Skip to main content

Administration for Children and Families

Jump To:

Recent Reports

View More Reports

Open Recommendations (5 total)

Foster Care: Further Assistance from HHS Would be Helpful in Supporting Youth's LGBTQ+ Identities and Religious Beliefs

GAO-22-104688
Show
1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Administration for Children and Families The Assistant Secretary for ACF should develop, identify, and disseminate information to state child welfare agencies on ways to support youth of various religious beliefs in foster care. (Recommendation 2)
Open
HHS agreed with this recommendation. In November 2023, HHS reported that the Children's Bureau will soon release a publication on the rights of youth in out-of-home care, including their right to have a choice in the type and frequency of religious or spiritual practice. Additionally, HHS officials said that the publication will discuss the rights and responsibilities of out-of-home caregivers and the application by the caregiver of the reasonable and prudent parent standard when making decisions about allowing a youth to participate in age- and developmentally appropriate extracurricular, enrichment, cultural, or social activities. We will continue to monitor the status and content of this publication.

Child Welfare: Better Data and Guidance Could Help States Reinvest Adoption Savings and Improve Federal Oversight

GAO-22-6
Show
2 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Administration for Children and Families The Assistant Secretary for ACF should develop a method to collect information from states on the year that reinvested state adoption savings were accrued to improve its oversight of states' compliance with the reinvestment requirements. For example, ACF could require states to submit this information along with their annual data reports. (Recommendation 1)
Open
HHS did not agree with this recommendation. The agency stated that its processes for reviewing state compliance with the 20 and 30 percent requirements provide sufficient information to identify circumstances where further documentation is needed from a particular state. HHS also said that collecting these data would impose a significant burden on states and that this burden is not warranted since states have, in the aggregate, exceeded the 20 and 30 percent requirements. However, HHS stated that it plans to enhance its training of Children's Bureau staff to prevent any further occurrences where potential non-compliance is not properly identified. As of December 2023, there was no change. We continue to believe that collecting additional information from states would improve the Children's Bureau's oversight. The Children's Bureau already requires states to maintain data on the year that reinvested adoption savings were accrued, and developed a tool for them to do so, so any additional burden on states would be limited to reporting the data. Further, we found a case in which Children's Bureau did not identify a state that was potentially out of compliance with the 20 percent requirement and misidentified a second state as being out of compliance when it was not. We believe that annually collecting additional data on the year in which reinvested adoption savings were accrued, as we recommended, could help prevent similar errors in the future. Finally, although it may be true that most states are either meeting, or potentially able to meet, the 20 and 30 percent requirements, the requirements apply to each state individually, not states in the aggregate. While we encourage the Children's Bureau to provide additional training to its staff, the Children's Bureau will continue to have to rely on estimates and assumptions if it does not gather more specific data. We will continue to monitor their progress on developing better data collection to improve oversight.
Administration for Children and Families The Assistant Secretary for ACF should provide additional guidance or systematic technical assistance to states on examples of services that would count toward the 20 and 30 percent requirements and on how to overcome challenges to spending adoption savings in a timely manner. These examples could take the form of a list of specific services that states could provide that would count toward these requirements or a compilation of best practices or strategies that some states have used to meet the 20 and 30 percent requirements and reinvest their adoption savings overall. (Recommendation 2)
Open
HHS agreed with this recommendation. The agency noted that the Children's Bureau provides training and technical assistance to facilitate states' sharing of experiences and best practices and will develop opportunities for states to share information on best practices and strategies for meeting the reinvestment requirements. In October 2022, the Children's Bureau held a training on Best Practices in Expending Calculated Title IV-E Adoption Savings which included presentations by both Children's Bureau officials and officials from six states. As of December 2023, HHS incorporated the training materials from its October 2022 training in its internal Learning Library as a resource for Children's Bureau Regional Office staff to use in providing ongoing technical assistance to states experiencing difficulties expending their adoption savings. These training materials should be helpful, however, there is no evidence that they contain information specifically focused on the services that count toward fulfilling the 20 and 30 percent requirements. We will close this recommendation when HHS provides evidence that it has developed and shared with states examples of services that would count toward the 20 and 30 percent requirements.

Native American Youth: Agencies Incorporated Almost All Leading Practices When Assessing Grant Programs That Could Prevent or Address Delinquency [Reissued with revisions on Aug. 27, 2020.]

GAO-20-600
Show
1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Administration for Children and Families The Associate Commissioner of the Administration for Children and Families Children's Bureau within the Department of Health and Human Services should develop a process to assess the reliability of grantee performance information contained within annual performance reports for tribal recipients of its Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services Program. (Recommendation 1)
Open
In November 2021, officials from HHS's Children Bureau within its Administration for Children and Families (ACF) told us that its joint planning process with tribes for its Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services Program is consistent with the level of burden they can impose on grantees to receive funding. In response, we acknowledged that if ACF officials determine that performance information is incomplete or inaccurate in the course of assessing the reliability of grantee performance information contained within annual performance reports, then they indeed would likely need to follow up with tribal recipients for remediation. We stated, however, that the benefits of developing such a process in terms of having increased visibility of tribal recipients' data collection practices and program performance as well as gaining insight about the possible need for technical assistance to those who are struggling in this area outweigh the potential burden of following up with tribal recipients whose performance information contained within the Annual Progress and Services Reports is found by ACF officials to be incomplete or inaccurate in some way. Additionally, in HHS's most recent FY 2022 Good Accounting Obligation in Government Act Report, whose content HHS last reviewed March 13, 2023, HHS stated that ACF continues to non-concur/disagree with this recommendation. We followed up with HHS in May, 2024 and have received no further updates from HHS.

Child Welfare and Aging Programs: HHS Could Enhance Support for Grandparents and Other Relative Caregivers

GAO-20-434
Show
1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Administration for Children and Families The Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) should establish an ongoing process to proactively share information and best practices with states about programs it administers that are available to serve kin caregivers, especially in states with a relatively large share of grandparent caregivers. This could be achieved, for example, by leveraging regional office staff to provide additional assistance and information sharing, particularly related to kinship navigator programs. (Recommendation 1)
Open
HHS officials did not agree with this recommendation and stated that the agency already provides sufficient ongoing support to states. HHS noted the technical assistance, information sharing, and other efforts provided by ACF and its contracted technical assistance provider to share information and best practices. For example, in February 2021, HHS noted that its contracted technical assistance provider, the Capacity Building Center for States, is now convening a community of practice for kinship care state managers to support kin caregivers and assist states in developing support for this population--an initiative that had not begun at the time of our report. As we noted in the report, use of federal programs established to serve grandparents and other kin caregivers is not widespread across states--including among states with relatively high shares of these caregivers--and state officials we interviewed said they would like more assistance in using these programs. Moreover, state officials may not always know what questions to ask, making a proactive approach from ACF more important. We continue to believe that HHS could do more to proactively share information and best practices for using these programs with states and, as of August 2023, await further agency progress. This is consistent with goals in the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers to increase awareness of and outreach to family caregivers, and strengthen services and supports for family caregivers, including grandparents and other older relative caregivers.
View More Recommendations