Teresa Casados runs New Mexico’s Children, Youth & Families Department. She found the state had been taking the Social Security checks of youngsters in foster care — youngsters who received the advantages as a result of they have been orphaned or disabled.

Children, Youth & Families Department/State of New Mexico

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Children, Youth & Families Department/State of New Mexico

Teresa Casados runs New Mexico’s Children, Youth & Families Department. She found the state had been taking the Social Security checks of youngsters in foster care — youngsters who received the advantages as a result of they have been orphaned or disabled.

Children, Youth & Families Department/State of New Mexico

To Teresa Casados, who runs the division answerable for baby welfare in New Mexico, it appeared like an odd query. At a legislative listening to in July, a lawmaker requested her if the state was taking the Social Security checks of children in foster care — the checks supposed for orphans and disabled youngsters.

“My reaction really was: That can’t be right,” mentioned Casados, who within the spring took over as appearing secretary of New Mexico’s Children, Youth & Families Department. “That can’t be a practice that we’re doing.”

Casados and her chief authorized counsel drove again to the workplace. “When we got back, we looked into it and found out it was a practice that the agency had for using those benefits — and had been going on for quite some time.”

A 2021 investigation by NPR and The Marshall Project discovered this apply was the rule throughout the nation. The investigation led to requires reform. Now, 15 states and cities have taken steps to protect the cash of foster youth. Several different state legislatures are contemplating related legal guidelines.

And final month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Social Security Administration despatched a letter to state and native baby welfare companies to encourage these adjustments.

The NPR/Marshall Project investigation discovered that in at least 49 states and the District of Columbia, when younger folks go into foster care baby, welfare companies routinely search for which of them include Social Security checks. Or, if the kids are eligible, companies signal them up for advantages. Then state companies money these checks — often with out telling the kid or their household, the investigation discovered.

States declare the cash as reimbursement for the prices of foster care. But governments have already got an obligation to pay the prices of foster care below state and federal legal guidelines. The result’s that solely impoverished youngsters, who obtain Social Security advantages as a result of they’re orphans or as a result of they’re disabled or their dad and mom are disabled, get a invoice for their very own foster care.

About 10% to twenty% of youngsters and youths in foster care are considered eligible for Social Security advantages. A toddler whose mom or father has died is eligible for survivors advantages, supposed to interchange among the misplaced wages of the deceased guardian. Another Social Security program, Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, pays a stipend to disabled youngsters and adults.

Just days after that legislative listening to in New Mexico, Casados says her division “sent out a directive to cease using those funds for care and support.” It pledged to begin placing apart the Social Security advantages checks for foster youngsters to have once they return to their households or age out of foster care.

Casados says saving that cash and educating youths the best way to handle it is vital: “This could be really life changing for some of these kids,” she mentioned.

It issues as a result of most youths go away foster care with little or no cash. Few will pay for school. Many find yourself jobless or homeless.

Helping youngsters save their Social Security cash isn’t easy for baby welfare companies, which have to arrange separate accounts, together with ones that do not penalize youths who get means-tested advantages.

A recipient of SSI — the utmost quantity in 2023 is $914 — isn’t allowed to build up greater than $2,000 in property or financial savings. The letter to baby welfare companies defined methods to keep away from that restrict.

“We’re, in many ways, setting the stage for folks to really be thinking differently about how to do this,” says Rebecca Jones Gaston, the commissioner of the federal Administration on Children, Youth and Families and co-author of the letter. “We want young people transitioning out of foster care to have what they need to move into adulthood successfully.”

Some baby welfare advocates say the letter from Washington is an efficient first step, however they’re upset that it did not do extra.

“The administration missed a leadership opportunity,” says Amy Harfeld of the Children’s Advocacy Institute, “to clarify once and for all that it is never in a child’s best interest for their money and assets to be used by a public agency without their notice for the agency’s own gain.”

Harfeld says change is coming “from across the political spectrum,” most just lately in Arizona, Oregon and New Mexico, and in main cities, together with New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Foster youth are paying consideration, too. Justin Kasieta, who’s 22 now, was simply 13 when his father died and he was thrust into a job taking care of his 4 youthful siblings.

“I would walk down to the store and buy food for my siblings occasionally, or whatever other needs we may have had.”

Justin Kasieta, who’s 22 now, was simply 13 when his father died and he was thrust into a job taking care of his 4 youthful siblings. In school, he interned within the state legislature and the U.S. Congress.

Benjamin Levitt

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Benjamin Levitt

Justin Kasieta, who’s 22 now, was simply 13 when his father died and he was thrust into a job taking care of his 4 youthful siblings. In school, he interned within the state legislature and the U.S. Congress.

Benjamin Levitt

So he knew the household’s funds, and that their revenue got here from Social Security — from survivors advantages checks.

It helped them get by of their small city on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

A few years later, Kasieta went into foster care and the state of Michigan took his checks to reimburse the price of that care.

That did not appear proper to Kasieta.

“The main argument would be that it’s not fair to make kids who are orphaned or disabled have to pay for their own foster care,” he says. “But then kids who are not orphaned or disabled, they receive taxpayer dollars to cover their foster care?”

Kasieta relied upon scholarships and grants to go to varsity. He says these Social Security checks might have helped.

Last month, he graduated from the University of Michigan. He has job prospects in finance and in authorities.

And he is advocating for a invoice in entrance of the legislature in Michigan — to avoid wasting Social Security advantages for youngsters and youths in foster care.

“If the goal is to make success stories like mine the rule, instead of the exception, I think that we need to support kids all the way through from the time they are in foster care to the time they exit foster care and even beyond that,” he mentioned.