Join the Effort
Help CAI end this practice. Momentum is building for reform across the country, but thousands of foster youth continue to have their benefits taken and used in a manner contrary to their best interests. Urgent efforts are still needed at local, state, and federal levels to end this practice. Click below to join the effort.
What is the issue?
Foster youth should benefit from their benefits. Disabled foster youth and those who have lost a parent constitute some of our nation’s most vulnerable children. Approximately 40,000-80,000 children and youth in foster care are eligible for or receiving Social Security disability, survivor, or other benefits, which can amount to over $900 per month. Federal law requires these benefits be used in the child’s best interest for unmet needs. For this subset of foster youth who face tremendous obstacles when they leave or age out of care, these assets can serve as a lifeline to cover housing, food, health care, and transportation.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of foster youth beneficiaries will never see a dollar of their money, or even know that someone has applied for their benefits. Most foster care agencies routinely screen and apply for benefits on behalf of youth. They then routinely request to have the benefit checks sent directly to them. After receiving the child’s check, foster care agencies almost uniformly intercept the full amount of the check to reimburse themselves for that child’s foster care.
This practice violates foster youths’ due process and property rights as well as federal law. A public agency taking disabled and orphaned foster youth’s assets behind their backs for their own, rather than the child’s best interest is immoral and predatory. Foster youth have no obligation to pay for their own care. Child protection agencies do. As stated by one youth, “I never thought that the system that was supposed to be helping me really was stealing from me the entire time.”
Media coverage and public awareness about this issue has soared since the release of a 2021 Pulitzer-recognized series by NPR and the Marshall Project. Other coverage including stories in the Philadelphia Inquirer, CBS News Chicago, Hawaii News Now, the Imprint, and The Hill have helped drive a wave of reform.
The Children’s Advocacy Institute, with the support of the Walter S. Johnson Foundation and other generous donors, is leading a multidimensional campaign to eradicate this practice nationwide. A well-established leader on this issue, CAI is leading reform efforts at the federal, state, and local levels to protect the rights and preserve the benefits of foster youth.
Most states are still actively engaged in the practice of charging vulnerable foster youth with a disability and those with a deceased parent for their own care, without notice. But this is changing.
To date, 40 states and jurisdictions have taken some form of action to preserve the federal Social Security benefits of foster youth (in calculating this total figure, states listed below are counted once regardless of multiple entries and cities are excluded if their state is separately listed):
Twelve states and jurisdictions have enacted reforms conserving all social security benefits of their foster youth, including Arizona, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, and Washington D.C.
Twenty-three states and jurisdictions have enacted partial reforms, including Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Utah, Virginia and Washington, as well as New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.
Six states have currently pending legislation, including Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
Thirteen states that recently introduced legislation or proposed executive action that was not enacted include Alaska (2026), Hawaii, Iowa (2025), Louisiana (2026), Maine (2026), Maryland (2026), Minnesota (2025), New York (2025), Oregon*(2025), Tennessee (2026), Texas (2025), Virginia (2026), and Wisconsin (2026). However, many of these states are expected to reintroduce their bills. *Oregon’s bill would be the first to provide a path for youth to retroactively recover their benefits.
Momentum is building for reform across the country, but thousands of foster youth continue to have their benefits taken and used in a manner contrary to their best interests. Urgent efforts are still needed at local, state, and federal levels to end this practice.
In 2021, Los Angeles County DCFS reported using $5.4 million in disability and survivor benefits of about 600 foster children to pay the cost of their own care.
5.3%
of foster youth receive disability or survivor benefits
Congressional Research Service, November 2021
24%
of children in foster care have special needs
Child Trends, December 2020
$10,970
annual average SSI disability benefit per youth
Learn More and Take Action
- Federal Law and Policy
- Policy Reforms
- Practice and Self-Help Tools
- Policy Advocacy Tools
- Litigation
- Resources
What is Your State Doing?
Foster Care or Foster Con? Preserving the Federal Benefits of America’s Most Vulnerable Children
April 17, 2024 - This report evaluates all fifty U.S. states and the District of Columbia with respect to their laws and policies relating to the protective preservation and management of foster youths’ federal benefits.
Lived Experience Advisors Tell Their Stories
Here lived experience advisor Marissa Pike tells her story in her testimony before the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities (September 26, 2023)
If foster care was a service I was being charged for, I want a refund.
Media Coverage On Use of Foster Youth SSI and Survivor Benefits
Federal Law and Policies On Use of Foster Youth SSI and Survivor Benefits
- 42 U.S. Code § 6729(a) establishes that all state foster care agencies are required to provide and pay for “foster care maintenance payments” “ on behalf of each child who has been removed from the home of a relative . . .” Foster care maintenance is defined in 42 U.S. Code § 675 as “payments to cover the cost of (and the cost of providing) food, clothing, shelter, [ ]. . .”
- 45 CFR § 75.306 explicitly prohibits agencies from using money other than state funds to pay the cost of care. The regulation prohibits the use of other (non-IV-E) federal funds for state costs.
- 42 U.S.C. § 675 requires child welfare agencies to develop individualized case plans for each child, focused on serving the best interests of foster children and specifically requiring the agency to help children in their future struggle for self-sufficiency. The entire Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood is intended to serve this purpose.
- 20 C.F.R. § 404.2021 articulates that Social Security Administration (SSA) abide by a preference list to guide appointment of a representative payee to manage, use, and conserve a child's funds. Foster care agencies are at the bottom of the list, yet are most often the only option identified, and nearly always selected by SSA to serve.
- 42 U.S.C. § 405(j); 20 C.F.R. § 404.2035(a) outlines obligations of representative payees for Social Security benefits and deems them fiduciaries, obligated to use SSI and OASDI funds for the beneficiary’s “use and benefit” and in a manner that is in the beneficiary’s best interest.
- Social Security Administration’s Program Operations Manual System GN 00602.001 states that a representative payee must exercise discretion for each child beneficiary and apply the benefits “in the best interests of the beneficiary….” Within this framework, representative payees are permitted to use a child's benefits to pay for current maintenance needs if they are not being provided for elsewhere. POMS GN 00602.001 explains “A payee must use benefits to provide for the beneficiary’s current needs such as food, clothing, housing, medical care and personal comfort items, or for reasonably foreseeable needs. If not needed for these purposes… the payee must conserve or invest benefits on behalf of the beneficiary…”) (emphasis added).
I never thought that the system that was supposed to be helping me really was stealing from me the entire time.
One Year of SSI/SSDI Benefits is Equivalent to:
9 months to 1 year of Childcare for a 2-4 year old
Demanding Change: Repairing Our Childcare system. Report by Child Care Aware 2022
2 years of books & supplies for college
Hanson, Melanie. “Average Cost of College & Tuition” EducationData.org, November 2023
4 years of SNAP benefits
USDA 2021 Data
10 months of rent for a one bedroom (national average)
Do you want more information? Do you have more information?
Email CAI at info@CAIChildLaw.org