Mississippi will join a Trump administration effort aimed at expanding foster-home recruitment for children in state custody, Gov. Tate Reeves announced Tuesday, saying the state has fewer licensed foster homes than it has children available for placement.
Reeves said Mississippi has 52 foster homes for every 100 children in the state’s foster-care custody. He said the state is the fifth to join the “A Home for Every Child Initiative,” a pilot that the federal Administration for Children and Families is running alongside other states.
Reeves said joining the program would require Mississippi to share updated data with the federal government about its child-to-home ratio. He said the federal government will publish those ratios on an online dashboard, and officials are tying the recruitment work to what foster homes will be needed most.
Alex Adams, assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, said federal performance reporting tied to the Children and Family Services Reviews has produced extensive documents that federal reviewers did not use. He said the initiative is intended to “liberat[e] the time and energy of the best caseworkers” by cutting the “paperwork” states had been submitting, including reports that he described as “mostly duplicated and recycled” content across years.
Adams said the reduction in red tape is not tied to additional federal funding. He said the time federal staff would have spent on reviewing lengthy reports instead allows states to “target funds” for casework. He also said that in the absence of licensed foster homes, some children end up in short-term arrangements such as rentals, hotels, Airbnbs, or even government offices.
Reeves and other state officials said the recruitment effort is meant to address those placement gaps by matching children’s needs to families’ licensing. Reeves said Mississippi is moving toward “targeted recruitment,” identifying “the right families for the right types of placements,” including placements for children who require therapeutic care and therefore need higher levels of licensing.
Sanders, director of the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, said the state is working on a more modern, digital application process for prospective foster parents. She said CPS is also preparing a new campaign to recruit foster families and described the work as making the process more transparent for applicants.
At the announcement, Adams said that while some facilities are well maintained, government buildings are not “conducive to stable, loving, nurturing environments that every child deserves.” Reeves also said Mississippi will pair recruitment changes with efforts to reduce administrative barriers that he said discourage qualified families from stepping forward.
The initiative, according to a federal announcement, is also intended to reduce the number of children entering foster care by prioritizing prevention interventions. Reeves said prevention is part of the strategy, but he did not provide specific details about how Mississippi plans to expand prevention through the initiative.
Officials said the effort relates to the Family First Prevention Services Act, enacted in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term. Federal officials said the law was designed to provide substantial funding to support stability for biological families, but Mississippi’s plan to start receiving those funds was only approved last August, and the state has not fully launched the program.
The announcement also came after Laurie Todd-Smith, a deputy assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, visited Mississippi and took part in a partnership effort with Focus on the Family. The cluster said Todd-Smith previously described the problem as children carrying belongings from home to home in trash bags, and Mississippi’s overall ratio as 52 homes for every 100 children, while describing a national ratio of 57 homes per 100 children.