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Under the final rule, these eligible uses are available to impacted households or classes of <br />households. <br />Public Comment: Child Welfare: While the interim final rule noted that certain types of <br />assistance, particularly around child development and parenting, were eligible for child welfare - <br />involved families, Treasury has received some recipient questions asking whether financial, <br />educational, housing, or other supports and services are eligible uses for foster youth, including <br />those aging out of the system, and child welfare -involved families. Other commenters asked <br />about whether funding for kinship care would be eligible. <br />Background: Child Welfare: The COVID-19 pandemic placed meaningful strain on the <br />child welfare and foster care system. Court hearings were delayed,146 essential mental health care <br />was shifted to a virtual environment, and attendance and performance in school among foster <br />children dropped sharply.147 Additionally, there was a nationwide rise of new children entering <br />the foster care system and many states placed temporary moratoria on children aging out of the <br />foster care system.148 As these temporary moratoria expire, additional support will be needed to <br />assist children exiting the system. <br />Additionally, financial and material hardship are causal factors in the increase of new <br />children entering the foster care system, whether through loss of a caregiver, domestic <br />violence,149 or other associated costs of the pandemic. Therefore, support to decrease these <br />146 National Conference of State Legislatures, Criminal Justice System Responses to COVID-19 (November 16, <br />2020), https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal justice/criminal justice-and-covid-19.aspx. <br />147 John Burton Advocates for Youth, The Cumulative Impact of the Pandemic on Youth Who Have <br />Been in Foster Care or Homeless (May 2020) https://jbay.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/JBAY-COVID-19- <br />Impact.pdf. <br />148 John Kelly, Next Week, Thousands of Foster Youth Will Age Out on the Same Day (September 21, 2021), <br />https://imprintnews.org/subscriber-content/thousands-of-foster-youth-will-age-out-on-the-same-day/59006. <br />149 Conrad-Hiebner, Aislinn, and Elizabeth Byram, The Temporal Impact of Economic Insecurity on Child <br />Maltreatment: A Systematic Review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, vol. 21, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 157-178, <br />doi:10.1177/1524838018756122. <br />99 <br />