Foster care transportation contracts: visitation rides, school-of-origin routes, and child safety checks

Child welfare work gives a ride company two kinds of contracts. The agency that has custody of a child buys rides to family visits, appointments, and court, and the child’s school district, together with that agency, buys the daily ride that keeps the child in the school they attended when they were placed. Public agencies buy both through solicitations with long lists of driver checks, and both have federal money behind them. The rules for carrying children, from car seat laws to escort and consent rules, are in children on NEMT rides; this page covers winning and pricing the contracts.

Who buys foster care rides

Three buyers pay for rides for a child in foster care, and each pays for different trips:

• The child welfare agency pays for family time (supervised visits with parents and siblings), case plan appointments, court, and sometimes rides for the parents themselves. In South Dakota, the Black Hills area alone had 584 children in state custody on February 28, 2026, up from 563 a year earlier, and the area’s office arranges family time for almost 500 children a month.
• The school district, together with the agency, pays for school-of-origin rides. The district side is covered in school transportation for students with disabilities.
• Medicaid pays for medical rides. Under 42 U.S.C. 673(b), a child receiving Title IV-E foster care maintenance payments is treated for Medicaid purposes as a recipient of the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, so these children are Medicaid eligible and book medical trips through the state’s ride program, including the EPSDT ride help owed to children.

How federal money reaches the ride

Federal foster care money can pay for both the visit ride and the school ride. Under 42 U.S.C. 675(4)(A), the foster care maintenance payment covers, among other costs, reasonable travel to the child’s home for visitation and reasonable travel for the child to remain in the school they were enrolled in at placement.

For school rides, federal education law adds a duty on the district. Under 20 U.S.C. 6312(c)(5)(B), every district receiving Title I money must have written procedures, built with the child welfare agency, that say how these rides are provided, arranged, and funded. The rides must be prompt and cost-effective. When they cost more than the district’s usual transportation, the district provides them if the agency agrees to reimburse it, the district agrees to pay, or the two split it.

Joint guidance from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, issued November 2024, fills in the details a vendor needs:

• Speed. Procedures should be detailed enough for the ride to start without undue delay, for example within three business days after the decision that staying in the old school is in the child’s best interest.
• Low-cost options get a look first. The guidance suggests checking a nearby stop on the old school’s bus route, public transit for students old enough to use it, rides from foster or birth parents, and bus routes near the foster home that cross into the old district. A transportation company is the ride for children those options don’t reach.
• What “additional cost” means. It is the difference between what the district would spend to take the student to their assigned school and the cost of the school-of-origin ride.
• Who pays the federal share. Title IV-E is the main federal source for that additional cost when the student is eligible for Title IV-E payments, and school-of-origin transportation is also an allowable Title IV-E administrative cost. The agency pays the non-federal share.

Visitation rides: what South Dakota’s 2026 solicitation asked for

South Dakota’s RFP 19494, published February 26, 2026 with proposals due April 2, 2026, shows what an agency wants from a visitation transporter. It bought supervised family time and transportation in Rapid City for children in state custody and their parents, to visits and to educational, medical, and mental health appointments. In state fiscal year 2025, the vendor at the time transported for about 1,100 visits or appointments and averaged 11,730 miles a month.

The requirements for the transportation half:

• Vehicles and seats. Vehicles in good repair with child restraints. The state’s answers to bidders’ questions made the provider responsible for age- and weight-appropriate seats, including infant and booster seats, used under South Dakota’s child restraint law (SDCL chapter 32-37) with staff trained to install them.
• Hours. Rides outside the normal business day, including evenings and weekends.
• Screening. Criminal background checks and Central Registry checks completed before an employee starts.
• Insurance. Business auto liability of at least $1 million per accident, with coverage for hired and non-owned vehicles too, plus $1 million general liability, $1 million professional liability, and workers’ compensation.
• Monthly report. Clients transported, time spent transporting or supervising, the name of each person carried, miles, and the total due for mileage and time.

Two answers from the state’s question-and-answer addendum matter for a ride company. The state said it would consider a proposal for transportation alone, even though the request bundled it with running a visit center. And it said the transporter is paid an hourly rate plus mileage, with any wait time included in the hourly rate.

School-of-origin routes: what Los Angeles County asked for

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services invitation for bids for school-of-origin transportation (proposals due January 4, 2024, for a one-year contract starting July 1, 2024 with two one-year options) is a demanding example of the daily route contract. Among its minimum requirements:

• Experience. At least three years, within the past five, running fixed routes for public or social services agencies.
• Driver records. Enrollment in California’s DMV Employer Pull Notice program to keep track of each driver’s record, and no driver with a DUI on record.
• Screening and training. Fingerprint checks through LiveScan, a signed criminal record statement, and training in cultural competency, trauma-informed care, sexual harassment prevention, and mandated child abuse reporting.
• Speed. A referral that arrives before 2 p.m. gets its first ride the next calendar day, with emailed confirmation to the caseworker, caregiver, and school by 4 p.m. on the business day before rides begin.
• Every referral. The contractor accepts every referral the county sends and could be terminated after three refusals.
• Handoffs. Arrival 20 minutes before school starts, a walk-in handoff to school staff or an adult at home when the referral asks for one, and at least 15 minutes of searching and calling before leaving a pickup without the child.

Pricing was simple and competitive. The county fixed a $30 initiation fee per ride, bidders entered a fixed fee per mile, and the lowest price earned the most points. Schedule changes made more than two hours before pickup cost nothing; for later changes, the contractor could still bill for the trip itself but had to waive the initiation fee.

Pricing a foster care bid

Price each model from your own costs, because the solicitation fixes the structure and you fill in the number. Two examples with assumed figures:

• Per-mile school route (Los Angeles structure). A child placed 12 miles from their school rides twice a day. At an assumed bid of $2.75 a mile, each one-way ride pays $30 plus $33.00, or $63.00, and a school day pays $126. Check that your per-mile bid covers the empty miles to the first pickup and back from the last drop-off, which the per-mile fee pays nothing for.
• Hourly visit ride (South Dakota structure). A driver collects a child, waits through a one-hour visit, and returns the child, taking three hours and 50 miles in all. At an assumed $42 an hour and an assumed $0.70 a mile, the ride bills $126 plus $35, or $161.

In a cost proposal like South Dakota’s, the rates you submit stay in force for the contract period, adjusted only by inflation increases the legislature grants, so build in what wages and insurance will cost in the contract’s last year. The government contracts guide covers registering and responding to public solicitations.

Safety checks to have ready before you bid

Have the screening in place before the proposal, not after the award, since both solicitations made the checks a condition of putting staff on the work. The children on NEMT rides guide covers seat laws and handoffs in more depth.

1. Fingerprint background checks through the state’s process; see fingerprint background checks for drivers.
2. Child abuse registry checks, where the state keeps a registry and allows employer requests.
3. Driving record monitoring, not a one-time pull.
4. Car seats and boosters for every age and weight you will carry, and drivers trained to install them.
5. Training in recognizing and reporting child abuse, plus any trauma-informed care course the agency names.
6. Written handoff rules: who may receive the child at school and at home, and what the driver does when no one is there.

Keeping child welfare routes on schedule in HealthRide

School-of-origin routes repeat every school day, and visit rides come with an escort, a handoff, and a mileage-and-time invoice. In HealthRide, each child’s route is scheduled once with recurring trips, an escort rides on the same trip, signatures are captured on screen at the handoff, and caregivers can follow the van live from a text link.