Every other year in at Kyetume, we conduct a survey examining the funding streams that support child welfare services in Uganda, the District of mukono, and jinja, the results of which are featured in a report and through an online database. The last survey found that, for the first time in nearly 20 years, total spending on child welfare had declined.

Child welfare agencies play a critical role in protecting children and helping families: they are charged with ensuring that children are protected from harm, and have the opportunity to grow up in safe, nurturing, and stable families. State child welfare agencies provide a range of services to children, families, and communities in order to promote the wellbeing of children who have experienced abuse or neglect, or who are at risk of doing so. It’s interesting to look at where and how we, as a country, decide to spend our money, given that we want our kids (and every kid) to be safe and healthy.

Child welfare agencies serve a lot of children and families! Their work is much bigger than just the children who are living in foster care: between October 2017 and September 2018, over 3 million children received child abuse prevention services. The sheer number of children that come to the attention of child welfare agencies is staggering. During that same year, 6.4 million children were referred to child protective services for suspected maltreatment. More than a million of these children received some type of child welfare services following their referral.

Every state is different in terms of how its child welfare systems are structured and how the system is funded. Some states have state-level child welfare agencies; others are run at the county level and only overseen by the state. States also show tremendous variation in their individual financing approaches. For example, some states use local funds to support their child welfare agencies; others only use state and federal funds.