State Action for Babies, Families and Stronger Systems: 2026 Child Welfare Legislative Highlights
Babies don’t experience systems. They experience relationships, so we have to change the way in which we’re doing things.
Health & Mental Health
Good health—including physical and mental health—provides the foundation for babies to develop physically, cognitively, emotionally, and socially, and parental health is a key foundation for infants’ and toddlers’ health. Access to health care, insurance coverage, and services to treat mental and physical health needs for the entire family is important to promoting optimal infant development and preventing deeper involvement in systems, including the child welfare system. States advanced policies to expand access to infant and early childhood mental health, home visiting, group prenatal care, and infant recovery services.
Added Medicaid coverage for group prenatal care services, providing evidence-based, group-based prenatal visits that include health assessments, social and clinical support, education, and peer-to-peer interaction in a family-centered environment to support individuals throughout pregnancy and into early childhood.
Required health insurers to cover screening, prevention, and treatment of behavioral health issues in children considered at risk even without a formal mental health diagnosis. This expands coverage into preventive care for children based on family circumstances or life challenges that can influence child development.
Provided funding to localities to support up to four infant recovery centers for substance exposed infants under one year of age. These are specialized treatment programs that support recovery and development for newborns exposed to substances while their mothers can stay alongside them and receive treatment for substance use disorders.
Established an early childhood mental health home visiting program to promote the mental health, developmental progress, and family stability of children from birth to five years of age and their families. The program serves families with young children who face significant stressors like poverty, trauma, or parental mental health challenges, and includes parent-child psychotherapy, care coordination with social services, developmental assessments, and adherence to evidence-based standards.
Established a pediatric interim care center to provide residential care for children birth through two years of age, primarily to serve those needing special care as a result of parental substance abuse. The care center must allow parents to board in the room and provide eat, sleep, and console services to their child, as well as provide support for substance use disorder treatment for the parents.
I wish people understood how connected we are to our children, and that when my mental health is having a crisis or a challenge, my child is going to feel that too.
Concrete Supports & Family Strengthening
Access to economic and concrete supports to meet the unique needs for the entire family (e.g., housing, food, income assistance) is important to promoting optimal infant development and preventing child welfare involvement. When parents and caregivers receive the support they need to foster close connections and healthy relationships with their babies, they are able to serve as a buffer against the impacts of trauma and life’s challenges that many families face every day. States focused on reducing material hardship and improving family stability through family resource centers, coordinated early childhood and family services, and peer support.
Created the Cradle-to-Career Grant Program to promote coordinated community-based supports and services that open opportunities for economic mobility from poverty. The program will connect families with key health and social services to improve prenatal and early childhood outcomes, student achievement, workforce readiness, and wealth-building opportunities.
Established a two-year Family Resilience Pilot Program to strengthen family resilience by offering trauma-informed, culturally responsive services by five peer support resource navigators. Navigators will help families enroll in public or other benefits, parenting classes, and culturally-appropriate family strengthening programs.
Created a comprehensive early childhood and family services system managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, establishing a dedicated fund to support primary prevention, early intervention, and family support services. The system integrates and transitions existing programs such as Healthy Families Iowa, child abuse prevention, and home visiting services into a unified framework.
Created a statewide network of community-based services and family resource centers to assist families at risk of entering or re-entering the child welfare system, emphasizing prevention, education, and mental health support.
Appropriated $30 million for Early Learning Partnerships to help parents with children under 5 navigate the early years and access services including parent groups, developmental screenings, literacy and home visiting programming, and childcare and preschool enrollment. The budget also included $5 million to create the Early Childhood Investment Fund to provide supplemental dollars for early childhood programs serving infants and toddlers, including early intervention, child care subsidies, and school readiness programs.
Systems can respond to parents sooner through community supports. It looks like building a network within those communities: affordable childcare, affordable and stable housing, transportation, health care, mental health, and more.
Kinship Care
When children are removed from the home, kinship placements can help create stability and consistency for babies and families. The behavior, mental health, and well-being of children placed in kinship care is better than that of children placed in traditional/non-relative foster care, and children placed with relatives are least likely to experience placement instability. Kinship care and familial connection appear as frequent themes in this year’s child welfare legislation, with states prioritizing relatives, fictive kin, and sibling connections.
Enhanced kinship care by requiring a due diligence search for adult relatives, extended family members, and persons with a significant relationship to a child within 30 days of temporary custody. The new law clarifies that placement with a relative or extended family member is presumed to be in the child’s best interest and mandates that such placements be prioritized.
Mandated that temporary placements prioritize relatives unless the court finds it not in the child’s best interest and expanded definitions of grandparent and great-grandparent.
Strengthened requirements around emergency placements of children to prioritize relatives and fictive kin.
Amended the state’s sibling and foster child bill of rights to mandate that siblings be placed together when safe and appropriate, ensure regular contact, and require foster parents and agencies to be trained on the importance of sibling relationships.
Expanded the definition of relative in child welfare processes to include an expanded group of relatives by blood, marriage, or adoption.
Prevention to me is preventing children from being removed from their families of origin: whether that’s a cousin, a grandparent, or a parent. Prevention is preventing foster care entry, preventing trauma to children, and preventing trauma to families. And that’s by keeping the family together.
Tribal Child Welfare
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) sets minimum federal standards for child custody cases involving Native children, prioritizing their best interests and strengthening family and tribal stability by mandating efforts to keep families intact, prioritizing out-of-home placements within their family and community, and ensuring the child’s tribal nation and family are fully informed and involved in state court proceedings. While ICWA is federal law, states can strengthen policies by going above and beyond in state law. Several states passed bills aimed at strengthening state level investment or protections for Native children.
Established the Tribal Foster Care Prevention Initiative to provide state funding to assist any federally recognized Indian tribe located in California, or with lands that extend into California, with the costs associated with services aimed at preserving families and preventing the entry of children into foster care.
Enhanced tribal jurisdiction in child welfare cases involving Indian children, ensuring that placements prioritize extended family and tribal members. The new law establishes clear definitions for key terms such as ‘Indian child,’ ‘tribal jurisdiction,’ and ‘adoptive placement,’ and mandates that foster or adoptive placements follow culturally appropriate preferences.
Repealed the sunset date of the Wyoming Indian Child Welfare Act, effectively ending its expiration. Federal protections outlined in ICWA are now enshrined in state code and safeguarded at the state level in perpetuity.
State efforts to clarify federal ICWA protections in the context of their specific child welfare system and court processes are invaluable. Further, many state ICWA laws expand protections beyond federal minimum requirements, consistent with the spirit of ICWA as a restorative policy. These efforts provide the opportunity for Native children to maintain their sense of identity as well as family and community relationships and experience their cultures’ teachings and practices to help them heal and grow up healthy.
Child Welfare Definitions & Reporting
State definitions of child abuse and neglect affect the reasons and frequency at which families are reported and children are removed from their homes. States define what triggers a notification or report, leading to a range of consequences for families without necessarily addressing the root causes of why a family enters the child welfare system. Some states are clarifying their definitions to distinguish harm from poverty to avoid punishing families for struggling when they would benefit from services and supports rather than separation.
Provided clearer definitions of child neglect and abuse, such as explicitly including a financial hardship exception, stating that a parent’s inability to provide for a child due solely to lack of financial resources does not constitute neglect.
Updated statutory definitions of neglect and abuse. The changes include explicitly stating that a parent’s eligibility for public benefits or homelessness cannot be used as sole evidence of neglect or parental failure.
The unfortunate reality is that a lot of our families, the root of their problems is poverty, trauma, mental health and that can easily manifest as neglect. So those problems, those are all things that can be worked on.
Safe Babies Expansion & Sustainability
Safe Babies, a program of ZERO TO THREE™, supports states and communities in building a more coordinated and aligned early childhood system based on the Safe Babies approach. The Safe Babies approach works concurrently at the child and family level, community level, and state level to promote healthy early childhood development while impacting long-term capacity building. The goal is to keep families together by igniting collective action to meet the urgent needs of babies, toddlers, and their families. While the Safe Babies approach is anchored in the court system, it is also an entry point for cross-system collaboration to effectively serve families across multiple areas of need.
Approved $500,000 in the state budget for Safe Babies for fiscal year 2027.
Expanded Safe Babies in the state to include cases involving children five years of age or younger, with priority given to cases involving children younger than three.
The thing that I cannot stress enough is how wonderful having such a team collaborative approach is for families and for the child welfare system. I look at some of the positive impacts that Safe Babies has had on families and the team—how they work together, how they support each other, how everybody is connected and tries to stay connected.
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The Safe Babies Policy Team provides research, tools and tailored support for state policy efforts that can strengthen families facing challenges like poverty, housing instability, substance use and mental health concerns.
