November 24, 2025
The Administration’s new Executive Order (EO), Fostering the Future for American Children and Families, directs federal agencies to modernize child welfare data and technology systems, expand employment and educational support for older foster youth, and increase partnerships with faith-based organizations.
But the EO offers scant detail on how these reforms will be funded or operationalized — raising serious questions about how these commitments will translate into meaningful change for children and families.
The EO’s directive to expand faith-based exemptions is particularly concerning. Diluting nondiscrimination protections threatens to open the door for providers to deny LGBTQI+ youth the affirming services and placements they need to thrive.
These young people are already overrepresented in state foster systems, where they face disproportionate risk of rejection, homelessness, and abuse. Further weakening safeguards that protect their rights is unacceptable.
The EO includes strategies to help young people in the foster system access employment and educational support and navigate healthcare, mentoring, and other services. Yet, it fails to invest in basic supports that keep families stable and prevent system involvement in the first place.
This gap is especially troubling as recent budget cuts and eligibility changes to essential programs—including Medicaid and SNAP—push more families into financial hardship that is too often mislabeled as “neglect,” leading inevitably to more families separated and more children placed in state foster systems.
Instead of prioritizing keeping children safely with their families and communities, the EO emphasizes faster placements, increased foster recruitment, and expanded use of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics.
Without strong oversight and transparency, these approaches risk reinforcing patterns of surveillance and separation that disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, and low-income families.
Children’s Rights will closely monitor implementation in the coming months and continue advocating for policies that keep families supported and safely together, protect critical rights for LGBTQIA+ youth, and advance racial justice.