Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor

Fund father-involvement programs and speed termination of parental rights

Attempted

482 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“Allocate funding to strategy programs promoting father involvement or terminate parental rights quickly. … At the same time, in cases where the father or mother does not make a sincere or serious effort to be involved in the child’s upbringing, termination of parental rights for children in foster care should be swift.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    Executive Order 14359 addresses the second limb of this disjunctive ask. Section 2(a)(iv) directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services, within 180 days, to publish annually a scorecard measuring state achievement on outcomes that include accelerating permanent placement for children and decreasing the average time children spend in foster care, and section 2(a)(i) directs the elimination of duplicative low-value reporting. Nothing has been published: no scorecard appears on acf.gov as of 2026-08-28, 288 days after the order, and ACF's implementing rulemaking (RIN 0970-AD32, Reforming Federal Reporting and Assessments in Child Welfare) is still at the proposed rule stage with no NPRM. On the first limb, the Administration for Children and Families continues to fund Responsible Fatherhood grants - a new five-year cohort was awarded in September 2025 - but that is a pre-existing program continuing, not an allocation made in response to this ask.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • EO 14359 read in full at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-11-19/html/2025-20406.htm. Signing date 2025-11-13, published 2025-11-19.
  • The acf.gov sitemap (13,399 URLs, last updated 2026-08-28) contains no page matching “scorecard” or “fostering-the-future”.
  • RIN 0970-AD32’s statement of need is the fullest account of ACF’s intent: it says the Child and Family Services Review has never produced substantial conformity in any state after three cycles of review and that the review scheme should move ‘from a check-the-box process to an outcome’ basis.
  • Moved nearby, reviewed 2026-10-04: the NPRM is out. Reforming Federal Reporting and Assessments in Child Welfare (FR 2026-20329, 91 FR 63226, published 2026-10-05, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/05/2026-20329/reforming-federal-reporting-and-assessments-in-child-welfare) was read in full. The 2025-11-13 event’s “no NPRM” was true when written, and the event is left as it is. The proposal amends 45 CFR parts 1355 and 1357. It strips title IV-B plan and APSR reporting requirements that are duplicated or superseded by statute, and estimates a 60.78 percent cut in reporting burden. It touches § 1355.34 only to remove cross-references to the deleted plan paragraphs. (1) It changes no Child and Family Services Review permanency or timeliness measure, and no termination-of-parental-rights timeline: 45 CFR 1356.21 is not amended or mentioned. (2) It says nothing about the EO 14359 §2(a)(iv) state scorecard, and the only executive orders it cites are the regulatory-review orders (12866, 13563, 14192). That makes it EO 14359’s duplicative-reporting strand, moved nearby, and not this Quote’s object. No event.
Action
other
Object
ACYF father involvement programs and termination of parental rights
ID
1337