Giving group homes a modern makeover

Residents of the Williams Cottage finish their lunch at the Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., campus of the Children’s Village.

to increase the number of good institutions,” he said. “But to increase the number of good foster families.”

About one-quarter of all states rely heavily on group homes. For them, the new law will mean dramatic changes, including caps in funding and new standards of care for group home providers, such as 24/7 nursing and clinical staff on site. States with programs that don’t qualify under the new rules will have to either shut down or foot the bill with no federal support, child welfare experts say.

Each of those states has its own peculiar circumstances that, collectively, contribute to the wildly disparate use of group

homes across the country, child welfare experts say. Even within states, the number of group homes varies across counties, according to a 2016 report by Chapin Hall, a child welfare research branch of the University of Chicago.

Colorado, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wyoming have the greatest percentage of foster children living in group homes, according to a 2015 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore-based child welfare research and advocacy group. Around the country, however, the number of children living in group homes has decreased by about 20 percent since 2009, the Chapin Hall report found.