Indiana Foster Parents Need Child Care Support. Without It, Children Pay the Price

By: Grant Kirsh

A recent report from WFYI laid out a problem that anyone who works in Indiana’s foster care system already knows: foster parents across this state are being forced to say no to young children because they cannot afford to pay for daycare without child care vouchers.

This is not a small problem. It is a crisis in the making. And if Indiana does not fix it, the consequences will fall on the most vulnerable children in our system, the infants and toddlers who have nowhere else to go.

At Kirsh & Kirsh, P.C., we have been working in Indiana’s foster care and adoption system for nearly 50 years. We have handled nearly 3,000 foster care adoptions across this state, in courts in Marion County, Lake County, Allen County, Hamilton County, Tippecanoe County, St. Joseph County, Hendricks County, Elkhart County, Johnson County, Delaware County, Vanderburgh County, Porter County, Madison County, Vigo County, Monroe County, and beyond. We have seen what happens when the support systems around foster families fail. We are speaking plainly about this one because the stakes are too high for anything less.

What Is Happening

Indiana’s Child Care and Development Fund, or CCDF, provided child care vouchers that helped working foster parents pay for daycare for the young children in their care. When COVID-era federal funding ran out in late 2024, Indiana froze new voucher enrollment and placed families on a waitlist. More than 33,000 families ended up waiting.

Foster families got caught in that freeze too. Indiana law technically requires the state to maintain 200 CCDF vouchers for licensed foster parents, but that number is a fraction of what is actually needed. In December 2025, only 26 vouchers for infants were in active use, compared to more than 3,600 infants receiving support in November 2024, just one month before the waitlist began.

The result has been exactly what you would expect. Seven foster families with The Villages of Indiana, described as “rock solid” families, stopped accepting young children because they could not afford infant care without a voucher. Infant care in Indiana costs roughly $1,200 per month. That is not a cost most foster families can absorb on their own, especially on top of everything else it takes to care for a child who has come from a hard situation.

“Since the start of the waitlist, they will often say no to those placements because they cannot get those vouchers,” the CEO of The Villages of Indiana told WFYI. The organization spent $80,000 in 2025 alone just helping foster parents cover daycare costs to keep those placements from falling apart.

What This Means for Children

Let us be clear about what happens when foster families say no to infant placements. Those babies do not simply wait in a comfortable, safe holding space. Indiana has faced situations in the past where children, including very young children, ended up sleeping in DCS offices because there were no available foster homes. That is not a hypothetical warning. That is something that has happened in this state.

When daycare costs are not covered, foster parents who work, which is most of them, cannot realistically take in infants and toddlers. They are not refusing because they do not care. They are refusing because the math does not work. And when those placements dry up, DCS finds itself scrambling to place young, vulnerable children with nowhere safe to go.

The children who suffer most in this scenario are the ones who can least afford it. Infants and toddlers removed from unsafe homes are already among the most at-risk children in our system. They need stable, caring placements immediately. Every barrier that prevents a qualified foster family from saying yes is a barrier that puts a child’s safety and development at risk.

Why This Is a Foster Care Adoption Issue Too

Many of the families who foster young children go on to adopt them. The foster placement is often the beginning of the path to permanency. When a foster family cannot take in an infant because of daycare costs, that family is also potentially lost as an adoptive family for that child. The connection that would have developed, the bond that would have made the adoption feel natural and right, never gets the chance to form.

Indiana has nearly 4,000 children under age 5 in out-of-home placements. Many of them will have their permanency plans change to adoption. The foster families who care for them now are, in many cases, the same families who will be asked to adopt them later. Undermining those placements at the foster care stage does not just create a short-term crisis. It disrupts the entire pipeline to permanent family for those children.

What Needs to Happen

The good news is that Indiana is taking steps in the right direction. Governor Braun recently announced a $200 million proposal to reopen the CCDF voucher program and prioritize foster and kinship families in the process. The Indiana General Assembly passed Senate Enrolled Act 4, which makes CCDF vouchers eligible for funding from the state’s Financial Responsibility and Opportunity Growth Fund. These are meaningful steps.

But they are only steps. What Indiana needs is a long-term commitment to making sure that licensed foster parents who care for young children always have access to child care support. The 200-voucher statutory cap is not enough. It has never been enough. Any family that opens their home to a child in DCS care deserves the support necessary to make that placement work, and for working families, that means daycare.

Our Position Is Simple

At Kirsh & Kirsh, P.C., we stand with Indiana’s foster families. We have watched them show up, again and again, for children who desperately need someone to count on. They deserve a state that shows up for them in return.

Covering the cost of daycare for foster children is not a luxury. It is a basic condition for keeping placements stable. It is what makes it possible for a working foster parent in Marion County, Hendricks County, Tippecanoe County, or anywhere else in Indiana to say yes when DCS calls with a child who needs a home tonight.

If you are a foster parent navigating the adoption process or trying to understand what legal support is available to your family, we are here to help.

Call us at 317-575-5555. Visit us at DCSAdoptions.com.

About the Author
Grant Kirsh is a second-generation adoption attorney and owner of Kirsh & Kirsh, P.C., a family law firm in Indianapolis, Indiana that has been serving Indiana families since 1981. Grant graduated from Indiana University McKinney School of Law in 2013 and has personally handled nearly 3,000 foster care adoptions and his law firm has handled over 5,000 private newborn adoptions. He practices all forms of domestic adoption, with a deep personal commitment to expectant mothers considering adoption in Indiana and Indiana’s foster care system and the families and children it serves.