FY 2007 HHS Annual Plan

Strategic Goal 7
Improve the Stability and Healthy Development of Our Nation's Children and Youth

On this page:
Program 7a: Child Support Enforcement Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
Program 7b: Foster Care, Adoption, and Other Child Welfare Programs Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
Program 7c: Head Start Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

Highlighted Programs:

• 7a. Child Support Enforcement (ACF)
• 7b. Foster Care, Adoption, and other Child Welfare Programs (ACF)
• 7c. Head Start (ACF)

In order to promote the development and stability of our Nation's children and youth, HHS will support programs that increase the involvement and financial support of non-custodial parents; increase the percentage of children and youth living in a safe and stable environment; and, continue to support the social and cognitive development of preschool children.

Over twelve HHS programs in one OPDIV contribute to achieving this strategic goal. Three programs are highlighted in this strategic goal including ACF Child Support Enforcement, Child Welfare, and Head Start programs.

The Child Support Enforcement program assures that support is available to children by locating parents and establishing paternity and support obligations. These efforts will continue to be an integral part of the Department's effort to increase parental responsibility by promoting the involvement of non-custodial parents in the lives of their children.

The Child Welfare programs will continue to support States and localities in their efforts to keep children living in a safe, stable and permanent environment. Services offered include preventive intervention, where appropriate, so that children can remain in their homes, identifying alternative placements like foster care when necessary, and reunification services so that a child can return home. HHS will also support research and demonstrations that focus on the prevention and treatment of child abuse, neglect, and family violence.

The Head Start program ensures that children are ready to succeed upon entering school by supporting their social and cognitive development. Head Start programs provide comprehensive child development services, including educational, health, nutritional, social, and other services, to primarily low-income families. Head Start also engages parents in their child's preschool experience by helping them achieve their own educational, literacy, and employment goals; supporting parents' role in their children's learning; and emphasizing the direct involvement of parents in the administration of local Head Start programs.

Program 7a: Child Support Enforcement
Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

Performance Measure: Increase the IV-D (child support) collection rate for current support.

In accordance with HHS Strategic Goal 7, HHS is taking steps to improve the stability and healthy development of the Nation's children and youth. Child Support Enforcement (CSE) demonstrates this commitment to the Nation's children and youth in several ways. The CSE program ensures that support is available to children by locating parents, establishing paternity, and enforcing support obligations. Since the creation of the Child Support Enforcement program, child support collections within the program have grown annually. States have increased collections by using a wide variety of approaches such as income withholding, offset of income tax refunds, and reporting to credit bureaus.

In addition, new collection tools and program improvements, such as new hire reporting and increasing statewide automation, have increased collections and will continue to do so as these tools become fully implemented in all states. The Office of Child Support Enforcement is committed to achieving a higher performance level by focusing on improved enforcement techniques and ensuring maintenance of more reliable data, with particular emphasis placed on automated mechanisms for enforcement, collections, and payments to families. The Deficit Reduction Act includes a series of provisions to strengthen and improve the CSE program. These program developments improve collection of medical child support, strengthen existing collection and enforcement tools, reduce Federal expenditures, and allow States the option to provide additional support to the families who need it most.

The program participated in the FY 2005 PART assessment and received a rating of Effective. OMB recommended that the program continue to build on its success in child support collection, improve medical support enforcement (provision of medical insurance for children), and encourage responsible parenthood.

CSE will continue its efforts to achieve the FY 2007 target for the current support collections measure by using all available enforcement tools. The current support collection rate performance target jumps to 63 percent in FY 2007, a one percent increase from the FY 2006 target of 62 percent. The total amount of child support distributed as current support in FY 2004 was $16.5 billion, approximately a five percent increase over FY 2003. The total amount of current support due in FY 2004 was $28 billion, which is approximately a three percent increase over FY 2003. This provides a collection rate for current support of 59 percent, up from 58 percent in FY 2003, which missed the target for FY 2004 by one percentage point. This measure is a proxy for the regular and timely payment of support. It directly indicates achievement of the performance target by comparing total dollars collected for current support in IV-D cases with total dollars owed for current support in IV-D cases.

Strategies to increase collections in recent years have resulted in the following:

• The government collected $1.5 billion in overdue child support from federal income tax refunds for tax year 2004 on behalf of more than 1.4 million families.
• A program to match a list of delinquent parents with financial institution records found over 1.9 million accounts during 2004 belonging to about 1.1 million delinquent non-custodial parents nationwide with a value in excess of $4 billion.
• A program to match a list of delinquent parents with financial institution records found over 1.9 million accounts during 2004 belonging to about 1.1 million delinquent non-custodial parents. These efforts resulted in reported collections of over $98 million. (The $98 million includes some collections from in-State matches as not all States are able to separate collections.)
• The Passport Denial program resulted in reported lump sum collections of over $13.25 million of child support payments in FY 2004.
• Using the expanded Federal Parent Locator Services, OCSE was able to provide States information on nearly 4.2 million non-custodial parents and putative fathers.

Program 7b: Foster Care, Adoption, and Other Child Welfare Programs
Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

Performance Measure: Increase the adoption rate (for children with involvement in the public child welfare system).

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Child Welfare programs prevent maltreatment of children, provide in-home services for at-risk children and families, find temporary foster placements for children who must be removed from their homes, and achieve safe and stable permanent placements for children in foster care. Foster Care provides stable environments for those children who cannot remain safely in their homes and ensures children's safety and well-being while their parents attempt to resolve the difficulties that led to the out-of-home placement. When the family cannot be reunified, it provides a stable environment until the child can be placed permanently with an adoptive family, in a guardianship arrangement or some other permanent placement. Federal adoption programs work to facilitate adoptions for children with involvement in the public child welfare system by providing funds to States for adoption assistance agreements with parents who adopt children with special needs; promoting recruitment of adoptive parents; providing financial incentives to states to encourage adoptions; and working to eliminate barriers to adoption.

As part of the CY 2005 PART process, ACF replaced a prior measure of total adoptions for children with involvement in the public child welfare system with a new adoption rate, which is calculated from the annual number of adoptions divided by the number of children in foster care at the end of the prior year. The new adoption rate outcome measure better reflects the performance of the programs by taking into account the number of children in foster care. For example, while the total number of adoptions did not meet the FY 2004 goal of 53,000 adoptions for children with involvement in the public child welfare system, the adoption rate for FY 2004 was 9.8 percent, representing an increase over the FY 2003 rate of 9.4 percent.

The goal is to increase the adoption rate to 9.9 percent by FY 2007 and 10 percent by FY 2008. This target is ambitious, but realistic considering the declining number of children in foster care, the aging of the foster care population, and the decrease in the proportion of children with a placement goal of adoption.

Number of Adoptions FY 1995 - FY 2004 - Line Graph

Although the annual number of adoptions had increased dramatically from 26,000 adoptions for children with involvement in the public child welfare system in FY 1995 to 53,000 adoptions by FY 2002, since FY 2000, the annualnumber of adoptions has leveled off. Significant proportions of the adoptions finalized from FY 1998 through FY 2000 were children who had been in the public child welfare system for a long time and who represented a backlog of cases. With improved case-practice under the reforms implemented by the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), the large backlogs of adoption cases needing to be finalized are being eliminated. At the same time, the age of children "waiting" to be adopted continues to increase, with almost half of the "waiting" children being over the age of nine. In addition, the proportion of children in foster care for whom adoption is identified as the appropriate permanency plan has also declined. These trends make adoption placement more challenging.

The program will continue to report data on the total number of adoptions along with the adoption rate through FY 2006. The information in the chart shows the annual number of adoptions of children with involvement in the public child welfare system. Preliminary data indicate that there were 51,000 adoptions in FY 2004, although this number may increase as additional adoptions for that year are reported.¹

Footnote ¹AFCARS permits the reporting of adoptions finalized in one year to be reported in later years. The current FY 2004 number of adoptions is 51,000. Based on previous experience, it is likely, with new AFCARS adoptions submissions and resubmissions from the states, that the number of adoptions finalized in FY 2004 will increase by as much as 2,000 adoptions.

Strategic Goal 7c: Head Start
Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

Performance Measure: Increase the percentage of teachers with AA, BA, Advanced Degree, or a degree in a field related to early childhood education.

Intended for preschoolers from low-income families, Head Start promotes school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social, and other services. Head Start programs emphasize cognitive, language, and socio-emotional development to enable each child to develop and function at his or her highest potential. Head Start also engages parents in their children's learning and helps parents to make progress toward their educational, literacy, and employment goals.

The Head Start Act requires that at least 50 percent of all teachers have an AA, BA, or degree in a field related to early childhood education. Head Start grantees are required to develop plans for using their allocation to increase the number of teachers with degrees. Head Start has shown a steady increase in the number of teachers with BA, AA, or advanced degrees in early childhood education and has met the requirements of the Head Start Act. For FY 2005, 69 percent of Head Start's teachers have an AA degree or higher, which exceeded the FY 2005 target of 65 percent. Of the 55,839 Head Start teachers, 18,355 have an AA degree, 17,538 have a BA degree, and 2,641 have a graduate degree. Numbers not included in the percentage are an additional number of teachers with a Child Development Associate (CDA) or state credential (no degree): 12,288. Of those teachers, 8,443 are enrolled in Early Childhood Education (ECE) degree programs.The total FY 2005 figure represents an increase of 2,061 degreed teachers over the previous year. In FY 2007, the target is to achieve 71 percent.

The Head Start program participated in the CY 2002 PART process and received a rating of Results Not Demonstrated. Based on this assessment it was recommended that the program:

• Implement and operate a National Reporting System designed to assess every 4-year-old in Head Start in the fall and spring of their preschool year. Head Start has already implemented the NRS, which assesses the school readiness of children via three cognitive measures. Assessments of children in every Head Start center were completed in Fall 2003, Spring 2004, Fall 2004, Spring 2005, and Fall 2005 through the NRS, which examined success in preparing children for school
.
• Work with Congress to pass a bill that would better integrate Head Start, child care and state operated pre-school programs. Head Start reauthorization proposals, which contain elements that increase Head Start-preschool integration, are currently awaiting action in Congress.
• Develop annual performance measures that assess the progress of individual grantees in improving school readiness and better measure the impact on children. The Secretary established an Advisory Committee on Head Start Accountability and Educational Performance Measures to make recommendations about further development of the National Reporting System and other performance monitoring activities that assess progress of grantees in improving children's school readiness.

Based on progress on PART recommendations, Head Start is preparing for PART reassessment in the Spring of 2006.

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