Create Accountable Respectful Environments (CARE) for Children Act
Sponsored By: Representative Steube
Introduced
Summary
Creates a new 'cottage family home' foster placement category that would expand foster options and aim to preserve sibling groups and improve child safety with clear care standards. It would also make placements in these homes eligible for foster care maintenance payments and set rules on living arrangements, restraints, and oversight.
Show full summary
- Families and children: Would encourage keeping siblings together and require trauma-informed care, access to age-appropriate activities, and regular family contact while banning seclusion, mechanical and chemical restraints, and any prone physical restraint.
- Foster parents and providers: Defines cottage family homes as single-family residences with live-in parents who provide 24-hour substitute care and generally limits bedrooms to no more than 2 children per bedroom unless it is in the children's best interest. It would allow foster care maintenance payments for children placed in these homes and remove time limits on those payments for such placements.
- State agencies: Would require State plans to authorize cottage family homes as a placement option and protects states from penalties for treating these homes as foster family homes when serving children's best interests.
- Oversight and child voice: Requires a system for children to report concerns and a continuous quality improvement process that regularly solicits feedback from children about care quality.
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Bill Overview
Analyzed Economic Effects
3 provisions identified: 2 benefits, 0 costs, 1 mixed.
Safety and care rules for cottage homes
The bill would set safety and care rules for “cottage family homes.” Homes must be licensed, support family and sibling contact, and let kids join age‑appropriate activities. Care would be trauma‑informed, with seclusion and mechanical or chemical restraints banned; prone restraints banned; only brief physical restraint to stop injury if policy allows. Each home would need a way for children to report concerns and must regularly get feedback from children. Homes would be single‑family style (no more than two per bedroom unless best for the children) with live‑in parents providing 24/7 care using the reasonable and prudent parent standard.
Foster payments for cottage family homes
If enacted, State foster care plans would need to list cottage family homes as a placement option. Children placed in these homes would qualify for foster care maintenance payments, with no time limit on these payments. The changes would apply to payments for calendar quarters starting on or after the enactment date. If HHS decides a State needs a new State law to comply, the State would have up to 6 months after enactment without being treated as out of compliance.
States get more say on cottage homes
The bill would bar HHS from blocking, penalizing, or suing a State for treating a cottage family home as a foster family home when the State says it serves children’s best interests. This would keep more authority with States and could reduce federal oversight.
Sponsors & CoSponsors
Sponsor
Steube
FL • R
Cosponsors
Dunn (FL)
FL • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Cammack
FL • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Wasserman Schultz
FL • D
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Soto
FL • D
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Gimenez
FL • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Franklin, Scott
FL • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Ezell
MS • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Guest
MS • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Bilirakis
FL • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Rutherford
FL • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Edwards
NC • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Mills
FL • R
Sponsored 8/15/2025
Buchanan
FL • R
Sponsored 9/2/2025
Haridopolos
FL • R
Sponsored 9/8/2025
Bean (FL)
FL • R
Sponsored 9/16/2025
Moskowitz
FL • D
Sponsored 9/17/2025
Donalds
FL • R
Sponsored 9/23/2025
Patronis
FL • R
Sponsored 9/23/2025
Vindman
VA • D
Sponsored 10/8/2025
Kelly (MS)
MS • R
Sponsored 10/8/2025
Van Duyne
TX • R
Sponsored 10/24/2025
Kustoff
TN • R
Sponsored 11/17/2025
Roll Call Votes
No roll call votes available for this bill.
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