42 U.S.C. § 679b — Annual report

(a) In general. After consulting Governors, State^* legislatures, State and local officials who run child^*-welfare programs, and child-welfare advocates, the Secretary^* must: (1) develop outcome measures, including foster-care length of stay, number of placements, and number of adoptions, to assess how States run child-protection and child-welfare programs under part B and this part and to ensure children’s safety; (2) develop those measures from Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System data as much as possible; (3) create a system for rating States on the measures and explain to States how the system and scores work; (4) issue regulations needed to make States provide the data needed to determine each measure, as a condition of receiving funds under this part; (5) beginning May 1, 1999, and every year after that, send Congress a report on every State’s performance on every measure, examining reasons for high and low performance and, when possible, recommending improvements; (6) for fiscal year 2007 and later, include State-by-State data on (A) the percentage of State-responsibility foster children visited monthly by the assigned caseworker, (B) monthly caseworker visits during the fiscal year as a percentage of the visits that would occur if every child were visited each month, and (C) the percentage of visits at the child’s residence; and (7) for fiscal year 2016 and later, include State-by-State data on (A) foster children placed in a child-care institution^* or another setting that is not a foster family home^*, including, for each placement, (i)(I) the setting type—shelter care; a group home and, if so, its child-population range; a residential treatment^* facility; a hospital or institution providing medical, rehabilitative, or psychiatric care; a setting providing prenatal, postpartum, or parenting support; or another child-care institution and its type; (II) the number of children and each child’s age, race, ethnicity, and gender; (III) each child’s placement length, whether it is the first placement, if not the number and types of earlier placements, and whether the child has special needs or a diagnosed mental or physical illness or condition; and (IV) the extent of specialized education, treatment, counseling, or other services; (ii) separately, the number and ages of children whose permanency plan is another planned permanent living arrangement; and (B) foster children who are pregnant or parenting.
(b) Consultation on other issues. The Secretary must consult States and organizations interested in child welfare, including adoption and foster-care service organizations, and consider requests from Members of Congress when choosing other issues to analyze and report using available data, including State data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System and the National Youth in Transition Database.