Gianforte says Montana joins foster care partnership in Helena

Montana’s foster care system got a new push in Helena as Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the state onto a federal partnership meant to make sure every child who enters care has a licensed foster home or kinship placement waiting.

The agreement, signed June 1 at the Montana State Capitol with Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, made Montana the 25th participant in the national A Home for Every Child collaboration. State officials said the goal is not just to add placements, but to improve outcomes for children in foster care by reducing unnecessary entries, strengthening recruitment and retention of foster families, and giving child welfare workers more support.

For Lewis and Clark County, the immediate significance is practical. Helena is where state policy, the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, advocacy groups and child welfare staff intersect, and changes made at the Capitol can affect how quickly children are placed, how often relatives are used first, and how much strain falls on local foster families when a child must be removed from home.

The federal initiative is built around a simple test: whether a child entering foster care can be matched with a safe home or a kinship placement instead of being moved through temporary arrangements. The Administration for Children and Families says the effort is meant to reduce entries into foster care through prevention while increasing foster and kinship homes through stronger recruitment, kin-first approaches and better retention of caregivers.

Montana officials cast the partnership as part of a broader effort to modernize child welfare. The governor’s office said the state wants to support foster parents and child welfare workers while also reducing administrative barriers inside the system. That matters in a county like Lewis and Clark, where the number of available homes can shape everything from caseworker workload to how often children are separated from siblings or moved from one placement to another.

The state is also pointing to recent foster care numbers as the backdrop for the move. Gianforte said Montana had 1,749 children in foster care, a 47% drop since January 2021, and a separate state update said the figure was down from more than 3,300 in early 2021. Federal training materials tied to the initiative also describe a $7 million innovation challenge aimed at improving foster-home-to-child ratios, giving states another benchmark to chase as they try to keep more children safely connected to family and community.