In May, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte announced that the state had reduced the number of kids in foster care by nearly half, “while prioritizing stronger families, reunification, and encouraging adoption.” That’s earned the state plaudits from the federal government, among other corners. But before other states jump on this bandwagon, Montana’s child welfare leaders should answer some important questions: Is this decline real? If so, how did it happen?
To be sure, the roughly 50 percent drop has a basis in the numbers. In 2021, more than 3,300 children in Montana were in foster care. By 2026, the number was 1,749. There are a few good ways (and a few not-so-good ways) that states can shrink the number of children in foster care.
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Children enter foster care because of serious problems at home, often involving parental drug and alcohol addiction, untreated mental-health conditions, cognitive disabilities, and generations of family dysfunction and violence. Montana does not attribute the decline in foster-care entries to addressing these problems, whether through new approaches to working with troubled families or investments in intensive, in-home prevention services. Entries into foster care have fallen since Gianforte took office in 2021. But so has the number of prevention plans opened with families.
The state does highlight CarePortal, an online service that connects vulnerable children and families with local churches and volunteers to provide for their needs. But CarePortal’s leadership claims that children enter foster care because of “poverty-related neglect,” which simply isn’t true. Montana’s own press release on foster-care decline more accurately reflects what the “Uber of foster care” actually offers: “mattresses to clothes to instruments for after-school programs.” A mattress does not treat a parent’s addiction.
Once a child enters foster care, the state shifts its focus to providing services that address the conditions that led to removal, with the goal of successful reunification. But again, it does not appear that Montana has improved either the share of children reunified or the speed of reunification.
More exits to adoption could also help reduce the foster-care population. But that hasn’t happened in Montana, either, despite the state’s new adoption tax credit. Exits to adoption peaked at 501 children in 2019, before Gianforte took office. By 2025, they had dropped to 239. The number of children exiting to guardianship rose during this period, but the overall story doesn’t change: more exits to permanency did not produce the dramatic reduction of children in foster care.
What, then, are some of the not-so-good ways that foster-care numbers can shift so dramatically in just a few years?
One possibility is systemic changes in the way children are counted in the state’s data. In Montana, more than one-third of children in foster care are Native American. With more tribes asserting “data sovereignty,” exactly how and where Native American victims of child abuse and neglect get “counted” has become increasingly unclear.
The distinction goes beyond questions of data and tallies. Governor Gianforte has said that he wants “a Native approach for Native kids” and “not a white approach.” But child abuse does not come in Native and white versions, and neither should child protection. In any case, the data do not indicate that Native American children are dropping out of the state’s counts. Federal data show foster care numbers fell for all groups.
Another approach to reducing foster care is to make it harder for child protection agencies to act. Unfortunately, that seems like a plausible explanation for the state’s declining numbers. In a 2025 report to the legislature, Montana’s Department of Public Health and Human Services describes “narrowing the criteria for entry into foster care.” In fiscal year 2020, the last full year before the governor took office, Montana’s child protection hotline received nearly 33,000 calls, and 10,489 led to an investigation. Projections based on partial data for 2025 suggest the number of calls the state received has barely changed, at about 31,900. But investigations fell every year, to an estimated 6,400 in 2025, a drop of nearly 40 percent since 2020. That implies Montanans are still raising alarms but that less action is being taken.
Finally, some states have reduced their foster-care populations by diverting kids at risk into homes with their extended families. But the same Montana press release that touts these foster-care declines reports that “kinship placements are lower and more difficult as families in their care are increasingly struggling with drug and alcohol abuse along with the rising cost of housing.”
Taken together, these possibilities raise the concern that Montana is prioritizing lower foster-care numbers over child safety. Other states are under sustained pressure to do the same. These demands, coupled with state budget constraints, are incentivizing states to act in ways potentially dangerous to vulnerable children.
Until Governor Gianforte can offer an explanation for how the number of children in foster care was cut in half safely, the public should be skeptical that it represents a positive development.