“At the age of 10, I received one last hug from my mother — a hug I wished would take me to magical places I read about in storybooks. Instead, she walked out of the office in tears. I never saw my mother again.” This was part of 19-year-old Jaydan Martinez’s heart-wrenching story of how he entered Texas’s foster care system at last week’s House Ways and Means roundtable on Capitol Hill.

Twenty-one-year-old Joselyn Fetting likewise described her painful experience, testifying, “I entered foster care at 12 alongside my younger siblings after losing my parents.” She went on to say, “I carried the emotional weight of being the oldest. To stay connected with my younger siblings, I used to pay my friends for rides to see them.”

No child should lose his or her family due to death, mental illness, drugs, or abuse. But if they do, they should not be forced to continue suffering due to a lack of support from their community or government. Quite the opposite: the local, state, and federal governments should work as efficiently and effectively as possible to provide these children with loving families so that they can achieve their full potential and, in turn, give back to their communities.

A Gap of 57 Foster Homes per 100 Foster Children

Improving the foster care system has been a passion of First Lady Melania Trump for years. Last week, speaking on Capitol Hill, she called improving the United States foster care system a “moral imperative.” During the first Trump administration, she created the Be Best initiative to strengthen child welfare, including foster care, and in the second administration, she initiated Fostering the Future, resulting in an executive order signed by President Trump in November that focuses on giving foster kids economic opportunities and more access to science and technology.

As part of these efforts, under the new leadership of Assistant Secretary Alex Adams, HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) created the “A Home for Every Child Initiative,” which seeks to close the horrendous gap of only 57 homes for every 100 children in foster care. As Adams explains, “That gap isn’t just a statistic — it means toddlers spending nights in office buildings, teenagers shuttled between hotels, and siblings separated not for safety, but for lack of space. It means overuse of congregate care, such as group home settings.”

Thankfully, Adams had extraordinary success closing a similar gap as Idaho’s Director of Health and Welfare. In just one year, Idaho went from 74 foster homes per 100 children to 104 foster homes per 100 children. As Adams explained, “We were able to shut down every short-term rental. We were able to get all kids in more appropriate settings. And [I’m] hoping to bring some of that thinking to the national level.”

Adams went on to say in his interview with KTVB TV, “I thought what we were doing in Idaho was a good model for other states, and thought I could make a difference for children throughout the nation. … Success for me looks like, when I leave this job, having a lot more than 57 homes per 100 kids, ideally every state would be above one.”

So far, within the first 100 days of A Home for Every Child’s launch, Adams is very encouraged by the progress they have already made: 14 red and blue states as well as Washington, D.C. have signed on to this effort: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and Iowa. This is well beyond HHS’s expectations of 10 states signing on.) And, as Adams announced on FRC’s “Washington Watch” on Monday, others will be joining in the next two weeks.

The Assistant Secretary has detailed two ways to increase the ratio of foster homes relative to the number of foster children:

• Decrease the number of kids that need to enter the foster care system in the first place by strengthening families. (President Trump has said that the best foster care system is one that’s not needed.) They are doing this by encouraging states to provide parents with substance abuse prevention and mental health support.

In fact, this is being helped by President Trump’s Great American Recovery executive order that he issued in February whose centerpiece is “a $100 million investment to solve long-standing homelessness issues, fight opioid addiction, and improve public safety by expanding treatment that emphasizes recovery and self-sufficiency,” including a $10 million Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) grant program to support adults with serious mental illness). In addition, Adams told Perkins, “HHS is going to start covering medications for opioid use disorder as a preventive measure to prevent kids coming into foster care in the first place.”

• Make it easier for couples to become licensed foster parents. They are doing this by deregulating the licensing process, increasing kinship care (care by a relative or another adult with a close relationship with the child), and increasing partnerships with faith-based groups.

Ending a Discriminatory Biden PolicyThis emphasis on partnering with faith-based groups and churches is a crucial and much-appreciated change: the previous, Biden HHS had actually imposed policies that prevented Christian couples from becoming foster parents (or caused them to stop being foster parents). It directed states to reject couples who would not “affirm” a child’s gender confusion. As HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. testified on Capitol Hill last week, “The Biden administration was excluding an entire class of people because of their religious beliefs … and told the states … to actually pass laws … refusing families ... with Christian religious beliefs not be allowed to have children. And that dramatically constricted the pool of available parents. We are changing that.”

TWS reached out to HHS, asking how they are ensuring that faith-based organizations can participate in federal programs without compromising their beliefs. The agency responded, “The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at HHS sent a letter to all 50 states in March, defending biological reality. The letter reminded state leaders that children may not be removed from their homes because parents won’t adhere to their child identifying as the opposite sex. As we told states, child welfare agencies must base child removal decisions on objective evidence of abuse or imminent risk of harm under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA).”

HHS also said, “Furthermore, removing a child from their home based solely on a parent’s sincerely-held religious beliefs or moral convictions may raise serious constitutional concerns, including violations of the free exercise of religion. “

Finally, this new ACF has contacted several states directly regarding their unfair policies. They told us, “ACF has also sent letters to 13 states who have policies which may prevent or discourage families of faith from fostering if those families will not agree to support a child identifying as the opposite sex. Two states, Massachusetts and Vermont, have since made some changes to their policies and we encourage the others to follow suit.”

If Each House of Worship Had One Foster Family, No Kids Would Be Waiting for Homes

In Adams’ conversation with Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch,” he explained the importance of Christians’ involvement in the foster care system: “As you said, Tony, the message that we send to families of faith is one of the most important things we can do. Statistically, they're much more likely to raise their hand and volunteer and run towards the foster care system. And when the previous administration in some states put in place policies that required families to violate their sincerely-held religious beliefs and moral convictions, it served as a deterrent. One stat you should know is if every house of worship in the United States had just one family come forward and foster, our ratio of homes to kids would be 4:1, and we would have homes waiting on kids, not kids waiting on homes.”

What Can You Do?

When TWS asked HHS what Americans can do to help accomplish their goal to provide a home for every child, they said, “We know children thrive best in families, so we encourage all Americans to consider how they can be a part of serving our most vulnerable children. For families considering becoming a foster parent, we have a map on our website highlighting wonderful resources in each state across the U.S.”

If your state has not yet joined HHS’s Home for Every Child initiative, you can contact your governor’s office and state legislators, asking them to join this effort so that no child is living in a government office or hotel and every child has a family.

Finally, pastors, you can encourage the families in your church to pray about and consider becoming foster families. Fostering a child is a beautiful way to fulfill Jesus’s commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves, make disciples, and to bring light and hope to a child who is hurting and in need.