Foster Care, The State, and $$$
Foster Care Agencies Take Millions of Dollars Owed to Kids. Most Children Have No Idea. By Eli Hager with Joseph Shapiro via The Marshall Project and NPR.
So, suffice to say: This is trash.
Full disclosure: I am a Court Appointed Special Advocate.
I am also a know-it-all, but this right now is about these foster kids. Lordy.
State foster care agencies collected more than $165 million from these children in 2018 alone, according to the most recent survey data from the research group Child Trends. And the number is likely much higher, according to Social Security Administration data for 10 states obtained by a member of Congress and shared with The Marshall Project and NPR.
In New York, California and a handful of other states, foster care is run by counties, many of which also take this money, our reporting shows.
Nationwide, foster care agencies are funded through a complicated web of federal and state grants and subsidies, paid for by taxpayers. Children’s Social Security benefits were not intended to be one of those funding streams, according to federal law.
In a Marshall Project/NPR survey of all 50 state child services agencies, most pointed out that it is legal for them to apply to the Social Security Administration to become the financial representative for foster children’s benefits — though federal regulations state that a parent, foster parent, relative or family friend is preferred. Almost all said they take kids’ money as reimbursement for the cost of foster care, putting the funds in individual accounts to recoup what the state has paid for each child’s room and board.
In interviews, several officials also said that children in foster care are not mature enough to make good financial choices on their own, and that their family members or foster parents may have ill intentions and pocket the cash themselves.
Clinton Bennett, a spokesman for Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services, said the agency — like any parent — uses kids’ funds to pay for their daily expenses, such as shelter and food, rather than just giving them cash. Bennett added that due to confidentiality laws, he could not comment on individual cases like Hunter’s.
The state of Alaska is currently facing a landmark class-action lawsuit over this practice that may reach the state supreme court later this year.
But to youth advocates, the fact that many agencies spend children’s money on children’s services doesn’t make it better. That means kids are being made to pay for their own foster care — a public service that federal law and laws in all 50 states require the government to pay for.
Money may not solve all your problems, but it sure will solve a lot of them, especially when you have literally nothing else, like some of these foster kids who have aged out of the system.
This article describes how the state hires private companies, at a flat fee rate, to file for these Social Security benefits. And ya know what?? That’s fine! Plenty of businesses, as well as the government, contracts out some work and projects. Social workers/caseworkers are super burdened and busy, and if contracting out work like this (finding benefits for individual kids) helps with the load, heck yes! It’s where the money is going is the problem - or isn’t going, as it were. So, task these same private companies to set up a protected trust for the kid instead of siphoning the money in to state coffers. One type of bank account to another. Of course, it’s not so easy to flip a switch like that, but DAMN, YA’LL. It’s not set up that way, because there was never an intent to get this money to these kids. It’s greed, and it’s despicable. It’s not the kid’s fault for being in foster care in the first place. So many circumstances occur before foster care happens. So why penalize them by taking money that is truly theirs and the state wouldn’t have to take if the state didn’t have the money and resources to pay an entity to retrieve these benefits supposedly on the kids’ behalves??? It’s wrong and I hope these kids in Alaska take the State for a ride with their class action suit.
Please please please consider donating to your local CASA program. I’ve seen with my own eyes the power of a CASA in a kid’s life.
PS: I’m usually going to encourage donating $ to non-profits you care about, for sometimes that is truly more impactful, and, some volunteer work is just not for everyone!
