New York City officers introduced the town will not take Social Security checks from children to pay for foster care.
Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
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Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
New York City officers introduced the town will not take Social Security checks from children to pay for foster care.
Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
Child welfare officers in New York City say they will stop collecting all the Social Security checks from children in foster care and utilizing that money to cowl the prices of their care, altering a observe criticized by advocates for children. And these advocates say they hope New York’s motion turns into a mannequin for companies throughout the nation.
Jess Dannhauser, commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, New York City’s child protection agency, says quickly the Social Security money will be positioned in financial savings accounts that children can entry after they depart foster care–both after they return to household, are adopted or age-out of foster care between ages 18 and 24.
“This is their money,” Dannhauser says, “and they deserve to use it as they see fit.”
NPR and The Marshall Project reported last year on the widespread observe of taking the Social Security checks of foster youth. Child welfare companies, in 49 states and the District of Columbia, take the profit checks.
Some companies, like in New York City, have employees, and even rent personal corporations, to determine which children to join that income, then money the checks, typically with out telling the kid in foster care or their household.
Child welfare companies justify the observe as a option to reimburse themselves for the meals, shelter and different issues that foster care gives. But different children in foster care usually are not anticipated to pay for this service–which is required by state and federal legal guidelines–with their very own assets.
Children get Social Security checks as a result of they’re entitled to them, by regulation, as a result of they or a mother or father are disabled or as a result of a mother or father has died. It’s estimated that 10 to 20 p.c of children in foster care are eligible for these advantages.
Melanie Perez was 12 years previous when she went into foster care. She left foster care as soon as, when she was 18, to attempt to make it on her personal. But returned when she was 19.
“For me, I don’t have my parent. My Mom (is) deceased,” she stated. “When I left here at 18, I didn’t have a penny in my bag.”
Not having money, particularly in a spot as costly as New York City, is one cause she returned to foster care, Perez stated.
Now 21 and the mom of a one-year-old daughter, she is aware of that ultimately she’ll want to go away foster care for good. In New York City, she will keep along with her daughter till she’s 24.
Just a few years in the past, when Perez was first leaving foster care, she was informed that, due to her numerous disabilities, Social Security had been sending her a month-to-month profit verify. It totaled a number of hundred {dollars} a month.
But the town foster care company was cashing it.
“It’s not OK for them to take something that is not theirs,” stated Perez.
“I want to use the money to take care of my child,” she says of her advantages verify. “So it will help me be independent. It will help me pay some of my college tuitions, hopefully.”
“This is their money,” says Jess Dannhauser, commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, of foster children’s social safety advantages. “And they deserve to use it as they see fit.”
New York City Administration for Children’s Services
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New York City Administration for Children’s Services
“This is their money,” says Jess Dannhauser, commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, of foster children’s social safety advantages. “And they deserve to use it as they see fit.”
New York City Administration for Children’s Services
Dannhauser says that is precisely why his company is altering its coverage. This summer season, it will begin placing these Social Security checks into financial savings accounts for the youth.
Dannhauser says the company will educate youth in foster care how one can save. The money then can be utilized, he says, to pay for an condo, for faculty or technical faculty or for different issues somebody leaving foster care must succeed. “Those resources can mean the difference between a really rocky start to that transition or one that they really have a foundation to launch from,” he stated.
Because they take care of poverty, interrupted training and trauma, children in foster care face lengthy odds after they depart care. They have elevated rates of unemployment, homelessness and time in jail or prison. By one estimate, only 3 to 4 percent will graduate from a four-year college.
After the NPR and Marshall Project tales final 12 months, advocates for children–together with Lawyers for Children, which represents Perez–tried to seek out out if New York City was among the many locations that took Social Security advantages from children in foster care. They found that ACS had staff who signed up youth for these checks – however that the company was contemplating a change to that observe.
Dannhauser took over ACS in January, appointed by New York’s new mayor, Eric Adams. The coverage change on Social Security was introduced by his predecessor, David Hansell, as he left workplace in late December. Hansell known as setting apart these Social Security advantages “the right thing to do.”
For a toddler who will get advantages as a result of they have been orphaned, the Social Security “survivors benefits” that get put aside will add as much as a number of thousand {dollars} a 12 months.
For a toddler who’s disabled or has a disabled mother or father, the plan is to place apart two thousand {dollars}. That’s the federal “asset limit” for somebody who receives these Social Security advantages, known as Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
Unlike SSI advantages, there is no such thing as a restrict on how a lot a toddler can preserve in the event that they obtain advantages as a result of a mother or father has died.
Amy Harfeld, nationwide coverage director for the Children’s Advocacy Institute, says there are methods New York might arrange particular accounts and save greater than the 2 thousand {dollars} of SSI advantages. It takes time and employees and authorized work, although.
Maryland is the one state that at present places a few of that Social Security money into financial savings accounts–beginning when a foster youth is 14. It additionally units up accounts in order that greater than $2,000 may be saved.
Still, Harfeld says New York City’s transfer is ground-breaking and one which she hopes different state, county and metropolis welfare companies will observe. “What New York City is doing is courageous,” she argues, “because they’ve basically said: We have been doing this thing that is unethical and that doesn’t serve the kids that we are the legal parents of. And so even though we’ve become accustomed to taking this money, it’s not the right thing to do. And we’re going to stop doing it.”
In Philadelphia, City Councilmember Helen Gym is anticipated to introduce laws this month to stop the observe, after the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in December that the town took $5 million in advantages from children in foster care between 2016 to 2020.
Currently, there may be laws pending in Nebraska, Texas, Minnesota and Illinois to stop taking Social Security profit checks from children in foster care.
