James Wood's mother struggled with drug addiction, and Wood often found himself lost, not knowing what day or month it was. “I couldn't tell time passing,” he says.
When James was 14, his mother died of pneumonia and he was placed in a California nursing home. As a disabled minor with two parents dead, James was entitled to federal benefits of $780 a month, some of which his mother had saved while working as a nurse.
But James never received the benefit. According to James and his adoptive father, Wayne Stidham, the government received the money instead.
It's a longstanding practice for many states and counties to apply for federal benefits for foster children and then use those funds to cover part of a foster child's care, often without the child's knowledge, according to children's legal advocacy groups and congressional researchers.
Each year, roughly 27,000 foster children qualify for these benefits because they have lost a parent or are disabled.Currently, about 390,000 children live in foster care in the United States.
“That's just not right,” said James, now 16 and living in Grass Valley, in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. “Foster kids should be able to figure out what to do with that money.”
Advocates say the money should be reserved for extra resources for kids, like summer camps or art classes, and that once a child leaves foster care, the money could be used for college tuition or a deposit on an apartment, they say.
Some state and county officials have said the federal funds are being used for children, and if there is any money left over, they will receive it when children leave the foster care system.
A spokesman for California's Placer County Health and Human Services Agency, which oversaw James' foster care placement, declined to comment on James' situation but said the county is required by the state to apply for federal funding and to use the funds “for the individual benefit of the child, including food, shelter, clothing, medical care and personal comfort items.”
But the practice, previously exposed by activists at the Children's Advocacy Institute, the Marshall Project and journalists at NPR, is increasingly being questioned by courts, Congress and Biden administration officials, and many states are also changing their laws to ensure that at least some of the children's money is preserved.
“We're seeing state agencies trying to raise funds at the expense of the children they're supposed to be helping,” said Amy Herfeld, national policy director for the Children's Advocacy Institute, which works to improve the quality of life and protections for foster youth. “It's outrageous.”
In a statement this week, the Social Security Administration said federal benefits for children must be used to cover “current needs and living expenses,” and if there's any money left over, states “must preserve the remaining funds for the child's future.”
The agency added that it recently issued letters to state child support systems reminding them “how to use and conserve SSA benefits and provide assistance to comply with agency requirements.”
Hafeld, who has been lobbying for changes to those practices for the past 15 years, said in many cases the state doesn't save any money.
She added that children whose states collect federal benefits receive the same foster care services as those who don't receive benefits.
“There's no such thing as Foster Care Plus,” Hafeld said, “The only difference is that some children are required to pay child support while others are paid child support by the state.”
The practice reflects the state's historically piecemeal payment of foster care funds: In the 19th century, private and religious organizations, as well as some state government agencies, partnered to provide boarding services for foster children.
Even as foster care systems came to be administered by state and county governments in the 20th century, federal policymakers were reluctant to allocate significant amounts of funding to these systems, fearing that some people might become foster parents simply for the money, said Katherine Rimpf, a dean and professor at the University of Missouri who has written a book on the history of foster care.
The result is that in many places the system is stretched to its limits, Linff said, and “funding is so tight that states will claw back whatever they can.”
However, children, especially those who inherit money from deceased parents, It shouldn't be used to shore up the system. When Anthony Jackson was 12, his mother died of a heart attack in the motel room where he and his siblings were living.
He considered his mother his “powerhouse”: a fixture in their St. Paul, Minnesota, neighborhood, driving a city shuttle bus and taking elderly people to doctor's appointments and the grocery store. She worked, paid into Social Security and provided survivor benefits for her children.
Jackson, now 20, was placed into foster care in 2017 after moving from one relative's house to another after his mother died.
While he was in foster care, Jackson's ex-girlfriend's mother told him that children who lose a parent are eligible for survivor benefits, but when he inquired with the Social Security Administration, he was told the state was collecting the benefits on his behalf.
“That was hers, I didn't receive it,” Jackson said.
The money, he said, would have enabled him to attend an art school in Savannah, Georgia, which he was interested in but couldn't afford. Jackson attended a local college in St. Paul but is no longer enrolled.
The Minnesota Department of Human Services said in a statement that when foster care agencies apply for benefits on a child's behalf, the money “is not appropriated for the state's child welfare system at large.” The statement also noted that a new state law passed this year says the money “may only be used for the care of children.” The state also plans to require notifying children when the state receives federal benefits on their behalf.
Across the country, the tide is turning: More than a dozen states, counties, and cities have enacted new rules or approved laws requiring that at least some benefits be set aside for children, and at least a dozen states have introduced bills that would require setting aside funds or notifying children about benefits.
During a series of congressional hearings in March, Social Security Administrator Martin O'Malley suggested the agency may need to go beyond current rules to ensure states set aside and preserve some of the benefits.
During one of the hearings, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said she “nearly fell off her chair” when told about the practice.
“It's just not right that benefits meant for our most vulnerable children should be used to fund other parts of state government,” she told O'Malley.
The Congressional Research Service said in a 2021 report that states used $179 million in federal benefits owed to about 27,000 foster children in 2018, a relatively small amount of total funding for foster care.
James Wood remembers his mother, who died when he was 14, giving him three pieces of advice: Stay away from drugs, don't follow in her footsteps and start planning your career by your freshman year of high school. “That really stuck with me,” Wood says.
James, a ninth-grader who was adopted last November, has decided to pursue a career as a police officer. He wants the government to respect his mother's wishes and the spirit of survivor benefits.
“Anyone you ask, I think it's very disrespectful to promise something and then back out,” James told a state Assembly committee in Sacramento last month, “especially when it comes to children who have lost a parent.”