Maryland turns to tech to improve foster care outcomes for children
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A software tool is helping the Maryland Department of Human Services connect children in foster care with more family members or friends, which is linked with better adulthood outcomes.
The kids are going to be alright in Maryland — at least that’s the goal of the state’s recent efforts to link more children with kin-based foster care options.
To help realize that mission, the Maryland Department of Human Services is leveraging a software service that expedites caseworkers’ search for potential kin caregivers when locating out-of-home, or foster, care options for a child. The deployment of the tool comes amid a new partnership between the department and software company Binti, state officials announced earlier this month.
In Maryland, there are an estimated 3,800 youth in the state’s out-of-home care system.
Placing a child in need of assistance with kin — such as a family member, relative or close friend — can result in better adulthood outcomes, like increased chances of employment and education and fewer interactions with public assistance, homelessness and incarceration, according to a 2020 study. There is also a nationwide shortage of foster families in general across the U.S., with an estimated 57 licensed foster homes for every 100 children in need of one.
By expanding the pool of out-of-home care options for children, Maryland hopes to address gaps in out-of-home care availability while also improving outcomes for the children in such environments, said Rebecca Rice, director of out-of-home care at the Maryland Department of Human Services’ Social Services Administration. Binti’s software aims to plug those gaps by expediting and streamlining caseworkers’ search for potential kin connections in the state.
The software “helps us find kinship caregivers faster, so we can assess them, make sure that they’re safe and appropriate, and then we can ideally place more children with kinship care,” Rice said.
Caseworkers will often try to work with families whose children are being placed into out-of-home care to identify familial or social connections, but manually finding and contacting them is time-intensive, particularly if the original family member is not in contact with other kin, she explained.
With the Binti search tool, caseworkers can more efficiently search and contact potential kin caregivers. The software, for example, generates a report on available out-of-home providers and their contact information based on public and proprietary databases.
Caseworkers can then move forward with determining the most appropriate fit for the child in need of assistance and contact their kin via letters or emails generated by the software tool, Rice explained.
Using the family-finding software, Maryland caseworkers have conducted more than 4,500 searches and identified more than 4,300 potential kin connections for foster care placement since DHS launched the software in September, state officials said in a recent announcement.
Since December, the state has also seen a 33% increase in the portion of children in foster care living with family members, according to state officials.
Helping drive that increase is a 2024 state law that directs child welfare staff to prioritize placing children with kin caregivers before seeking unrelated caregivers, Rice said.
Maryland also created an alternative licensing pathway for kin caregivers that helped remove barriers to obtaining a license that would unlock their access to resource support from DHS, such as monthly stipends, that nonkin caregivers receive, she explained. Such efforts have resulted in an increase of licensed kin caregivers from 25% in December 2024 to 86% the next year, state officials said.
“We want to improve the experience and the outcomes for children who are in foster care in Maryland,” Rice said. “This is one way that we can work on improving that.”