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 growth followed a 2022–2024 trajectory that reached $14 million in the current request. He described the strategy as a "flywheel effect": invest in preventing new placements and recruiting more foster families so existing foster beds can serve children who would otherwise be placed in congregate settings, producing both better outcomes and budget savings.

Specific proposals and administrative changes discussed

- Recruitment and licensure: Adams said the department made temporary rule changes last year that streamlined licensure and created reciprocity for families who previously fostered in other states; he attributed a rapid increase in monthly foster recruitment to those steps. The committee was told that paid family leave was extended to foster families to give prospective and new foster parents time to bond with children. Adams said the department has also launched public-relations efforts and community partnerships (free park passes, fishing licenses) to raise awareness.

- Retention and support: Adams said the department met with more than 100 foster families to develop a foster "Bill of Rights," increase communication and transparency and produce a foster-family newsletter and forum. The department proposed a "warm line" (24/7 clinician support) and additional staff to license families faster and reduce social-worker caseloads.

- Targeted pay increase for foster families: The budget asks include a farmed pay increase designed to target children who are harder to place — sibling groups and older children — with a proposed 5 percent pay increase focused on the 8–10 percent of placements that are hardest to place and smaller increases for infants.

- Permanency and adoption: The department waived adoption fees and home-study charges to reduce barriers to adoption, a change Adams said was affirmed by rule last week.

Numbers and caseload context

Adams and Deputy Director Monte Pro briefed senators that, at the time of the presentation, roughly 1,400 children per year enter placements and about 300 cases per year are handled as prevention cases. Adams said approximately 65 percent of children who achieve permanency are reunified with biological parents, 25 percent are adopted and the remainder achieve permanency through guardianship or aging out. The department reported a decline in the number of children in congregate care from approximately 268 to 90 (department slide data), and a reduction in out-of-state placements to about 49 children.

On social-worker caseloads, Deputy Director Monte Pro told the committee the department's goal is to reach the national standard of about 12–15 cases per worker, though he said current caseloads vary by region: some areas may be 1:8 while others are 1:19.

Prevention services described

Deputy Director Pro and Adams described prevention cases as focused on raising protective factors (stable schedules, food, housing, therapy or substance-use treatment for parents or youth) and lowering risk factors. Pro said prevention cases often resolve in roughly six months when supports are effective. Adams emphasized community-based solutions such as Care Portal-style models and said the department will expand technology and local partnerships so courts will feel comfortable keeping appropriate cases in prevention rather than placing children.

Federal funding and grant risk

Adams told the committee the department receives mandatory federal Title IV-E funding and said mandatory programs are not at risk from the federal administration's actions; he identified a small subset of discretionary federal grants tied to programs such as LIHEAP and weatherization dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act as having potential exposure and said the department is using "extreme discretion" before applying for discretionary grants and is preparing exit plans so state taxpayers would not be left to backfill grants if federal funding changed.

Committee questions and next steps

Senators asked how the department increased foster-family recruitment (Adams cited faith-based outreach, targeted campaigns and streamlined licensure); how the department reduced out-of-state placements (work to support in-state providers and match needs to in-state capacity); and what concrete prevention services are provided (food, rent assistance, therapy, substance-use treatment). Adams said the department will present its full budget request to JFAC in the coming weeks and that the child-welfare measures are intended to produce results within approximately two years if recruitment and prevention goals are met.

The presentation contained no formal committee vote or committee action recorded during the briefing. Adams closed by thanking the committee for prior oversight and said the department would follow up with JFAC on the budget details.