Title IVE of the Social Security Act (SSA) addresses numerous major components of the child welfare system. Title IVE is focused on providing safety and stability for children who are in out-of-home care (e.g., (foster care or kinship caregiving arrangements) or who are at-risk of being placed in out-of-home care due to maltreatment. Title IVE provides services to help families achieve permanency by being safely returned home, as well as funding for services for children who are placed permanently with adoptive families, or placed in other planned arrangements. The largest portion of Title IVE federal funding is for reimbursement of costs related to providing foster care, adoption assistance, and kinship guardianship assistance. Title IVE is also a major funding source for prevention of out-of-home placements, that is, providing funds to child welfare systems to provide services that will prevent out-of-home foster care placements.
