Oklahoma is the first state to join the federal “A Home for Every Child” initiative, which aims to achieve a foster home-to-child ratio of greater than 1:1 in every state. Federal leaders joined Gov. Kevin Stitt and Oklahoma Human Services during the Wednesday announcement.
The effort was launched by the Administration for Children and Families in November, following an executive order from President Donald Trump that requested a modernization of the child welfare system, new supports for older foster youth and increased partnerships with faith-based organizations.
It aims to recruit and retain more safe foster homes and reduce the number of kids in the system through prevention and support.
The federal division’s assistant secretary, Alex Adams, said Oklahoma has been a leader in prevention and preserving families. The state recently completed over a decade of intensive foster care reforms under the “Pinnacle Plan,” which came out of a 2012 federal class action lawsuit against the state’s treatment of children in the system.
“It builds on progress already made to improve outcomes and strengthen families across the state of Oklahoma,” Stitt said.
Fewer Oklahoma youth are in foster care, declining from 8,311 in 2019 to 6,063 in 2025. But the number of licensed foster homes has also dropped, from 4,897 in 2019 to 3,820 in 2025.
“When we don't have enough foster homes for kids, we have kids sleeping in Airbnbs, short-term rentals, government office spaces, places that are not conducive to the safe, loving environment that every child deserves to grow up in,” Adams said.
Adams said “A Home for Every Child” seeks to respect the role of states, allowing them to determine how they want to address the foster home-to-child ratio. He said they’re working to cut through red tape, so staff have the time and energy necessary to move the needle.
In an opinion piece for nonprofit news outlet The Imprint, Adams wrote about Child and Family Services Reviews, which are designed to assess state compliance with federal child welfare laws. In 25 years, results have shown that no states achieved substantial conformity with all outcome measures and systemic factors.
When they fail, they are placed on a program improvement plan negotiated under threat of financial penalty. He said reviews are costly, require up to 1,989 federal staff hours per review and program improvement plans average 44 pages covering up to 14 mandated measures. This, he said, is busywork that hasn’t improved outcomes.
Through “A Home for Every Child,” states can now choose a program improvement plan approach focused on the metric of a foster home-to-child ratio greater than 1:1. The goal is for other states to join and report monthly ratio data to the federal division, allowing for cross-state comparisons.
“Having a monthly data point where I can see how I'm doing relative to Missouri or Kansas or Arkansas or Texas – if someone is doing better than me, I might be able to learn from policy decisions they've made, from practice decisions they made, and it might allow me to adjust how I structure practice here in Oklahoma,” Adams said.
Michael Williams, Oklahoma Human Services’ child welfare director, said Oklahoma’s efforts will require strong connections with caregivers and partnerships with community- and faith-based organizations.
“We have to change the image of who we are in the communities that we serve so that those folks who live in our communities who know children in our communities, who want to step up and be a caregiver, can come forward without fear of being involved with the Department of Human Services or with Child Welfare Services,” Williams said.
“We know the success of this is going to depend heavily upon our ability to have folks come forward, and when they do come forward, to make sure they have a wonderful experience as a foster parent,” he added.
StateImpact Oklahoma is a partnership of Oklahoma’s public radio stations which relies on contributions from readers and listeners to fulfill its mission of public service to Oklahoma and beyond. Donate online.
