Assistance program
State Court Improvement Program
$263.6 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Administration for Children and Families, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Formula Grants;Project Grants (Discretionary)
- CFDA number
- 93.586
- What it does
- This program provides funding to state and tribal courts to improve the quality of court processes and legal representation. The program provides courts flexibility to design assessments which identify barriers to timely and effective decision-making, highlight practices which are not fully successful, examine areas they find to be in need of correction or added attention, and then implement reforms which address specific needs. State courts are required to collaborate with the state child welfare agency and tribes in this work. The program also provides funding for tribal court recipients through discretionary awards.
- Who benefits
- Families and children who are served by state and tribal courts in proceedings related to foster care, guardianship and adoption.
- Who applies
- The highest state courts in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are eligible to apply for funding. The term "highest state court" means the judicial tribunal which is the ultimate court of appeals in the state. Tribal courts or tribal governments of federally recognized Tribes may apply for awards. To be eligible, a tribe must be operating an approved title IV-E program in accordance with section 479B of the Act; or plan to operate a title IV-E program and have received a title IV-E plan development award, as authorized by section 476 of the Act; or have a court responsible for proceedings related to foster care or adoption (section 438(c)(3)(A)(iv) of the Act).
- Authorized by
- Social Security Act
- Program site
- http://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb ↗
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