Florida's child welfare system is not one office but a chain: a report is investigated, a case is opened where it needs to be, services are arranged through community-based care agencies, and the courts oversee anything that removes a child from home.
The pages here describe the parts of that chain most people actually encounter — adoption from foster care, becoming a licensed foster parent, and choosing child care. This page is a plain-language guide. Cases, licences and eligibility decisions are handled by the State of Florida through its own official channels.
The stated aim of the system is that children stay safely at home wherever that is possible. In practice most cases never involve removal: they involve in-home services, parenting support, substance use treatment or help with housing.
Removal is meant to be the exception, used when a child cannot be kept safe at home even with services in place, and it is reviewed by a court rather than decided by an agency alone.
Placement with relatives is preferred over placement with strangers, and siblings are kept together where it can be managed. A licensed foster home is used when neither is available.
Every case has a permanency goal from the start — usually reunification with the parents, and adoption or permanent guardianship where reunification is ruled out. That goal is what the case plan is built around.
The adoption page explains how children in foster care are matched with families and what the process asks of applicants. The foster parenting page covers licensing. The child care page explains what a licence means when you are choosing care for a young child.