![]() Many have mental health or substance abuse problems. Of parents who get billed for foster care: A disproportionate number - 57% in California, for example - are people of color. This is a form of child support that targets both mothers and what family courts call "non-custodial" fathers - unlike the far more common kind that is charged mostly to those fathers. The result is that those struggling parents get big bills - NPR saw charges from $25 to more than $1,000 a month - that weigh them down in debt and make it harder to normalize their lives and their children's lives. President Ronald Reagan signs legislation providing for the mandatory withholding of wages from parents delinquent in child support payments, as well as settling rules about foster care repayment, in 1984. Among the costs the federal funding pays for: shelter, food and clothing case planning and the training of foster parents. That law tells state child welfare agencies to make it their focus to preserve families and help struggling parents get their lives back on track so that they can be safely reunited with their children.īut a 1984 federal law still stands, as do additional state laws, that call for making many parents pay for some of the cost of foster care. In 2018, Congress reformed funding for child welfare when it passed the Family First Preservation Services Act. It's long been recognized that the best thing for most children in foster care is to be reunited with their family. There were 407,493 children in foster care on the day the federal government counted in 2020 to get a snapshot of the population, according to a report from the Administration on Children, Youth and Families. ![]() More than half will eventually return home. ![]() While in foster care, children live with foster families, with relatives or in group settings. "Try living off $10,000 a year"įoster care is meant to be a temporary arrangement for children, provided by state and county child welfare agencies when families are in crisis or when parents are thought to be unable to care for their children. NPR analyzed federal and state data, collected published and unpublished research, and sent freedom of information requests to all 50 states and the District of Columbia for documents, demographic information and other data for state foster care and child support enforcement programs. Government raises little money, or even loses money, when it tries to collect.When parents get billed, children spend added time in foster care and the extra debt follows families for years, making it hard for them to climb out of poverty and.The fees are charged almost exclusively to the poorest families.The other law, almost 40 years old, tells states to charge parents for the cost of child care, which makes it harder for families to reunite.įor parents like Daisy Hohman, those bills can bury them in debt and make it harder to create the stable home they need to get their children out of foster care - and to keep them from being taken again. Hohman got a bill from Wright County to reimburse it for some of the cost of that foster care.Īn NPR investigation found that it's common in every state for parents to get a bill for the cost of foster care.Īnd the investigation found that two federal laws basically contradict each other: One recent law directs child-welfare agencies to prioritize reuniting families. Hohman, county officials argued, had left the children in an unsafe place.Īfter 20 months in foster care, her three children came back home. No drugs were found on her, and police did not charge her.īut child protective services in Wright County, Minn., placed her kids - two daughters, then 15 and 10, and a son, 9 - into foster care. They found drugs and drug paraphernalia, according to court records. Now, two weeks after living at this new address, police raided the trailer. After Hohman separated from her husband, she and her three kids had moved from place to place, staying with family and friends. Just before Christmas in 2017, Daisy Hohman, desperate for a place to live, moved into the trailer of a friend who had an extra room to rent. When Hohman was reunited with her children, she received a bill of nearly $20,000 for foster care from her Minnesota county. ![]() Daisy Hohman was separated from her three children for 20 months when they were placed in foster care. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |