Family First: Ending Unwarranted State Interference in Families

The Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First), passed in February 2018, fundamentally changed how states can use federal Social Security Title IV funds. Before its passage, states could only receive these federal grants after removing a child from their home and placing them in foster care. Family First reversed that incentive structure. Now, states use those same funds to provide services that help keep children safely at home or within their extended families—the people who already love them.

Under Family First, both sides of a child’s family must be considered as potential caregivers before the state turns to foster care. In the past, judges operated under the “one bad apple” rule and placed most children into the foster care system. The Act was designed to reduce this trauma children experienced when separated from siblings, relatives, and their communities. Yet for years after its passage, most states—including California—resisted implementing the Act’s federal guidelines, even while continuing to accept the federal grant money. The County Welfare Directors Association of California repeatedly opposed the changes, yet California continued to receive federal funding because, as one state assemblymember admitted, “We know how to get federal grant money”.  

Family First significantly restricts the state’s ability to place children in group homes or institutional settings, even after emergency or temporary removal. It was created to prevent the abuse and neglect that too many children have suffered in California’s foster homes and institutions. It also provides financial support to extended family members—grandparents, aunts, uncles—who step up to care for children. And it strengthens services for former foster youth to help prevent the all too common pipeline from foster care to homelessness.

California’s own foster youth helped make Family First a reality. The California Youth Connection, and especially former member Jordan Sosa, played a key role. Jordan, whose own siblings grew up separated in foster care, interned with the House Committee on Ways and Means and worked directly on the Family First Act. He also collaborated with the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute to brief Congress on improving juvenile dependency (CPS) courts. His work is a reminder that the people most affected by the system are often the ones leading the push for reform.

Expanding jury trial rights in California’s juvenile dependency courts would further shift the focus away from targeting parents and toward keeping children with the relatives who can care for them. This effort is not about preventing the state from taking emergency action when a child is in danger. It is about stopping the unnecessary removal of temporary or permanent legal rights from family members who are better equipped to raise the child than the state. Ultimately, the goal is to prevent unwarranted government interference in families and extended families.