Authored by Stacey Priest, Senior Consultant at PCG

Part 2 of a 3-part series on

A Home for Every Child

In November 2025, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) announced A Home for Every Child, a national initiative aimed at making the ratio of foster homes to the number of kids in a foster care system greater than 1:1 in every state. The initiative focuses on increasing the availability of safe homes through diligent recruitment, prioritizing kin, and improved retention of existing caregivers while reducing entries into foster care through effective prevention and faster pathways to permanency.

While increasing the number of licensed foster homes is an important goal, child welfare agencies must move beyond simple counts of homes and instead focus on ensuring sufficient, appropriate, and high-quality placement capacity. This includes reducing the number of children entering care and aligning available foster homes with the specific needs of the child population. Achieving this requires a data-driven approach grounded in both system-level and placement-level performance.

To determine the “right” types of homes needed, agencies should leverage existing administrative and demographic data to conduct targeted recruitment and retention planning. This includes analyzing the characteristics of currently licensed foster and adoptive parents and comparing them to the needs, demographics, and entry trends of children in care. Such analysis enables agencies to recruit caregivers equipped to serve specific populations, including older youth, sibling groups, and children with complex behavioral health needs.

To support accountability, agencies must develop and implement a comprehensive measurement plan within their Program Improvement Plans (PIP) in response to their Child and Family Service Review (CFSR). These measures should be monitored and used to guide continuous improvement. In addition to the measures outlined in Technical Bulletin #14, agencies should expand their focus to include the following, not just to have more homes, but the “right” homes:

Prevention:

• Rate of children entering foster care
• Utilization and effectiveness of prevention services
• Ability to keep children safely at home
• Reduction in unnecessary removals (i.e., due to family homelessness)

Placement Capacity and Quality:

• Number of newly licensed foster homes
• Retention rates of foster families
• Number of licensed beds available, disaggregated by child needs (rather than only number of homes)
• Kinship placement availability and rate of kinship placements
• Alignment of available capacity with population needs (age, sibling groups, behavioral health needs)
• Extent to which states are using an expanded definition of kinship (including fictive kin)
• Alignment of kinship licensing and approval standards with updated policy expectations

Placement Stability and Outcomes

• Placement stability (e.g., number of moves per child)
• First 90-day placement stability rate
• Length of time to achieve permanency
• Number and rate of children re-entering foster care
• Percentage of children placed with siblings
• Percentage of children placed in settings aligned with their cultural and community context
• Geographic proximity of placements to the child’s home community
• Percentage of children sleeping in offices or other temporary settings

Workforce Supports and Caregiver Preparedness

• Availability and completion rates of pre-service and ongoing caregiver training
• Frequency and quality of updated training aligned to emerging needs
• Evidence linking training participation to improved stability and permanency outcomes

As child welfare agencies pursue system-expansion strategies, such as engaging faith-based organizations or broadening recruitment pipelines, they should pair these efforts with outcome-based accountability measures. They should evaluate inputs such as recruitment campaigns or licensing reforms based on whether they produce measurable improvements in child-level outcomes, including stability, well-being, and timely permanency. By aligning recruitment, capacity-building, and performance measurement with clearly defined outcomes, states can more effectively realize the intent of A Home for Every Child: not simply more homes, but the right homes delivering stable, appropriate, and permanent placements for every child.

Public Consulting Group’s (PCG), leveraging its national presence, experience, and research capabilities, is ready to work with your agency to assess its strengths and weaknesses and identify areas of focus to improve foster home recruitment and retention rates. Contact us today to learn more.

(800) 210-6113 | [email protected] | Children and Youth Services