CONNECT Act

The bill updates the legal purposes of the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program, which serves youth who have been in foster care at age 14 or older. It adds a new purpose: to help these youth develop and maintain ongoing, supportive relationships with adults, mentors, and peers, including others who have been in foster care. The goal is to reduce isolation and help youth build lifelong connections and support networks, even when the adults involved are not their foster placement. Another new purpose is to support youth who are still in foster care in using their rights to help create their permanency plan, which is the official plan for where they will live and who will care for them in the long term. This includes making sure youth get written information about services available and the steps agencies are taking to support their plans. It also includes helping with peer support before and after permanency decisions, mentoring, connections to relatives, and referrals to other programs and services. The bill sets an effective date: these changes to the Chafee program’s purposes take effect one year after the law is enacted. It also requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue guidance within one year of enactment, after consulting with youth who have lived experience in foster care. This guidance must give examples of services and supports that can receive federal funding, describe best practices for peer support and mentoring, set standards for outreach and notification to eligible youth, and explain how to document relationship-building activities in a child’s case plan so they can be reviewed under existing case review systems.

Youth who age out of or spend their teen years in foster care often face challenges with housing, education, work, and mental health. Research and feedback from these youth suggest that having stable, long-term relationships with supportive adults and peers can make it easier to handle these challenges. By explicitly making relationship-building a core purpose of the Chafee program, the bill aims to align the program’s goals with this research and experience. The bill also affects how state and tribal child welfare agencies plan and document services. Clear federal guidance on what can be funded and what practices are encouraged may shape the types of supports agencies offer, such as mentoring, peer groups, and efforts to keep sibling, tribal, and community ties. The actual impact on youth will depend on how agencies use this guidance, how they design their services, and what resources they devote to relationship-focused activities. For the public, the bill helps define how existing federal foster care transition funds can be used, without creating a new program. It may influence how judges, caseworkers, and oversight bodies review case plans, because relationship-building and youth participation in permanency planning would be more clearly recognized as important parts of the foster care transition process.