Abstract
The Interstate Compact on Placement of Children (ICPC) is a legally binding agreement among all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. 1 It governs the placement of children across state lines for the purpose of foster care, adoption, residential treatment, or institutional care. Its core function is to ensure that children placed outside their home states receive appropriate services and protections, and that both the sending and receiving states have a clear, coordinated process for placements. Currently, the ICPC is an important national matter due to the increased use of kinship placements within the child protection system. There are roughly 1,000 ICPC cases in Texas each year.
The ICPC plays a critical role in ensuring interstate child placements are conducted with care, safety, and legal oversight. While it addresses fundamental child welfare needs like safety, permanency, and accountability, it also presents challenges in efficiency and uniformity. As child protection systems evolve toward a more kinship focused system, the ICPC procedure must leverage technology and policy reforms to better serve children and families across state lines.
Under the ICPC, the sending state, or the state that the child resides in prior to being placed in a new state, maintains legal and financial responsibility for the child during the placement period. The receiving state is the new state in which the child will be placed.3 For example, if a child is in the legal custody of the child protection agency in Louisiana and that agency is seeking to place the child with the child’s maternal aunt in Texas, then Louisiana is the sending state and Texas is the receiving state.