Civic
NewsOnScale Staff
October 7, 2026
Every year, the federal government distributes billions of dollars to states through Title IV-D and Title IV-E of the Social Security Act. The money flows to child support enforcement agencies and foster care programs. The more children in foster care, the more federal money a state receives. The more child support orders established, the more federal matching funds flow in.
Critics argue the incentive structure is the problem.
Title IV-D pays states federal matching funds — in some cases up to 66 cents per federal dollar — based on child support collections and case volume. Title IV-E pays states for each child in foster care. Both funding streams create financial incentives to open cases, establish orders, and keep children in the system rather than to preserve families and resolve cases quickly.
The numbers are significant. The federal government distributed over $5 billion in Title IV-D incentive payments to states in 2024. Florida received hundreds of millions. Child welfare advocates have documented cases in which parents who were never charged with a crime, never failed a drug test, and posed no documented risk to their children had their parental rights terminated after 24 months in the system — the federal statutory timeline that triggers termination proceedings.
The stories behind these numbers are not abstractions.
A parent in crisis — a death in the family, a temporary housing instability, a medical emergency — may find CPS at their door not with support services but with removal proceedings. Once a child enters foster care, the federal funding clock starts. States have financial incentives to maintain cases. Parents navigating the system without attorneys, without resources, and often without a clear explanation of what they must do to get their children back face a system that profits from their failure.
Florida's DCF has faced documented criticism for case mismanagement, inadequate family preservation services, and opaque processes for parents trying to recover custody of their children.
The solution is not complicated. Federal funding should follow family preservation outcomes, not case volume. States that reunify families quickly and keep them together should receive more federal support, not less. The current structure does the opposite.
As a declared 2028 presidential candidate, JJ Johnson has made DCF reform and the elimination of Title IV-D funding incentives that separate families without cause a central platform position. No child should be separated from a parent without a crime being committed first.
The federal money funding family separation is public record. The outcomes it produces are documented. The policy change required is straightforward.
What's missing is the political will to make it.
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