Mississippi is the fifth state to join a federal effort aimed at increasing the number of foster homes to meet a growing demand.
Gov. Tate Reeves announced Tuesday that Mississippi is joining President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump’s “A Home for Every Child” pilot campaign. The initiative was created by a November 2025 executive order to modernize the U.S. child welfare system and improve outcomes for youth in foster care.
In Mississippi, the state’s Department of Child Protection Services will work with the federal Administration for Children and Families to ensure a foster home is available to all youth in need by recruiting new foster families, increasing kinship placements, and strengthening prevention services. This, in part, will be done through reducing avoidable burdens placed on families who are open to welcoming foster children into their homes.
On the recruitment front, officials plan to use data-driven strategies to target potential families, reducing red tape by allowing foster parents to submit paperwork and documentation digitally, and strategically matching children with the most appropriate homes. Officials also want to ensure that family members are the first point of contact and the initial home opportunity for children in need by easing the process of licensing those kin to youth as viable caretakers.
Another step in this plan is to enhance prevention services that support families earlier and reduce unnecessary entries into foster care. This applies to increasing access to counseling and rehabilitation opportunities for parents and children in need, among other functions.
“It reflects a belief that government should focus on the things that matter most: protecting children, strengthening families, and ensuring that systems work effectively for the people they serve,” Reeves said of the program. “As a conservative, I believe that government should always be efficient, that government should be accountable to taxpayers, and that government should focus on the responsibilities that matter most. One of those responsibilities is protecting our children.”
At the state level, Mississippi began laying the groundwork for these efforts by improving the use of data to identify placement needs and recruitment gaps across the state. The Department of Child Protection Services plans to launch a statewide foster parent engagement campaign designed to recruit, engage, and support foster families. The launch is expected in the spring or summer of this year.
“Even at its very best, government will always be a poor substitute for family. That is why the goal of ‘A Home for Every Child’ is not just to increase the number of foster homes,” Department of Child Protection Services Commissioner Andrea Sanders said. “The goal is to ensure that every child has the right home at the right time: a home where they are supported, understood, and given the opportunity to thrive.”
Currently, there are around 52 homes for every 100 children in Mississippi’s foster care system. The federal plan, paired with statewide participation, aims to drastically increase that figure so that children are not being placed in supervised hotel rooms or apartment settings on the taxpayer’s dime.
“This is an effort to prevent kids from coming into foster care by safely reducing demand, by wrapping around families, and by providing support,” Administration for Children and Families Assistant Secretary Alex Adams said. “If we do this right, we can get to the point where Mississippi and every other state in the country has more homes than kids, where we have homes waiting on kids and not kids waiting on homes.”
Other stated who have opted in to the program are Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Adams said the federal government plans to have 10 states on board by the end of March.