What Foster411 is
Georgia's foster care rules are public — but they live in places built for auditors, not for a foster parent with a question at 11pm. The child welfare policy manual (PAMMS), the DHS financial manuals, and the Georgia Code (O.C.G.A.) answer almost everything; they just don't answer it in a way a stressed family on a phone can use.
Foster411 is the plain-English layer between those manuals and the questions real families actually ask: How much is the per diem, and when does it arrive? Can my foster child sleep over at a friend's house? What happens in the first 72 hours? We read the policy, say what it means in ordinary words, and link you to the official source so you can check our work.
The site is community-built and free. We are not affiliated with Georgia DFCS or any placement agency — we don't make policy, we don't decide cases, and nothing here is legal, tax, or medical advice. We summarize; the official sources decide.
How we vet every fact
One rule sits under everything: official sources only. Before a rate, rule, phone number, or deadline goes on this site, it gets checked against the state's own publications — pamms.dhs.ga.gov (the DFCS policy manual), ffs.dhs.ga.gov (the DHS financial manuals), fostergeorgia.com (the state's foster and adopt site), and the O.C.G.A. (Georgia's statutes). Advocacy groups, Facebook posts, and national roundups can point us toward a question, but they never count as verification.
Every claim we check ends up with one of three verdicts:
- Confirmed — it matched an official source. It's published with a verified date and a link to that source.
- Corrected — the official source said something different from what circulates in the community. We publish the corrected version and log what changed.
- Unverifiable — the state doesn't publish it anywhere we can find. We say so on the page, in a labeled caution box, and add the question to a running checklist of things to ask the agency directly. We do not fill the gap with a plausible guess — a visible gap builds more trust than a confident wrong number.
Verification isn't a one-time event. Facts go stale — rates change at the fiscal year, contracts change hands, phone numbers churn. So dated facts sit on a re-check calendar, and the moment a page is past its review date it's flagged as stale on the page itself, not quietly left up looking fresh.
| What we re-check | How often |
|---|---|
| Per diem rates & clothing allowances | Every July 1 (rates change at the state fiscal year) |
| Georgia Families 360° administrator | Monthly, until the managed-care transition lands |
| Foster child donation tax credit caps | Every January |
| Organization phone numbers | Every 6 months |
Re-check calendar as of July 2026. It grows as the site does.
An honest note about how checking works
Some things Georgia simply doesn't publish — as of mid-2026, for example, there is no public per diem rate table anywhere online. Where that's true, the page says so plainly, and the question goes to the state office that can answer it. Being upfront about what we couldn't verify is as much a part of the method as citing what we could.
How to read the badges
Honesty is a component here — literally. These marks appear next to facts across the site, and they all mean something specific:
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Verified Jul 1, 2026
Verified badge. We checked this fact against an official source on that date. It tells you when we last looked — not that nothing has changed since. A fact without a date is a bug, and we treat it like one.
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Re-verification due
Stale flag. This fact is past its scheduled re-check and we haven't confirmed it yet. It was accurate when verified, but treat it with extra caution and confirm before you rely on it. Stale states are shown, never hidden.
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Caution / unverified
Labeled uncertainty. A peach caution box means the state doesn't publish this, the number is a placeholder, or the situation is actively changing. It's how we publish honestly instead of guessing — never buried in body text.
The part you should actually read
Policy changes faster than any website, and your case has details we can't see. So: always confirm specifics with your case manager or agency before acting on them. Use this site to walk into that conversation knowing what to ask and where the rule lives — that's the job it's built for. The verified date tells you when we last checked; your case manager tells you what's true for your child, today.
Spot something wrong or stale?
Telling us about an outdated number or a broken listing is the single most useful thing a reader can do — it goes straight onto the re-verification list.