Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act

The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, signed into law on October 7, 2008, rewrote major sections of federal foster care policy under Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act.¹ It forced states to notify relatives when a child is removed, gave families a way to be paid for taking legal guardianship of a relative’s child, let states keep young people in foster care up to age 21, cut a decades-old income test out of adoption assistance, and for the first time allowed tribal nations to draw federal child welfare funds directly instead of through their state.²

Notifying Relatives When a Child Is Removed

Within 30 days of removing a child from a parent’s custody, the state must identify and notify all adult grandparents, the parents of the child’s siblings who have custody of those siblings, and any other adult relatives the parents suggest. The one carve-out is when contacting a specific relative would create a family or domestic violence risk.³

The notice has to tell the relative that the child has been removed, explain the relative’s options for taking part in the child’s care and placement under federal, state, and local law, and describe what it takes to become a licensed foster home. If the state runs a kinship guardianship payment program, the notice must explain how to access it. It also has to flag any options the relative could lose by not responding.³

That last piece matters. A relative who sits on the notice may forfeit a placement priority that state policy would otherwise have extended.

Keeping Siblings Together

States must make reasonable efforts to place siblings in the same foster, kinship, guardianship, or adoptive home. Agencies can split siblings only when they document that a joint placement would threaten the safety or well-being of one of the children. When siblings are placed apart, the state has to arrange frequent visitation or other ongoing contact, unless it documents that even contact would be harmful.⁴

The Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program

Before this law, relatives who took legal guardianship of a child usually lost the payments that came with foster care. The Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program, often called GAP, opened a federal payment stream under Title IV-E for relative guardians who meet a set of conditions.⁵

The child must have been removed from the parent’s home through a court order or voluntary placement agreement and must have lived with the prospective relative guardian, in that relative’s licensed foster home, for at least six consecutive months while meeting Title IV-E foster care eligibility criteria. The agency must also determine that reunification and adoption are both off the table as permanency options and that the child has a strong attachment to the relative guardian. Children 14 or older must be consulted about the arrangement.⁵

Once those conditions are met, the state and the relative guardian sign a binding kinship guardianship assistance agreement before the court finalizes the guardianship. The agreement lays out the payment amount, how it can be adjusted based on the guardian’s circumstances and the child’s needs, what additional services the family can reach, and how to request more help later. The state also pays nonrecurring legal costs of obtaining guardianship up to $2,000. One important limit: the monthly kinship guardianship payment cannot exceed what the foster care maintenance payment would have been if the child had stayed in a foster home.⁵

Successor Guardians

If the assistance agreement names a successor guardian, the child’s payments continue without interruption when that successor steps in after the original guardian dies or becomes incapacitated. The agreement can also be amended later to add one. Naming a successor early matters, because if no one is designated and something happens to the guardian, both the financial support and the legal arrangement can unravel.⁵

Moving Across State Lines

The agreement stays in effect if the guardian moves to another state. Without that portability, families who relocated could have lost their payments at the state line.⁵

Extending Foster Care Past 18

Federal foster care used to end at 18 in most states. The act gave states the option to keep Title IV-E maintenance payments running until age 19, 20, or 21. As of July 2025, 36 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and nine tribes have opted in.

To stay eligible past 18, a young adult must meet at least one of these conditions:

Working toward a high school diploma or equivalent
Enrolled in a college, university, or vocational program
Participating in a program designed to promote employment or remove barriers to it
Employed at least 80 hours per month
Unable to meet any of the above because of a documented medical condition

States check on these conditions regularly to maintain federal reimbursement.¹

Supervised Independent Living

The law also broadened what counts as a foster care placement for young adults. For anyone 18 or older, a supervised independent living setting qualifies. In practice that means a young adult can live in their own apartment, a college dorm, transitional housing, subsidized housing, or with a roommate and still be in foster care drawing maintenance payments. Supervision levels vary by state, but the agency keeps oversight of the arrangement. Before this change, the only eligible placements were traditional foster homes and group care facilities, which rarely fit the life of someone in college or holding down a job.

Coming Back Into Care

In most states that extended foster care, a young person who left at 18 can ask to come back before turning 21, as long as they meet the same activity conditions. Not every state offers re-entry, so it depends on where the young person lives.

The Transition Plan Before Aging Out

During the 90 days before a young person leaves foster care, whether at 18 or the state’s elected older age, a caseworker must help them build a personalized transition plan. The plan is directed by the youth and can be as detailed as they want, but at a minimum it has to cover housing, health insurance, education, local mentoring opportunities, continuing support services, and workforce and employment services.⁶

The plan must also address who will make health care decisions if the young person becomes unable to. If the youth doesn’t have a relative who would automatically have that authority under state law, the caseworker has to offer the option to execute a health care power of attorney, health care proxy, or similar document. This piece came in through Affordable Care Act amendments to the transition provisions.⁶

Adoption Assistance Freed From the Old Income Test

For decades, a child’s eligibility for federal adoption assistance was tied to whether the birth parents would have qualified for Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a welfare program whose income standards were frozen in 1996. A child’s shot at adoption support turned on the finances of parents who were no longer in the picture. The act phased that out.⁷

The phase-out ran by age. Starting in fiscal year 2010, children who had been in foster care for at least five consecutive years, and children 16 or older, became eligible regardless of the birth family’s income, as long as they met the state’s definition of special needs. The age threshold dropped in steps: 14 and up in 2011, 12 and up in 2012, 10 and up in 2013, then in two-year increments until every age was covered in fiscal year 2018. The de-linking is complete. No child’s adoption assistance eligibility now depends on the old welfare income test.

Direct Federal Funding for Tribes

Before 2008, federally recognized tribes could only reach Title IV-E foster care and adoption funds by negotiating pass-through agreements with state governments. Those negotiations were slow, difficult, or never happened at all. The act let tribes, tribal organizations, and tribal consortia submit their own Title IV-E plans directly to the Department of Health and Human Services.¹

Tribal plans have to meet the same federal requirements for child safety, permanency planning, and administrative oversight that states meet. But tribes keep sovereign authority to define key concepts in their own cultural frameworks. They can set their own foster care licensing standards, define who counts as a relative based on tribal custom, and decide what makes an appropriate home. A tribe might recognize a structure like a hogan or a fish camp as an acceptable foster home, provided the space is adequate and safety requirements are met. Federal baselines like criminal background checks still apply, and tribes have discretion above those minimums.

To help tribes build the administrative capacity to run a Title IV-E program, the law also created one-time plan development grants of up to $300,000, usable for costs like data systems and court review procedures.⁸ The Administration for Children and Families keeps a current list of tribes with approved plans in operation.⁹

Educational Stability and Health Care Oversight

Two other pieces of the law shape day-to-day life for children already in care. State child welfare agencies must coordinate with local school districts to keep a child in the same school when entering foster care or changing placements, unless staying there clearly is not in the child’s best interest. If a school change does happen, the new school must enroll the child right away, even if immunization records or transcripts haven’t arrived. Federal guidance treats the cost of transporting a foster child to their school of origin as an allowable Title IV-E administrative expense, so the federal government shares that cost with the state or tribe.¹⁰¹¹

Each state also has to build a coordinated health care strategy for children in foster care. Child welfare and Medicaid agencies work together with pediatricians, mental health providers, and other clinicians on a plan covering health screenings, dental care, emotional trauma from removal, monitoring and treatment of identified needs, and sharing of medical records across agencies and placements. The plan has to include specific protocols for the appropriate use and monitoring of psychotropic medications, including informed consent, and safeguards against inappropriate diagnoses that could push a child out of a family setting.¹²

1
Administration for Children and Families. Implementation of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008
2
Child Welfare Information Gateway. Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 – P.L. 110-351
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 671 – State Plan for Foster Care and Adoption Assistance
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 671 – State Plan for Foster Care and Adoption Assistance
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 673 – Adoption and Guardianship Assistance Program
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 675 – Definitions
7
Administration for Children and Families. Information Memorandum ACYF-CB-IM-17-05 – Title IV-E Adoption Assistance Applicable Child Eligibility Criteria
8
Grants.gov. Standing Announcement for Tribal Title IV-E Plan Development Grants
9
Administration for Children and Families. Tribes with Approved Title IV-E Plans
10
U.S. Department of Education. Frequently Asked Foster Care Education Stability Questions and Answers
11
Child Welfare Policy Manual. Title IV-E Administrative Functions/Costs – Allowable Costs – Foster Care Maintenance Payments Program
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 622 – State Plans for Child Welfare Services