Many are not aware, but most foster care systems around the country force parents to pay the state or county child support if their child is in the foster care system. Many studies have found that this type of arrangement can keep children in foster care for several added months and burden already poor and troubled families with added debt, often for years.
This setup disproportionately affects poor families, especially Black families. In fact, Black families are twice as likely as white families to be affected, with more than half of Black children being subject to a child welfare investigation by the time they are 18, University of Pennsylvania professor Dorothy Roberts, a child protection system expert, recently told CBS News. The Children’s Defense Fund, or CDF, reports that of every 1,000 white children in the United States, 5.2 are in foster care, compared with 9.9 of every 1,000 Black children.
After calls for changing the system, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance this summer to states informing them that, if they choose, they can stop sending child support bills to parents whose children are in foster care. This is a good step, and I’m happy to report that the state of Illinois is considering changing its system by the end of June.
In a statement to my researcher, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services spokesman William McCaffrey said the state is anticipating changes by the end of June.
“DCFS is aware of the ACF revised guidance regarding the collection of parental support payments. DCFS does anticipate changes to the current practice and is currently reviewing the legal requirements associated with any changes. The department anticipates changes being announced within the current fiscal year,” McCaffrey said in the statement.
While it is not certain that Illinois will completely stop charging parents of kids in foster care, it sounds like a positive change will be made. This is great news — because the current system is broken.
According to CDF, a child is removed from their home and placed into foster care every two minutes in the U.S. There are now more than 400,000 children in the foster care system across the country, with many placed there for controversial reasons.
While there are legitimate cases of endangerment to children, only 20% of child welfare cases allege actual physical abuse. The vast majority involve neglect, which Roberts told CBS is often confused with poverty, like when a parent cannot afford food, clothing or adequate housing.
Roberts said the more than $30 billion given to child welfare agencies would be better used going directly to families that need help rather than in propping up a system that she believes should be called the “family policing system” instead of child welfare or foster care.
The idea behind the 1984 law that allows agencies to charge child support to parents with kids in foster care stemmed from the belief that families, even those that abused or neglected their children, must take responsibility for them. However, since then, research has shown that charging these already-struggling families only deepens their problems and keeps kids in state care longer.
NPR did an investigation of the foster care system this year and found that in every state, parents get charged for the cost of foster care even though so few are able to pay and that state child enforcement agencies actually lose money when their staff spends time trying to find these parents and collect.
In 2019, Washington state found that for every dollar spent trying to chase down parents in arrears for foster care payments, 39 cents was collected. Across the country, similar patterns were found — making parents pay for foster care ends up costing states money. Even worse, it extends the time children are in foster care, with research showing that for every $100 charged to a family reunification is delayed by about six months. This is outrageous.
The sad reality is that unless the treatment of a child makes headlines, usually when a child dies, such as in the horrific case of Crystal Lake 5-year-old Andrew “AJ” Freund in 2019, Americans rarely think about the agencies in charge of protecting children. The result is that the child welfare system, which handles more than 3.5 million cases a year, gets little public scrutiny.
I’m happy to learn that Illinois plans to make changes, and I hope other states follow the federal guidance and stop the outdated practice of charging parents for the cost of foster care. It does more harm than good.
Jeffery Leving is founder and president of the Law Offices of Jeffery Leving and an advocate for the rights of fathers. He is the author of “Fathers’ Rights,” “Divorce Wars” and “How to be a Good Divorced Dad.”
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