Adam Walsh Background Check: Disqualifying Convictions and Registries

The Adam Walsh background check is the set of screenings federal law requires before a child can be placed in a foster or adoptive home: a fingerprint-based FBI criminal history check, plus child abuse and neglect registry checks in every state where the prospective parent, and every other adult in the household, has lived during the previous five years. The requirements come from the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 and are codified at 42 U.S.C. § 671(a)(20). They apply in every state that accepts Title IV-E federal funding for foster care and adoption assistance, which is all of them.¹

Who Must Be Checked and What the Checks Cover

The checks are not limited to the applicant. The state must screen the prospective foster or adoptive parent and every other adult living in the home before a child can be placed there.¹

Three components make up the required screening:

A fingerprint-based check against national crime information databases through the FBI.
A search of the child abuse and neglect registry in the state where the applicant lives, plus the registry of every other state where the applicant or any other household adult has lived during the preceding five years.
Compliance with registry check requests received from other states, so that the system works in both directions.

States were required to have the fingerprint-based check in place no later than October 1, 2008.¹

Convictions That Disqualify a Prospective Parent

The Act sorts disqualifying criminal convictions into two tiers. Some felonies bar approval for life. Others bar approval for five years from the date of conviction.²

A felony conviction produces a permanent bar if it is for:

Child abuse or neglect
Spousal abuse
A crime against a child, including child pornography
A crime involving violence, including rape, sexual assault, and homicide

A felony conviction produces a five-year bar if it is for:

Physical assault or battery
A drug-related offense

Physical assault and battery sit in the five-year category by an express carve-out from the permanent “crime involving violence” bucket.³

That list is the federal floor, not the ceiling. States are free to add barrier crimes and many have. Arizona identifies 48 permanent barrier crimes and 68 additional potential barrier crimes. Virginia’s list of non-waivable offenses runs past 160.³ So a conviction that would clear the federal screen can still disqualify an applicant in a particular state. Check the state list, not just the federal one.

How the Out-of-State Child Abuse Registry Checks Work

There is no federal child abuse registry to query, and no unified portal for reaching the state registries. Each state’s registry is contacted individually, and each state sets its own procedures, forms, fees, and turnaround.⁴

The variation is real and it slows applications down. Some states take requests through an online portal; others require email, physical mail, or fax. Notarized forms and original signatures are common. Some states require agency letterhead, and a handful specify ink color or file format.⁵ Fees run from $2.50 in Nebraska to $35 in Colorado. Turnaround runs from a few business days to 30 days or more.⁶

What sits inside a registry also differs. Some states log every investigated report of abuse or neglect. Others record only substantiated findings. Retention periods and criteria for removal are set by state law. Oklahoma restricts registry access to active investigations or court orders and will not process a general foster care placement request.⁵ A clean result from one state does not mean a clean result from the next, and a household with adults who have moved around should expect the process to take longer.

Relatives and Kinship Placements

The Adam Walsh checks apply to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relative caregivers on the same terms as anyone else. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 lets child welfare agencies waive certain non-safety licensing standards for relatives, but that waiver authority does not reach the Adam Walsh criminal history or child abuse registry requirements.⁷

A few jurisdictions, including California and the District of Columbia, let agencies approve a relative caregiver who has a disqualifying conviction in narrow circumstances. Those placements have to be paid for entirely with state funds and cannot be reimbursed under federal Title IV-E.³

A September 2023 final rule from the Administration for Children and Families gave Title IV-E agencies room to build “kin-specific” licensing standards that reduce non-safety barriers for relatives. Full Adam Walsh compliance is still required. The rule encourages agencies to keep their barrier crime lists no broader than the federal list and to strip out requirements that have no clear safety purpose.⁸

What Happens if a State Skips the Checks

The enforcement mechanism is money. If a state places a child in a home where the foster parent or another adult in the household has not cleared the required checks, the state cannot claim federal Title IV-E reimbursement for foster care maintenance payments for any child in that home until the requirements are satisfied.⁹

If federal funds turn out to have gone to a noncompliant placement, the full amount of those payments and the associated administrative costs is disallowed for the entire period they were claimed. That result stands whether the problem surfaces during a review or afterward.⁹

A National Child Abuse Registry That Doesn’t Exist

Section 633 of the Act directed the Department of Health and Human Services to study and establish a national registry of substantiated child maltreatment perpetrators. It was never built. HHS’s 2012 final report to Congress said no funds were ever appropriated for development, and the feasibility study concluded the registry could not be built within the statute as written. The law limited identifying information to the perpetrator’s name, which HHS said would generate an unacceptable rate of false positives. HHS estimated development at $4 million and annual maintenance at $4 million to $6 million, and noted that participation would be voluntary. Congress took no action to fix the statutory limits or fund the work.¹⁰

The practical consequence for anyone going through a home study: the state-by-state registry search described above is the only child abuse registry check that exists.

How States Layer Their Own Rules on Top

The Adam Walsh Act sets the federal minimum. States often screen more strictly, and California illustrates how that plays out.

California adopted the federal requirements through Senate Bill 703 in 2007, effective January 1, 2008. Every prospective foster parent and every other adult in the home who has lived outside California within the past five years has to clear an FBI criminal history check and an out-of-state child abuse registry check.¹¹

The state’s Care Provider Management Branch handles the out-of-state registry checks using specific forms. An applicant is not eligible to live in or be associated with a foster home until the out-of-state check clears. If the applicant later moves out of California for any period, the check has to be redone. It is a one-time search, so California will not be notified if a new incident is later logged in another state’s registry.¹²

California also carried forward stricter criminal disqualification rules of its own on top of the federal list. A legislative analysis described the result as a “complex set of overlapping and unduly restrictive rules and exemptions.” Senate Bill 213, introduced by State Senator Holly Mitchell, sought to align the state’s non-exemptible crime list more closely with the Adam Walsh baseline and to let agencies grant case-by-case exemptions for nonviolent felonies older than seven years and most misdemeanors older than five years, on “substantial and convincing evidence” of present good character. Felony convictions for sexual abuse or child abuse would stay permanently disqualifying.¹³

The lesson from California generalizes. If you are applying to foster or adopt, the federal Adam Walsh checks and the federal disqualification list tell you the minimum you have to clear. Your state’s own list may be longer, its exemption process narrower, and its treatment of older or nonviolent convictions different from the federal default. Ask the licensing agency for the state’s full barrier crime list and its exemption criteria in writing before you begin.

1
Child Welfare Information Gateway. Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006
2
American Public Human Services Association. Summary of the Adam Walsh Act
3
Grandfamilies.org. Licensing Barrier Crimes Memo
4
AdoptUSKids. State Child Abuse Registries
5
Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. Adam Walsh State Contacts – Child Abuse Registries
6
Missouri DSS. Adam Walsh State Child Abuse Registry Contacts
7
Grandfamilies.org. Report to Congress: States’ Use of Waivers
8
Children’s Rights. New Federal Rule Supports Kinship Families in Foster Care
9
Administration for Children and Families. Program Instruction on Title IV-E Compliance
10
HHS ASPE. Report to Congress: Feasibility of a National Registry of Child Maltreatment Perpetrators
11
California CDSS. Adam Walsh Background Check Information
12
California CDSS. Background Check Process
13
The Imprint. Needing Foster Homes, California Seeks to Relax Rules on Criminal Convictions