Child Welfare in 2025
....what will a second Trump Administration mean?
Over at The Imprint, John Kelly this past week interviewed former Children’s Bureau Director Jerry Milner regarding his expectations for a second Trump term. Jerry led the agency during Trump’s first term. As for this column, you won’t find a crystal ball here, but it’s worth thinking about how the next four years might look different at the federal level than the last four.
One Biden Administration position that will certainly be reversed quickly is the interpretation of Title IX as it applies to “gender identity.” Biden’s HHS issued regulations and guidance that (1) interpreted Title IX as prohibiting discrimination in gender identity and (2) required child welfare agencies to provide “safe and affirming” placements for gay, lesbian, and gender-diverse youth in foster care. Conservatives have argued that this approach led to children being removed from their families by child protective services agencies based on a parent’s refusal to “affirm” a child’s gender identity as well as foster or adoptive families being denied the ability to serve in those roles if they wouldn’t agree to support a child’s desire to identify with a different gender. Trump has already vowed to walk back that Biden-era guidance.
Second, I’d expect to see significant changes in the way the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement manages cases of unaccompanied minors, especially those who are protected by the TVPRA’s requirement that they be screened for trafficking and not merely turned away at the border. During the Biden Administration, critics raised alarms regarding such children being placed by ORR with unvetted “sponsors” only to be trafficked for sex or labor. Whether through greater vetting and oversight or through changes to the law, the incoming administration and Congress will likely focus on preventing the migration of these children, more closely monitoring those who are allowed in temporarily, and when possible, reuniting them quickly with family in their home countries.
Third, the current political climate would suggest that while the Biden Administration focused on limiting the involvement of child protective services in the lives of fragile families, a Trump administration may strike a balance on the side of child protection rather than family preservation. At the same time, there are prominent conservative voices who have called for increased free legal representation for families involved with CPS, increased services to prevent children from coming into foster care, greater support for adoption and for families that have adopted children from care, and especially expanded support for youth who are aging out of care.
In my experience, child welfare can be a nonpartisan or bipartisan issue, with the exception from time to time of hot-button issues. The approaches may differ — entitlements vs. block grants, a focus on protecting children vs. a focus on family preservation, expedited permanency vs. reunification services — but most policymakers understand that children belong in families.
In other news:
It appears Iraq is devolving. The country is considering a law allowing men to marry girls as young as 9 years old.
J.K. Rowling’s foundation focused on child welfare, Lumos, has a new CEO.
Mike Leach is stepping down from leading South Carolina’s DSS after a successful five-year run. The state will need a strong leader to replace him as it struggles to find placements for children with behavioral issues following the closure of several juvenile justice centers.
This story out of Chicago gives a good picture of the difficulties that child welfare leaders face when working with foster youth who also have significant juvenile delinquency issues. A 17 year old in foster care escaped from Midway Airport while being transported from a residential treatment center in Florida back to DCFS custody. “The teen has been moved around the DCFS system since he was 10 years old,” according to the news. “He has been in and out of courtrooms for repeated crimes, and was arrested several times in 2023 alone.” Despite arrests for crimes involving weapons, he received only probation, leaving the foster care system in a quandry.
I didn’t realize that Michigan remains one of the states in which children involved in dependency proceedings receive only a GAL, not a client-directed attorney. This editorial discusses the need for change.
A judge in Tulsa, Oklahoma, greenlit a grand jury panel to investigate child protection following abuse at a juvenile detention facility.
In Idaho, progress is being made in reducing the use of unapproved short-term facilities to house children in foster care with complex needs.
From The Imprint, an interesting article on studies questioning any link between abortion restrictions and child maltreatment.
More legislative focus on West Virginia’s child welfare system, where 1 in 8 children were born drug-exposed between 2020 and 2022.
Here’s an interview with Rhode Island’s Child Advocate.
Tennessee has at least 230 foster children placed outside the state due to a lack of in-state facilities for children with high needs.