Supporting America’s Children and Families Act

The bill was restructured from standalone sections 1-17 into Title I with sections 101-117, and the overall Act short title changed from 'Protecting America's Children by Strengthening Families Act' to 'Supporting America's Children and Families Act,' indicating this is now one title within a larger bill.

A new provision (section 431(a)(1)(G)) authorizes peer-to-peer mentoring and support programs with demonstrated experience fostering constructive relationships between children and families and mentors with relevant lived experience or interactions with the child welfare system, with a special rule allowing such expenditures to count toward multiple service categories.

Remote court proceedings under the Court Improvement Program now require participant consent. The language 'subject to participant consent' was added to both the best practices provision for remote hearings and the continuity-of-services provision supporting remote technology.

New performance indicators were added for regional partnership grants addressing parental substance use disorder: child permanency, reunification, re-entry into care, and access to services for families with substance use disorder including those with children who are overrepresented in foster care, difficult to place, or have disproportionately low permanency rates.

A new State plan requirement (section 422(b)(4)(C)) requires States to describe steps to ensure that information about available independent legal representation is provided to the child and to any parent, guardian, or person with legal custody in judicial proceedings involving allegations of child abuse or neglect.

In the ICWA state plan requirement, 'timely notice to tribal organizations' was changed to 'timely notice to Indian tribes,' broadening who must receive notice of State custody proceedings involving Indian children.

The threshold for streamlined reporting requirements for Indian tribes changed from 'less than $50,000' to 'not more than $50,000,' making the streamlining provision slightly broader in applicability.

In the kinship caregiver section, 'adoptive and extended' was changed to 'kinship and adoptive,' and 'parents and other caregivers (including foster parents)' was changed to 'parents, kinship caregivers, and foster parents,' elevating kinship caregivers to a named category rather than an example.

Multiple instances of 'experts with lived experience' or 'youth with the experience' were changed to 'individuals with lived experience' or 'youth with lived experience,' standardizing the terminology throughout the bill.