# Plain Language Summary: Recruiting Families Using Data Act of 2025

## What This Bill Does

This bill aims to improve how states recruit and keep foster and adoptive parents by requiring them to develop detailed "family partnership plans." These plans would focus on finding more families willing to take in children who need care, particularly relatives and people already connected to the child. The bill emphasizes using data and feedback to identify problems and track progress in getting more children into family homes rather than institutional care settings.

## Who Benefits and Who Is Affected

**Primary beneficiaries:**
- Children in foster care (especially teens, sibling groups, and children with special needs)
- Prospective foster and adoptive parents
- Birth families and relatives who could care for children

**Who must comply:**
- State child welfare agencies, which must create and update these partnership plans annually
- States must also collect and report detailed data about their foster and adoptive families

## Key Requirements

States would need to:
- **Develop recruitment strategies** for every child needing placement, with special focus on finding relatives and people connected to the child
- **Collect annual data** on how many licensed foster families they have, how many aren't being used, and why
- **Get feedback** from foster/adoptive parents and youth about what makes it hard to become or stay a foster parent
- **Address racial equity** by analyzing barriers to recruiting families that match children's racial and ethnic backgrounds
- **Create foster family advisory boards** to help improve recruitment and retention

The bill takes effect October 1, 2026, with flexibility for states that need to change their laws first.

Recruiting Families Using Data Act of 2025

Feenstra, Randy

Recruiting Families Using Data Act of 2025This bill requires state plans for child welfare services to provide for the development and implementation of a family partnership plan to improve foster care placement stability, increase rates of kinship placements, and align the composition of foster and adoptive families with the needs of children in or entering foster care.The Children's Bureau of the Administration for Children and&nbsp;Families also must include in its annual report information from states about the number, demographics, and characteristics of foster and adoptive families as well as a summary of the challenges related to recruiting and being foster or adoptive parents.