A Home for Every Sibling Set: How the Federal Initiative Builds on Kinship and Sibling Connections
A Home for Every Child means a Home for Every Sibling Set!
The new federal initiative with the catchy name, offers a new opportunity to find homes for America’s foster children.
The majority of children in foster care are separated from one or more siblings during their time in care. Except in rare cases, children’s outcomes fare much better when placed with siblings. Unfortunately enough efforts have not been focused on finding homes for larger sibling sets, most importantly recruiting and supporting kin and fictive kin most likely to take in siblings. The Home for Every Child initiative creates an important opportunity for states to build on two longstanding principles of federal child-welfare law: find children's families early and make reasonable efforts to keep siblings together.
Research Supports Keeping Siblings Together.
Siblings are often the longest relationship in a person’s life. Sibling disconnection is consistently raised as a major concern among those who experienced foster care. Sibling relationships provide continuity, emotional support, identity, belonging, and stability during the trauma of removal from parents. The American Bar Association’s “Sibling Relationships Are Sacred: Benefits of Sibling Placement and Contact,” is a toolkit summarizing social science research. Studies highlight that joint placement can reduce trauma, placement disruption, depression, anxiety, and self-blame while supporting mental health, stability, educational competence, and later social functioning. Disrupting these relationships, conversely has negative outcomes on permanency and wellbeing.
Federal law already recognizes the need to engage kinship early and place every child with their siblings
Under 42 U.S.C. § 671(a)(29), within 30 days after a child is removed from a parent, a state must exercise due diligence to identify and notify adult relatives including adult siblings, grandparents and other adult relatives—including parents of the child's siblings who have legal custody of those siblings. The notice must explain the relative's options to participate in the child's care and placement and the requirements and supports for becoming a foster family.
This requirement is more than a procedural deadline. Timely identification and notification gives states an opportunity to discover family connections and potential homes before placement decisions become entrenched. For sibling groups, that family search can reveal relatives who may be able to care for more than one child and help preserve relationships that are critical to children's stability.
A Home for Every Child, highlights not only the need to comply with the federal notice requirements but the immediate need to identify relatives even earlier. Agencies can adopt policies to have placement workers on call 24-7 whenever removals are happening, ready and waiting to finger print kin and fictive kin to prevent sibling separations and unnecessary stays in congregate care settings.
Federal law separately requires states to make reasonable efforts to place siblings removed from their home together in the same foster care, kinship guardianship, or adoptive placement, unless the state documents that doing so would be contrary to a sibling's safety or well-being. See 42 U.S.C. § 671(a)(31).
The law establishes a clear framework: find the family, identify the sibling connections, and make reasonable efforts to keep siblings together.
A Home for Every Child builds on that framework
ACF's A Home for Every Child initiative gives states flexibility to develop strategies for increasing the availability of homes for children in foster care so long as they are also in compliance with other federal and state laws. CFSR Technical Bulletin #14. Finding kin, engaging them, and placing siblings together are clear priorities.
Imagine a foster care system with enough homes available, that when children enter care, they won’t be separated from their siblings, sleeping in offices over night, or sent to restrictive facilities because enough families are ready, waiting and supported.
To learn more about this initiative check out the January 2026 ACF webinar on A Home for Every Child and Technical Bulletin #14.
