From Newsweek:
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent letters to 39 governors on Thursday calling for an end to the diversion of foster youths’ earned Social Security survivor benefits.
The ACF said in a press release that state welfare agencies often intercept federal benefits, such as Social Security survivor benefits earned through a deceased parent’s lifetime contributions, that are intended for a child in foster care. The welfare agencies reimburse their own costs using these funds.
The ACF sent letters to governors who allow this practice and said it plans to work with states to end it. …
3 comments:
A broken clock is right twice a day. ⏰
I thought the policy made sense. If a child is living with a surviving parent, the money is usually sent to the parent and most of the time completely used up going for the child's share of rent, utilities , food, transportation, etc. If the new plan is to save the money for the foster kids and give them all of their benefits when they leave foster care it puts the cost of raising the kids entirely on the tax payers.
The only thing is that, as bad as children's services are in some states, the only thing those states are worse at is trust fund retention and accounting for children in child services custody.
In our state, DCFS routinely lost track of trust funds for kids that had aged out of the system. And, even when they found them, they were slow as Christmas about releasing the money. I once spent almost 4 months trying to get $18,000 out of them in my state on behalf of a girl that had aged out of the system and was homeless.
It'll be the next big scandal at some point in the future, mark my words.
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