Assistance program
Foster Care Title IV-E
$44.8 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Administration for Children and Families, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Formula Grants;Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 93.658
- What it does
- The Title IV-E Foster Care program helps states, Indian tribes, tribal organizations and tribal consortia (tribes) to provide safe and stable out-of-home care for children under the jurisdiction of the state or tribal child welfare agency until the children are returned home safely, placed with adoptive families, or placed in other planned arrangements for permanency. The program provides funds to assist with the costs of foster care maintenance for eligible children; administrative costs to manage the program; and training for public agency staff, foster parents and eligible professional partner agency staff. In addition, $3 million is reserved for technical assistance and plan development/implementation awards to eligible tribes.
- Who benefits
- Children meeting eligibility criteria for the former Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (except up to a 12-month period for those children placed with a parent residing in a licensed residential family-based treatment facility for substance abuse treatment) whose removal and placement in foster care are in accordance with a voluntary placement agreement or judicial determinations to the effect that continuation in the home would be contrary to the child's welfare and that reasonable efforts were made to prevent the removal (or that such efforts were not necessary), and whose placement and care are the responsibility of the state or tribal agency administering the Title IV-E program. Any youth who left or leaves foster care due to reaching the state/tribe’s maximum age.
- Who applies
- Funds are available to states (including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa) and to tribes with approved Title IV-E plans. For Plan Development/Implementation Grants: Eligibility is limited to Indian tribes, tribal organizations, and tribal consortia. The terms "Indian tribe" and "tribal organization" have the meanings given those terms in section 4 of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, Pub. L. 93-638, 25 U.S.C. § 450b. Also see sections 479B(a) and 476(c)(2)(A)(iii) of the Social Security Act.
- Authorized by
- Social Security Act
- as amended.
- Program site
- https://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