Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System

On February 9, 2015, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to amend the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) regulations to modify the requirements for title IV-E agencies to collect and report data to ACF on children in out-of-home care and who were adopted or in a legal guardianship with a title IV-E subsidized adoption or guardianship agreement. However, we did not propose that title IV-E agencies report data in AFCARS on American Indian and Alaskan Native children related to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA). In this notice, we are announcing that we intend to publish a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM), which will propose that title IV-E agencies collect and report additional ICWA-related data elements in AFCARS. We will consider the public comments on that SNPRM (related to ICWA-related data elements) and the February 9, 2015 NPRM (related to all other data elements) and issue one final rule on AFCARS.