By JEANNE KUANG | CalMatters
In December 2019, a month after her son’s demise, Patricia Baca contacted the federal authorities to supply for her surviving grandchildren.
The twins, simply 3 on the time, had lived a tough first few years of life. San Diego County had eliminated them from their dad and mom’ custody that yr as a consequence of allegations of drug and alcohol abuse and home violence within the dwelling, Baca stated. The brother and sister have been in foster care with Baca when their father died in an accident.
Hoping to safe the kids a future nest egg, Baca filed for them to obtain survivor’s advantages from the Social Safety Administration for youngsters whose dad and mom have died.
However it was the twins’ authorized dad or mum on the time — the San Diego County Well being and Human Providers Company — that stepped in to obtain their cash. For the following two years, the county put their survivors’ advantages into its personal coffers. Information present it was an effort to pay itself again for having issued month-to-month checks to Baca to cowl the kids’s fundamental wants.
In keeping with county and federal information Baca confirmed to CalMatters, the cash taken totaled almost $15,000 per little one. Baca stated she obtained foster care checks of about $1,000 a month per little one, that means the county partially recouped its prices utilizing the Social Safety advantages.
The funds seizure is frequent amongst little one welfare businesses in California and nationwide – and it’s authorized.
However forces are constructing to halt the apply, which advocates say has been in place for no less than twenty years. A rising variety of states are banning it, and advocates are in search of to eradicate it in California via a court docket problem and a invoice set to be launched within the state Legislature subsequent week.
Offsetting prices
San Diego County stated it halted the apply final yr and now saves foster youth’s advantages in reserve accounts for them. However it didn’t repay Baca’s grandchildren. She has misplaced two state administrative hearings making an attempt to get the cash paid again, with the county telling her it could not pay retroactively and the state’s Division of Social Providers ruling it didn't have jurisdiction.
A county spokesperson declined to touch upon Baca’s grandchildren’s case, citing confidentiality considerations.
The kids at the moment are 7. Baca and her husband, each retired, had hoped the cash would assist their grandchildren assist themselves after they’re older.
“They’ve been traumatized, they’ve been taken from their household and now they’ve misplaced a dad or mum,” she stated in an interview, including she would say to county and state officers: “That is their cash, and also you’re stealing it.”
Appearing on behalf of foster youth of their care, businesses can apply for and obtain kids’s Social Safety advantages.
That may embody survivor advantages or, extra generally, a incapacity profit often known as Supplemental Safety Revenue (SSI). In rarer circumstances in addition they apply for veterans’ advantages earmarked for the kids of those that died in navy service.
By state regulation, counties should use the cash within the little one’s greatest pursuits. One allowable use is to “offset” the businesses’ prices for offering foster care.
For youth in state custody who don’t qualify for such advantages, counties pay for foster care utilizing present funding — a mixture of federal, state and native cash.
Youth in danger
Opponents of the reimbursement practices say it’s an inappropriate use of cash meant for probably the most weak younger individuals in state custody — these with disabilities and people who will age into maturity with out parental assist.
Foster youth are at increased danger than different kids of falling into poverty and homelessness in maturity. An extended-term research in California in 2020 discovered that a quarter of former foster youth have been sleeping in shelters or quickly unhoused after exiting foster care.
Advocates say typically youth and their households don’t even know their county has utilized for and brought their Social Safety advantages.
Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Culver Metropolis Democrat, is authoring a invoice that might prohibit counties from utilizing federal advantages to defray foster care prices. It additionally would direct little one welfare businesses to make use of the cash for the kids immediately, which might embody preserving it for his or her futures.
The invoice would apply to foster youth going ahead, however it could not assist these like Baca’s grandchildren who already had their advantages taken.
Few of California’s roughly 50,000 foster youngsters get Social Safety advantages, advocates say, however the state doesn't monitor what number of have had their funds withheld by the counties.
Los Angeles County has the best share of the caseload, with custody of a few third of the state’s foster kids. The county’s Division of Kids and Household Providers receives the advantages of about 600 kids in its custody in any given month, a spokesperson informed CalMatters final yr. In 2021 the county took $5.4 million of kids’s Supplemental Safety Revenue or survivor advantages as reimbursements.
A funding stream
CalMatters additionally reported that Kern County in 2021 offset $313,000 of its foster care prices by taking advantages from 56 youth. And San Diego County within the 2021-2022 fiscal yr took about $137,000 from 13 youth.
In complete California’s little one welfare system prices about $5 billion yearly, based on the analysis middle Little one Traits. The quantity taken from youth advantages as reimbursement makes up a fraction of that – as a lot as $39 million, Bryan’s workplace estimates.
Bryan’s laws, a placeholder that can be amended subsequent week, has but to be heard in a committee. It comes as different states and cities have already agreed to restrict the seizure of foster youth’s advantages, together with Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut and the cities of Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Hawaii final yr stopped taking the advantages and opened financial institution accounts for foster youth who have been receiving them. Washington state and Oregon are each weighing proposals this yr to take action.
For years California’s advocates have pushed the state and counties to assist foster youth apply for the federal advantages. Whereas the kids are beneath state and county care, county businesses have considered the advantages as a funding stream.
Many eligible youth have no idea they'll qualify, advocates say, and the appliance course of is advanced. California at present requires counties to display screen foster youth for potential eligibility for Social Safety help on the age of 16, however advocates say that leaves out many kids who could possibly be receiving it a lot earlier.
Social Safety ‘a possible lifeline’
Bryan’s invoice would require counties to display screen all youth for eligibility inside two months of coming into foster care. It additionally would require the county or state businesses to inform the youth’s household and attorneys after they apply for these advantages and to supply an everyday accounting of the cash obtained on a toddler’s behalf.
Marisa Lopez-Scott, employees lawyer on the Kids’s Legislation Heart which is sponsoring Bryan’s invoice, stated this may assist extra kids or their households proceed receiving Social Safety advantages even after leaving foster care. These receiving supplemental safety revenue might get it for the remainder of their lives.
“It's a potential lifeline,” Lopez-Scott stated.
Little one welfare businesses ought to obtain the cash on behalf of foster youth solely as a matter of final resort, based on federal rules and state regulation.
Each record most well-liked options: a toddler’s relative, an grownup sibling or perhaps a household buddy who has demonstrated an curiosity within the little one’s well-being. Little one welfare businesses are final on the record.
However California counties have made themselves the recipients even when different relations have been obtainable.
Fiduciary duties
That’s what occurred in Baca’s grandchildren’s case and within the case of one other set of two kids now suing San Diego County.
The kids, two preteen sisters who've been out and in of foster care since they have been 4 and 6, at the moment are with an adoptive mom, Amy, who requested to be recognized solely by her first title to guard the kids’s id.
The women’ organic father died just a few months earlier than the second time the women landed in foster care. Figuring out their organic mom had been receiving survivor’s advantages on behalf of the kids, Amy contacted the county and the Social Safety Administration, to make sure one other relative would get the women’ advantages after they have been in foster care.
“The youngsters are going to want these ultimately,” she stated. “I assumed the county would accumulate them however put them in belief for the youngsters.”
As their foster dad or mum on the time, Amy wasn’t eligible to carry onto the advantages for the kids. However she stated the county by no means contacted the women’ grownup sibling or nice aunt and as an alternative utilized to obtain the cash itself. The county collected it for a few yr, stopping after the adoption went via.
‘Most fitted payee’
Social Safety spokesperson Patricia Raymond declined to touch upon this case or Baca’s. She stated that in circumstances the place it should appoint somebody to obtain advantages on a toddler’s behalf, the company “will examine and appoint probably the most appropriate payee.”
The Kids’s Advocacy Institute, based mostly on the College of San Diego regulation college, has sued the county for Amy’s adopted kids’s advantages in San Diego County Superior Courtroom. The swimsuit accuses the county of violating its fiduciary responsibility towards the kids, arguing that utilizing the funds as reimbursement was not within the women’ greatest pursuits.
San Diego County has not responded to the lawsuit in court docket and didn't reply to a request for remark.
Amy and her husband now obtain the advantages for the women, ages 11 and 13. She stated they use it for the kids’s medical wants that the state doesn’t cowl they usually save the remaining for school or different bills when the women flip 18.
Amy stated she needs the county to pay again what it took – totalling slightly below $25,000 – so she will be able to add it to the women’ fund.
“The final word objective for our household is to alter coverage,” Amy stated. “We don’t need some other little one to need to have this expertise. These kids, greater than any, want this cash.”