The Child Welfare Information Gateway is the congressionally mandated and funded information service of the United States Children's Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, United States Department of Health and Human Services.
In the early days of these federal clearinghouses, services consisted primarily of gathering print resources in a central library located in Northern Virginia.
Responses to child welfare-related inquiries were provided via telephone, and publications were mailed via the postal service upon request.
Early compendiums of national adoption resources and state child welfare laws were collected in binders.
More recently, the clearinghouses and now Information Gateway have increasingly used electronic databases and the Internet to provide services, including access to electronic copies of publications; searchable databases of state statutes, foster care organizations, and adoption resources; and interactive online learning tools.