The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has proposed removing the federal regulations that tell states and tribes what to report about their title IV-B child welfare spending and planning. ACF estimates the change would cut the hours those reports take by about 61 percent.
What the proposal removes
The rule would remove and reserve all of 45 CFR part 1357 — the regulations spelling out what states and tribes must include in the Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP), a five-year strategic plan; the Annual Progress and Services Report (APSR), filed yearly; and Form CFS-101, an annual expenditure report. Dropped items include a required "vision statement," goal narratives, quality-assurance descriptions and planning deadlines tied to dates in the 1990s. Tribes receiving only subpart 1 funding would no longer be required by these regulations to file a CFSP, an APSR or a CFS-101. The rule also removes § 1355.25, guiding principles for child and family services, which the Department says provides "unenforceable recommendations," and § 1355.30, a list of other applicable regulations.
Four requirements survive, moved ("redesignated") into § 1355.21: a bar on residency requirements for services, a staff training plan, provisions on Indian children under state and tribal jurisdiction, and tribal funding-formula and eligibility documentation. ACF states this NPRM "does not propose any new requirements."
Reviews and penalties are not rewritten
The document calls its edits to § 1355.33 (procedures for the review), § 1355.34 (criteria for determining substantial conformity) and § 1355.35 (program improvement plans) "conforming" changes: cross-references to the deleted sections give way to statutory citations, and "CFSP" becomes "title IV-B plans." ACF says one of those edits means agencies "will only report subpart 2 requirements." The reviews, the conformity standard and the improvement-plan procedures are not otherwise changed, and penalties are not part of this filing.
The numbers ACF cites
ACF estimates 235 agencies receiving title IV-B subpart 2 funding (56 states, territories and insular areas, plus 179 tribes) now spend 49,350 hours a year on these reports, falling to 19,355.07 hours — a cut of 29,994 hours, or 60.78 percent — and saving an estimated $1,396,520.64 a year, which ACF rounds elsewhere to $1.4 million in annualized savings.
The dates
The document was filed for public inspection October 2, 2026, at 8:45 a.m. ET, and is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on October 5, 2026. Its comment line is still a placeholder — 30 days after the actual publication date — which by this desk's count is November 4, 2026 if it publishes on schedule.
What it does not say
The document does not mention AFCARS or NYTD, the federal foster-care and youth-outcome data systems; that reporting is not addressed here. It sets no effective date, because nothing changes unless and until the rule is finalized. One inconsistency is worth flagging: the SUMMARY calls the removed section "the principles of child and family services reviews," while the section-by-section discussion and the amendment text treat § 1355.25 as principles for services, not for reviews.