Foster Care Transportation Services in 2027: Who Pays and How to Win Child Welfare Ride Contracts

Which foster care rides exist and who pays for each

A child in foster care needs the rides most children get from a parent: to visits with parents and siblings, to the school they attended before the move, to court, to a new placement, and to the doctor. Each kind of ride has its own payer, and the payer decides who you sell to. Medicaid pays for medical rides, the school district and the child welfare agency share school rides, and the agency pays for visits, court, and moves.

Ride	Who usually pays	How a company gets the work
Doctor, dentist, therapy	The child’s Medicaid plan	Join the plan’s broker or ride network
School of origin	The school district and child welfare agency	A district or agency contract, often a bid
Family and sibling visits	The child welfare agency	An agency contract or a visitation provider
Court, placement moves, other case plan trips	The child welfare agency	Agency referrals or a transportation contract

Medical rides go through Medicaid

A child who receives federal Title IV-E foster care maintenance payments is treated as eligible for Medicaid under 42 U.S.C. 673(b), and federal rule 42 CFR 431.53 requires every state to ensure necessary rides for its members. So a foster child’s checkup or therapy visit is an ordinary NEMT trip, booked through the plan.

Several states run one plan for these children. Arizona’s child welfare policy tells caseworkers to call Mercy Care’s DCS Comprehensive Health Plan when a caregiver cannot drive the child to a medical or dental visit (see Mercy Care). Texas children in state conservatorship are in STAR Health, which one statewide plan runs (Superior HealthPlan). In North Carolina’s foster care plan, Healthy Blue Care Together, county social services staff, foster parents, and caretakers book a child’s rides through Modivcare (fact sheet, December 2025; see Healthy Blue).

Missouri’s Show Me Healthy Kids plan, which has covered children in Children’s Division custody since July 1, 2022, goes further. As of October 2026, its ride benefit adds family visits, court appointments, and child welfare visits and meetings, booked through its ride broker (MTM Health in Missouri). In Missouri, a broker network is the way into visit rides.

Everything else comes from the agency or the school

Federal foster care maintenance payments may cover reasonable travel to the child’s home for visits and reasonable travel to stay in the school the child attended at placement (42 U.S.C. 675(4)(A)). The agency decides what counts as reasonable. The November 2024 federal guidance calls these payments the main federal money for extra school of origin ride costs, and adds that those costs are also allowable Title IV-E administrative costs.

How school of origin rides are paid for

Federal law requires each school district that takes Title I money to work with the child welfare agency on written procedures for how rides to the school of origin are provided, arranged, and paid for, for as long as the child is in foster care (20 U.S.C. 6312(c)(5)). The deadline for those procedures was December 10, 2016. The rides must come promptly and in a cost-effective way. If they cost extra, the agency reimburses the district, the district pays, or the two share the cost.

The joint Education and Health and Human Services guidance from November 2024 explains what that means for a ride company:

• Agencies try cheap options first. These include a school bus stop near the existing route, public transit for older students, foster or birth parents who can drive, and routes that already cross district lines. Your trips are the ones none of those can cover.
• A dedicated ride is the extra cost. When a district uses a private vehicle or a transportation company for one student, the difference between that cost and its usual cost per student is the additional cost the written procedures must cover.
• Speed matters. The guidance gives within three business days of finishing the best interest decision as an example of providing rides without undue delay.
• Disputes do not stop school. The district must keep the student in the school of origin while any dispute is resolved.
• Rides can outlast foster care. The rules stop when the child leaves foster care, but districts are encouraged to keep the ride going through the end of that school year.

Los Angeles County shows the scale. Its Department of Children and Family Services released an invitation for bids on November 16, 2023 and awarded the contract to the lowest responsive bidder for July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025, with two one-year options through June 30, 2027. A board letter dated April 29, 2025 asked to raise the yearly maximum from $4 million to $10 million, and to $30 million over three years, because referrals had grown. The 75 local school agencies on its agreement pay half of the private ride costs.

When a district buys these rides itself, the special needs student transportation guide covers how districts bid student routes, and the vehicles and paperwork they ask for.

Family visit and case plan rides

Visits are steady work. New Jersey’s child protection policy calls for weekly visits between children in placement and their families, and its July 3, 2024 request for proposals for Supportive Visitation Services shows how one state buys the rides.

• Rides are bundled with supervision. The new model replaced all of the state’s existing cost reimbursement and vendor visitation contracts. It made $18,959,998 available for October 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025, across 9 regions, with one award per region.
• Visitation aides drive and supervise. Each aide drives children or parents to visits, supervises visits as needed, and documents each ride. Aides need a valid New Jersey license, a clean driver’s abstract, and a year of experience with children and families, or 30 college credits that include 12 in the behavioral sciences.
• Rides stay within an hour. Awarded agencies drive within their region and from areas within one hour one way of the visit.
• The volume is large. The regional tables estimated about 82,000 transportation hours across the nine regions.
• Medicaid does not pay for the rides. New Jersey bills Medicaid for parts of the visit service, but lists transportation for children and caregivers as not covered.
• The winners were social service and counseling agencies. New Jersey announced awards on September 17, 2024, and its question and answer document says every proposed subcontract must be submitted for review and approval.

Arizona works differently. Its Department of Child Safety shares routine rides with foster caregivers as the case plan says, and caseworkers can submit a transportation referral when a caregiver cannot drive (policy effective March 5, 2021). For a child traveling alone with a commercial transportation company, the caseworker gives the company a written affidavit with the child’s identification, the caseworker’s and supervisor’s phone numbers, the child’s legal status, the destination, who will meet the child, who is responsible for medical care, and an emergency contact.

What child welfare ride contracts require beyond NEMT

Agency contracts add rules written for children. Los Angeles County’s 2023 bid for school of origin rides shows what an agency can ask for:

• Experience and an office. Bidders needed three years of fixed-route transportation for government or social services agencies within the last five, an office in the county by the contract start, and enrollment in the California DMV Employer Pull Notice program for every driver.
• Fingerprints. Staff in positions the county marks as sensitive must pass a background investigation through fingerprints sent to the California Department of Justice, with state, local, and federal review, at the contractor’s cost. No driver may have a DUI on their record. The driver background check guide covers the basics behind these checks.
• Training. Everyone with direct contact with children completes training on child abuse, sexual harassment, trauma-informed care, and cultural competency. For the reporting duty itself, see are NEMT drivers mandatory reporters.
• Car seats. Each vehicle carries the right car or booster seat for the child referred, meeting federal motor vehicle safety standards, and the company records height and weight for children under 8. New Jersey’s visitation contracts add a car seat course built with the state’s Division of Highway Traffic Safety. State seat laws are in the child passengers guide.
• Handoffs and waiting. On request, drivers park and walk the child to school staff or to an adult at home. They wait at least 15 minutes, and if the child cannot be found, they call the caseworker, child, and caregiver before leaving.
• Insurance. General liability of $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate with the county as additional insured, $2 million auto liability per accident, and $2 million of sexual misconduct liability per claim. New Jersey asked for general liability of $1 million per occurrence and $3 million aggregate, and $2 million auto. Compare these with your policy using the insurance requirements guide and the entry on abuse and molestation coverage.
• Technology. The county wanted an electronic referral system and $10 million of technology errors and omissions coverage, terms a small van company may only meet as a subcontractor.

Pennsylvania adds a state law to check. Employees of child-care services, a term that includes other child-care services provided under a contract with a county social services agency, need a state police record check, a child abuse history certification, and an FBI fingerprint check before they start, renewed every 60 months (23 Pa.C.S. 6344 and 6344.4). As of October 1, 2026, the fingerprint fee is $27.95 for an employee. If you contract with a county children and youth agency, ask whether it treats your drivers this way.

How foster care ride contracts pay

Agency contracts pay differently from Medicaid trips, so read the pricing sheet before you decide to bid.

• Per ride and per mile. Los Angeles County set a $30 initiation fee for each ride and asked bidders for one fixed price per mile. The lowest price scored highest.
• Changes and cancellations. Changes made more than 2 hours before pickup cost the county nothing. For later changes, the company recovers the cost of the ride but waives its fees.
• No picking and choosing. The company must accept every referral, and three refusals can end the contract.
• Staff hours, not trips. New Jersey funds each visitation agency through one contract, measures the work in visitation and transportation hours, and expects each full-time aide to deliver 1,600 hours of supervised visits or driving a year. A ride company working under one of those agencies is paid by the agency on whatever terms its subcontract sets.

How to get foster care ride work, step by step

1. Enroll for the medical rides first. Join the broker or ride network for your state’s foster care plan. Those trips are steady and use the screening you already have.
2. Find out who buys the other rides. In some states the state child welfare agency contracts for them, in others the county does. Call the agency’s contracts office, ask how it buys rides today, and get on its vendor list. The government contracts guide shows where bids are posted.
3. Call the school districts near you. Ask each district’s foster care point of contact how its written procedures handle rides that need a dedicated vehicle, and whether it buys them alone or through a county agreement like Los Angeles’s.
4. Finish screening before you bid. Run the fingerprint and registry checks your state requires for every driver and aide, enroll in your state’s driving record monitoring if it has one, and track renewal dates.
5. Train and equip for children. Put car seat and mandated reporter training on every driver’s record, and carry seats for the ages you serve.
6. Get insurance quotes early. Ask your agent to quote the limits in the agency’s sample contract, including sexual misconduct coverage, before the bid is due.
7. Price per mile and per ride. Know your cost per mile, including the empty miles to and from schools across district lines, and price every line the bid asks for.
8. Partner where rides are bundled. If your state buys visits as one service, or the contract asks for technology you do not have, offer to drive for the agency that wins, under a subcontract the agency approves.