnb placement and had zero at the time of the meeting. Multiple legislators asked about caseloads, prevention services (including concrete supports, therapy, childcare and community partnerships such as Care Portal), and the pace for realizing budget savings. Adams said the department expects to begin showing results within roughly a year and to see effects on costs over a two-year horizon, contingent on successful recruitment and prevention outcomes.

Adams also briefed the committee on federal funding exposure. He said Title IV-E, a mandatory federal funding stream for child welfare, is not at risk from the federal executive actions being discussed, and that discretionary grants with programmatic requirements are being treated cautiously. He said the department has created central clearance and exit plans for federal grants to avoid shifting grant-supported costs to the state general fund.

The presentation drew detailed follow-up from senators and longer discussion about implementation details, including how the department proposes to reduce caseloads, support kinship placements, and align guardian ad litem offices with department resources. Adams and Pro said they have been meeting with guardian-ad-litem executive directors and adding the offices to communication and resource distribution efforts.

Adams closed by thanking the committee for prior oversight and said the department would present the formal budget to JFAC in its upcoming hearing.

Ending: The committee did not take formal votes on the proposals during the briefing; the department's budget request and proposed rule changes will next be considered in upcoming budget hearings.