Idaho health department seeks $14 million supplemental to expand child-welfare prevention, boost foster recruitment

Director Adams, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, told a Senate committee that the department is seeking a $14 million supplemental and a budget structure that prioritizes prevention and foster-family recruitment to reduce costly congregate-care placements and improve outcomes for children.

Adams said Idaho has about 463,000 children and receives roughly 24,000 hotline calls a year reporting potential abuse or neglect; the department responds to about 15,800 of those calls and finds a child unsafe in roughly 11 percent of assessed cases, or about 1,700 times annually. "It's the right thing to do," Adams said of focusing the agency on child welfare, and he described child welfare as the department's strategic priority.

The department briefed senators on cost drivers. Adams said congregate care (group homes and similar settings) is both the most expensive placement and often yields the poorest outcomes; using 2024 data, he told the committee congregate-care placements have cost the state, in some cases, "upwards of $1,400 a day" and described that setting as "over $140,000 per kid, per year." By contrast, he said prevention services that keep a child at home cost about $1.80 a day (about $657 a year) and produce better outcomes.

Why it matters: Adams and Deputy Director Monte Pro framed the department's approach as an effort to bend a sharply rising cost curve caused by more frequent use of congregate care and higher acuity among children entering custody. Adams said the department has had repeated supplemental requests in recent years; the supplemental…