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Committee member urges support for bipartisan foster‑care reform package
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Summary
A committee member urged colleagues at a congressional committee session to back a bipartisan package of bills aimed at modernizing Title IV programs, expanding home‑visiting supports for expecting and parenting foster youth, and improving outcomes for youth who age out of care.
A committee member urged colleagues at a congressional committee session to support a bipartisan package of foster‑care reforms, saying the measures would modernize Title IV programs and expand supports for expecting and parenting foster youth.
"I'm really, really pleased that the committee is continuing its bipartisan tradition of making reforms to our nation's foster care system to support vulnerable foster youth and families in our country," the committee member said in opening remarks.
The member said the last Congress reauthorized and modernized the Title IV‑B foster care program and described a separate proposal to strengthen court capacity through training, legal representation and technology to speed permanency decisions. "Each year, however, nearly 16,000 foster youth age out of foster care without achieving their permanency goals," the speaker said, and added that in the speaker's home state of Utah, about 8 percent of children in foster care aged out in 2025.
The package cited by the speaker includes a proposed Title IV‑E initiative intended to support youth transitioning to adulthood and the Support for Expectant and Parenting Foster Youth Act, which the speaker said would connect expecting and parenting foster youth with evidence‑based maternal, infant and early childhood home‑visiting services to improve maternal and child health and family economic well‑being.
The committee member said those home‑visiting supports reach large numbers in Utah: "In 2025, nearly 1,450 families were served by 18,600 home visits in just Utah," the speaker said. The member also emphasized a preventative, services‑based approach intended to keep families together and reduce the likelihood that children of foster youth enter the welfare system.
Addressing program administration, the speaker said the bipartisan package would make programmatic changes to ensure existing programs are "working as intended" so foster youth can access necessary resources. The member noted that from 2018 to 2022 Utah returned unused education and training voucher funds and said that in 2022 Utah returned more than $80,000 in unused funds, criticizing practices that, the speaker alleged, allowed some states to benefit from other states' unused allocations.
The speaker thanked First Lady Melania Trump for advocacy on foster‑care reforms and closed by urging colleagues to support the bills. "I urge my colleagues to support this package of bills, and I yield back," the committee member said.
The remarks were delivered as part of routine committee consideration and did not record a formal vote or amendment in the transcript provided.
