During the first Trump administration, former associate commissioner of the U.S. Children’s Bureau Jerry Milner made it a priority to include young people who had been impacted by the child welfare system in the agency’s grantmaking. The agency developed a series of grants to states and organizations that required the engagement and inclusion of former foster youth, and to compensate them for that participation. 

Among the ventures that incorporated lived experience into grants and contracts that were developed by the first Trump team: Community Collaborations to Strengthen and Preserve Families, the Quality Improvement Center on Family-Centered Reunification, the Quality Improvement Center on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency, Family Support Through Primary Prevention Demonstration Sites, and Improving Child Welfare Through Investing in Families.

“At that time, the word ‘inclusion’ had not become politicized and had the simple, commonsense meaning of promoting personal agency and self-determination,” said Milner. “To me, it meant and continues to mean people should not just have a say in what government can do to them, but an active role in shaping what and how it can show up in their lives.”

Times have changed, and quickly. These paid opportunities to advise on the work of federal contractors seems to be very much in limbo now, following the slate of executive actions taken by Trump in the early weeks of his second tenure in the White House. Cancelled contracts, a funding freeze and the unwinding of Biden’s decrees on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have left federal contractors and the young people they work with uncertain if their projects will continue. 

Virtually nobody will speak about this publicly, given the atmosphere around federal funding right now. But documents shared with Youth Services Insider, and conversations with people involved with federal child welfare work, suggest a tumultuous time for former foster youth relying on their work on federal projects to make ends meet. 

In late January, one of the initiatives started by the first Trump team sent notice to all of its lived-expert advisors that a funding freeze announced by Trump meant a halt to all work and invoicing. The next day, the freeze was rescinded, and everyone was notified that the project was back online. They were advised to not speak at all in public about the work, which is consistent with a current agency-wide halt on external communications at the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Still, the two days of tumult left at least one young advisor on the project feeling precarious. They told Youth Services Insider that they left other work to focus fully on this contract, and were now very nervous that the grant will get frozen or cancelled eventually. 

Those fears are no doubt bolstered by the fact that one at least one child welfare project has already been cancelled in the first year of a planned five-year grant. Another federal initiative, this one launched by the Biden administration, decided after some conversations with the current Children’s Bureau staff that it needed to end its advisory board. An email on the topic obtained by Youth Services Inside makes clear why: the Trump executive order rolling back Biden’s action on racial justice and equity.  

Trump’s order, issued on the day of his inauguration, orders the rollback of any DEI work in the federal government. That concludes, per the order, an end to “equity-related grants or contracts; and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees.”

The email suspending the advisory board for the kinship work notes that the project “would need to cease the advisory group, any conversations pertaining to DEI (in our meetings) and any report submission that has DEI component.”

To be clear: Youth Services Insider has yet to see any official communication from the Children’s Bureau or elsewhere in government saying that the lived experience components of grants are considered to be DEI. But the aforementioned communication suggests there is a fear, perhaps even an expectation, that it’s coming. 

So too for organizations working on subject matter specifically about equity, such as the eight programs working on federal grants called Field-Initiated Approaches to Addressing Racial Bias and Inequity in Child Welfare. A leader involved with one of those grants told Youth Services Insider that they have not yet gotten official guidance from Children’s Bureau, but are bracing for an early end to what was supposed to be a five year.

“We anticipate it’ll go away, and we’re preparing for that,” the source said. 

Milner said it is “unimaginable” to him that the second Trump administration would intentionally roll back efforts to include former foster youth and others with lived experience in federal work. He noted that during his time in the first administration, he was allowed to hire people impacted by foster care to advise him directly at the Children’s Bureau, “and their impact was immeasurable.”

“If this administration is serious about turning the government over to the people, we should have the people most affected by government action involved in shaping what it does,” said Milner. “Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.”