Money icon2025–2027 Biennial Budget Deal Reached

Earlier this month, the state legislature reached a bipartisan agreement on a compromise 2025–2027 Biennial Budget deal, which Governor Tony Evers signed on July 3.

While not everything from the initial budget proposal is included in this deal, some items that were advanced in the Department of Children and Families’ (DCF) budget include:

  • Increased funding for the Tribal high-cost out-of-home care placement program to $1,000,000 annually to better support Native American children in the child welfare system.
  • $824,100 all funds in fiscal year 2025–26 and $1,657,300 all funds to increase foster care and kinship care aid payments by 2.5 percent, effective January 1, 2026—ensuring foster parents caring for children in out-of-home care receive sufficient support.
  • One-time funding of more than $3 million over the biennium to continue funding online, evidence-based parenting programming (Triple P online through Children’s Hospital). 

 Not in DCF’s budget, but closely related to child welfare programming, the budget also:

  • Provides $1.8 million in fiscal year 2025–26 to the Joint Finance Committee’s program supplements appropriation for grants to psychiatric residential treatment facilities.
  • Provides $20 million in the biennium for grants to crime victim service providers and child advocacy centers to supplement federal Victims of Crime Act grants.
    • $163,500 in each year and two full-time two-year project positions to administer grants for crime victim services.

 

For more details on DCF’s 2025–2027 budget, read the Summary of Provisions.