Assistance program
MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program
$3.5 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Administration for Children and Families, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Formula Grants;Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 93.556
- What it does
- The objectives of the MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program (PSSF) are: 1) to prevent child maltreatment among families at risk through the provision of supportive family services; 2) to assure children's safety within the home and preserve intact families in which children have been maltreated, when the family's problems can be addressed effectively; 3) to address the problems of families whose children have been placed in foster care so that reunification may occur in a safe and stable manner; 4) to support adoptive families by providing support services as necessary so that they can make a lifetime commitment to their children. To accomplish these objectives, recipients (state, territory, and tribal child welfare agencies) will develop or expand and operate coordinated programs of community-based family support services, family preservation services, family reunification services, and adoption promotion and support services. In addition, a portion of funds is reserved for separate formula awards for states and territories to support monthly caseworker visits with children who are in foster care. A small proportion of appropriated funds are reserved for research, evaluation, and technical assistance, which may be awarded competitively through contracts or discretionary awards. In addition, funds are used to make formula awards to develop kinship navigator programs.
- Who benefits
- Families and children who need services to assist them to stabilize their lives, strengthen family functioning, prevent out-of-home placement of children, enhance child development, and increase competence in parenting abilities, facilitate timely reunification of the child, and promote appropriate adoptions.
- Who applies
- (1) Formula Awards: States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U. S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Marianas, Guam, American Samoa, and Federally recognized Indian tribes are eligible applicants. For caseworker visit funds, only states and territories are eligible applicants. (2) Discretionary Awards: Eligible applicants for kinship navigator funds are States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Federally recognized Indian tribes that operate a title IV-E foster care program. Please see the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for applicant eligibility for research, evaluation, and technical assistance funds.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments