Family First Prevention Services Act: What It Changed and What It Means for Foster Parents

If you have been through a foster care orientation in the last several years, you have likely heard about the Family First Prevention Services Act — usually abbreviated as FFPSA or simply the "Family First Act." What you may not have heard is a clear explanation of what it actually changed, why those changes matter, and how they affect you as someone pursuing foster-to-adopt. This is that explanation.

What the Family First Prevention Services Act Is

The Family First Prevention Services Act was signed into law in February 2018 as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act. It represents the most significant federal overhaul of the child welfare funding system since the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.

The law's central purpose is to redirect federal child welfare funding upstream — toward preventing children from entering foster care in the first place, rather than funding their care after removal. Prior to FFPSA, federal Title IV-E funds could only be used for out-of-home placements (foster care, group homes, residential facilities). The law opened those funds to evidence-based prevention services for families at risk of having their children removed.

In simple terms: before FFPSA, the federal government would pay for a child to be placed in foster care but would not pay to help the family before that point. FFPSA changed that calculus.

The Three Types of Services FFPSA Funds

FFPSA allows states to use federal Title IV-E dollars for three categories of prevention services, provided those services are "evidence-based" and meet specific program standards:

Mental health services. Therapy and mental health treatment for parents and children in families at imminent risk of foster care involvement.

Substance use disorder treatment. Treatment programs for parents whose substance use is the primary driver of the child welfare involvement.

Parenting skills training. Structured parenting programs that are evidence-rated and designed to improve parenting capacity and reduce risk factors.

The law also established the "Family First Prevention Services Clearinghouse," which rates programs on an evidence scale and determines which specific programs qualify for federal reimbursement. States must use programs that have received an evidence rating, not simply any program they have been running.

What FFPSA Changed About Group Care and Congregate Settings

A significant and controversial provision of FFPSA limits the use of federal funds for "congregate care" — group homes and residential treatment facilities. After a transition period, states may only use federal Title IV-E funds for placements in congregate settings that qualify as "Qualified Residential Treatment Programs" (QRTPs).

QRTPs must meet specific criteria, including:

• A trauma-informed treatment model with a registered or licensed clinical staff
• An assessment within 30 days of placement to determine if congregate care is the appropriate level of care
• Ongoing court oversight of placements to ensure the setting continues to be appropriate
• A family-based aftercare plan before discharge

The intent was to prevent the routine placement of children — particularly older youth and adolescents — in group settings that offer minimal therapeutic benefit compared to family-based care. The critique behind this provision was well-founded: research consistently shows that most children do better in family settings than in congregate care, and the practice of using residential placements as a default for teenagers who were "hard to place" in families was widespread and harmful.

For foster families, this provision is relevant because it means the system is now, at least in theory, more incentivized to place adolescents in family settings than in group homes. Whether this plays out in practice depends on the availability of trained foster families willing to take teenagers — which remains the most significant gap in the system.

The "Family First" Mandate and What It Means for Reunification

The philosophical shift embedded in FFPSA is a strengthened emphasis on family preservation. The law reinforces the child welfare system's existing commitment to keeping children with their families when it is safe to do so, and to reunifying children who have been removed as quickly as possible.

For families pursuing foster-to-adopt, this is an important context to understand. It does not mean the law is hostile to adoption — the law explicitly maintains and strengthens adoption support. But it does mean the system is now more explicitly funded and oriented toward preventing removal and facilitating reunification. The primary goal of foster care has always been reunification; FFPSA adds federal financial incentives to pursue that goal upstream, before the removal happens.

What this means practically for foster parents:

Births parents may have more services available. Families at risk of removal in states that have implemented FFPSA prevention programs may now have access to substance use treatment, parenting classes, and mental health services that were previously unavailable or underfunded. When birth parents receive effective support, reunification rates may increase.

Cases may move differently. The emphasis on prevention may mean some families that previously would have had children removed are instead kept together with support. The children who do enter foster care may therefore have more complex circumstances — cases where prevention services were tried and did not stabilize the home.

The hierarchy of permanency remains. Nothing in FFPSA changes the underlying hierarchy of permanency goals: safety with the birth family first, then kinship placement, then foster care, then adoption. The law does not alter the legal framework that governs individual case decisions.

The Adoption and Kinship Provisions

FFPSA also contains provisions designed to strengthen adoption support and kinship care:

Adoption tax credit extension. The law extended and expanded the adoption tax credit.

Kinship navigator programs. Federal funding became available for programs that help relatives who take in children (kinship placements) navigate the child welfare system and access available services.

Family Finding requirements. States are required to make more systematic efforts to locate and assess relatives when children enter care — reinforcing the existing kinship preference in the placement hierarchy.

The kinship navigator provision is directly relevant to foster-to-adopt families because it strengthens the system's capacity to locate relatives who might be interested in placement. The "relative preference" in foster care — the requirement that agencies look for biological relatives before placing a child with non-related foster parents — is reinforced by FFPSA, even if the mechanism is support services rather than legal mandate.

Implementation Challenges

FFPSA has not been implemented evenly across states. The law established a federal matching rate for prevention services, but states had to opt into the prevention provisions through approved state plans. As of the early 2020s, many states were still in the process of developing and submitting those plans.

The QRTP requirements for congregate care were similarly rolled out with delays and implementation challenges. The requirement that all placements in group settings be assessed within 30 days and reviewed by a court placed new administrative demands on already-strained child welfare systems.

The practical impact of FFPSA varies significantly by state. Families in states with robust prevention programs will see different dynamics than families in states that have been slower to implement.

What Foster-to-Adopt Families Should Take Away

FFPSA reflects the direction the federal child welfare system is moving — toward prevention, toward family preservation, toward family-based rather than institutional care. For foster-to-adopt families, the takeaways are:

The system's orientation toward reunification is not changing. If anything, FFPSA strengthens the infrastructure supporting reunification. Going in with realistic expectations about the primary goal of foster care — and genuine willingness to support reunification when it is safe — is more important than ever.

The emphasis on family-based care for older youth creates opportunity. FFPSA's restriction on congregate care means the system needs more foster families willing to care for teenagers. Families open to older children are filling a genuine gap.

Prevention services do not mean children won't enter care. The most at-risk families, with the deepest trauma and substance use histories, may not be stabilized by prevention services. The children who enter foster care will continue to have significant needs.

Understanding the policy context of foster care helps you navigate it. Knowing why the system is structured the way it is — why reunification is prioritized, why kinship relatives are contacted, why prevention services now exist — transforms the experience from feeling like you're fighting an indifferent bureaucracy to understanding a system that has both genuine values and genuine failures.

The Foster-to-Adopt Transition Guide covers the practical dimensions of navigating the foster care system as a family pursuing permanency — including how to work within the system's structure rather than against it, and what to expect at each stage of the process from placement through finalization.