Glossary of foster care compliance and caregiver screening

The statutes that create foster care, the money that pays for it, and the agency that answers for both.

Title IV-E

The part of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. §§670–679c) under which the federal government reimburses states for foster care, adoption assistance and guardianship. To receive the money a state files a state plan that promises to meet the conditions in §671(a) — including background checks on caregivers and the missing-from-care reporting duty. See the 24-hour rule.

Title IV-E agency

The state (or tribal) agency responsible for the plan — usually the state child-welfare department. It carries the statutory duties even where it contracts placements to private agencies.

State plan requirement

A condition a state must meet to keep federal funding. The 24-hour reporting rule is one of about three dozen in §671(a).

Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2014 (P.L. 113-183)

The federal law that created the protocol requirement (due within one year, by September 2015) and the missing-from-care reporting duty (in force from September 2016).

Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-348)

Signed January 5, 2023. Its §137 amended the reporting duty: regular communication with law enforcement and NCMEC, and a report that includes a photograph, physical description and endangerment information where reasonably possible.

Child and Family Services Improvement Act of 2006 (P.L. 109-288)

Established the federal standard for monthly caseworker visits with children in foster care (see below).

Monthly caseworker visit standard

The federal expectation that a caseworker visits each child in foster care every month; states must reach at least 95 percent of the monthly visits that would occur over the fiscal year if every child were seen. Since October 1, 2025, federal law no longer requires at least half of those visits to take place in the child’s residence. The visit is the routine moment at which a child’s presence is, or is not, confirmed.

Extended foster care

State programs that continue care and supervision for young adults, typically to age 21. Those youth are covered by the missing-from-care rule.

AFCARS

The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System — the federal dataset every state reports into. Its annual figures are the standard source for how many children are in care (331,747 on September 30, 2025, and 501,745 served during that fiscal year; preliminary estimates).

ACF and the Children’s Bureau

The Administration for Children and Families, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the bureau within it that administers Title IV-E and AFCARS and oversees state compliance.

HHS-OIG

The Office of Inspector General of HHS, which audits federal programs. Its 2023 audits estimated, from samples, how often state agencies reported children missing from foster care as federal law requires, for July 2018 to December 2020. See What the OIG actually found.

Child-placing agency (CPA)

A licensed private agency that recruits and supervises foster homes under contract to the state. It does the day-to-day supervision the statute ultimately holds the state responsible for.

Congregate care

Group homes, residential treatment and similar settings rather than family homes.

CCWIS / SACWIS

The Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (and its predecessor, the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System): the case-management systems states run. They record what workers enter; they do not by themselves verify it.

What the words mean when a child in care cannot be found, and which report goes where.

Missing from care

A child or youth in the agency’s care whose whereabouts are unknown — whether the child ran away, was abducted, or simply cannot be located. Federal law attaches the same reporting duty to every cause.

Missing-from-care episode

One continuous period during which a child is missing. The OIG audits counted episodes (74,353 lasting two calendar days or longer in thirty months, in 46 states), not children, because one child can go missing several times.

NCIC

The National Crime Information Center, the FBI’s national database of wanted persons, stolen property and missing persons, queried by law-enforcement agencies nationwide. A missing child is entered into NCIC by a law-enforcement agency, which is why the statute routes the first report through police.

NCMEC

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the congressionally designated non-profit clearinghouse for missing-child cases. It receives the second, separate report required by the statute and provides case analysis and recovery support.

The two legs

Shorthand for the two reports the rule requires: law enforcement for NCIC entry, and NCMEC directly. Compliance on one leg does not satisfy the other.

Protocol requirement

42 U.S.C. §671(a)(35)(A): each state must have protocols for locating missing children, determining why they left, assessing their experiences while missing (including screening for sex trafficking), and responding.

The checks that establish who an adult is, and the words for what a check made once cannot see.

National Child Protection Act of 1993 (NCPA)

The federal law (P.L. 103-209, December 20, 1993), as amended, including by the Volunteers for Children Act of 1998, that lets states set up procedures for qualified organizations to request national checks based on fingerprints on people who care for children and, under the current text, the elderly and people with disabilities. It permits checks; it does not itself require anyone to be checked, or rechecked. See why one-time background checks fail.

Fingerprint-based check

A criminal-history check keyed to fingerprints rather than name and date of birth; harder to defeat with an alias, but still a snapshot of one day.

Rap back

A subscription service, keyed to fingerprints and run by the FBI and some states, that alerts a subscriber the law authorizes to receive criminal records (a government agency or an authorized nongovernmental organization) when an enrolled person’s record changes, for example a new arrest. Recurring screening serves a similar purpose where rap back is unavailable, though a new record can wait until the next check.

Identity verification

Establishing that a person is who they claim to be, typically by validating a government-issued document and matching it to the live person. Supporting data such as the device, location and SSN or ITIN may be checked as well.

Liveness detection

Confirming that a face presented to a camera belongs to a live person present at that moment, rather than a photograph, video or mask.

Document verification

Checking that an identity document is genuine and unaltered, and that its data matches the person presenting it.

Synthetic identity

An identity assembled from real and fabricated data that belongs to no actual person, for instance a real Social Security number with a different name. A name-based check on a synthetic identity can come back clean, because the identifying details may not connect to the person’s own record.

Multi-factor authentication

Requiring more than one kind of proof — something known, held or inherent — before accepting a login or a re-verification.

Recurring screening

Repeating background checks on a schedule instead of relying on the check made at hire. Complied ID, in development, will rescreen every year once it launches.

Proof of presence

Evidence, created at the time, that a specific person was at a specific place at a specific moment — in FComply’s system as designed, a biometric photo capture combined with GPS. See digital chain of custody.

Digital chain of custody

A continuous, tamper-evident record of a child’s identity, presence and movement across placements, built from verified events rather than after-the-fact entries.

Longitudinal record

The whole history of one child across time and placements, rather than a snapshot at a single check.

Suggest a term: info@fcomply.com.