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Committee approves amendment to reserve CCDF slots for licensed foster parents to ease emergency placements
Summary
Lawmakers amended and advanced a bill to reserve a small set-aside of CCDF childcare vouchers to prioritize licensed foster families, aiming to remove a barrier to foster recruitment and emergency placements. The committee approved the amended bill and sent it to the floor.
The committee approved an amendment and advanced House Bill 1248 to reserve a limited number of Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) vouchers for licensed foster parents, a change supporters said will reduce barriers to emergency foster placements and encourage recruitment of licensed foster homes.
Representative Brown and other sponsors said the amendment creates a separate lane — 200 reserved vouchers in the bill as discussed in committee — to ensure licensed foster families have quicker access to childcare assistance needed to make or sustain a placement. The amendment debated in committee narrowed eligibility for the reserved lane to children placed with licensed foster parents (rather than all kinship or court-ordered caregivers), a choice sponsors said is intended to incentivize licensure by reducing one logistical barrier for families considering foster parenting.
Supporters included county-level foster-care providers and statewide foster-care organizations, which said emergency placements of infants and very young children can be disrupted when caregivers lack timely access to childcare vouchers. Witnesses described long CCDF waiting lists — more than 10,000 family applications were cited — and said reserved vouchers for foster parents would remove a practical barrier to placing infants and toddlers in licensed homes in time-sensitive situations.
The committee took the amendment by consent and approved the bill as amended. A roll call in the transcript excerpt recorded seven yes votes and no no votes in the recorded sequence; the clerk announced the measure will advance to the floor.
Sponsors and providers said the policy is intended to be a limited carve-out — not an exclusion of other caregivers from CCDF — to give licensed foster parents rapid access to a small number of vouchers to support emergency and initial placement needs.
