Idaho child welfare director seeks $14 million supplemental, emphasizes prevention and foster recruitment to curb expensive congregate care

Director Adams, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, told a legislative committee he is seeking a $14,000,000 supplemental and will ask for additional spending in the department’s upcoming budget to expand prevention services and recruit and retain foster families.

Adams said the department is treating child welfare as a strategic priority and that recent oversight work by the Office of Performance Evaluations helped crystallize where to act. “They gave us a Rosetta Stone of options for us to consider,” Adams said, and the department has focused on raising the number of foster families and increasing prevention services to keep children safely at home.

The department described statewide child-welfare activity and drivers of rising costs. Idaho has roughly 463,000 children; the department receives about 24,000 hotline calls a year and responds to roughly 15,800 investigations. Adams said 89% of assessed children are found to be safe; about 11% — roughly 1,700 cases annually — are deemed unsafe. Of cases that come into custody or require further action, Adams said currently about 300 cases a year are managed as prevention cases while roughly 1,400 result in placements.

Placement type drives the budget, Adams told the committee. He said the state spends about $16 per day (roughly $5,800 annually) for traditional foster or kinship placements, about $385 a day on average for congregate care based on 2024 data, and that some congregate care rates have risen to as much as $1,400 a day. By contrast, he said…