Congressman Pete Stark

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), a member of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, today introduced the “Foster Children Self Support Act” to protect the Social Security benefits of eligible foster children.

State governments are responsible for the care of all children in foster care. About thirty thousand of these children are eligible for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits due to their disabilities or the death of their parents. Rather than allow these children to use their benefits to address existing needs and help them prepare for their adult lives, many states currently take these funds for use as a government revenue stream.

The “Foster Children Self Support Act” would outlaw this practice and instead require state agencies to work with each foster child and his or her advocate to formulate a plan on how to best use these benefits to meet the child’s present and future needs. Many children have a pressing need to which the their benefits should be immediately applied, such as paying for a wheelchair ramp, tutoring services, or making mortgage payments on a house willed to them by their parents. Under Stark’s legislation, children that don’t have current needs could save their benefits for use after they are emancipated from foster care.

“State governments that steal the Social Security benefits of foster children should be ashamed of themselves,” said Stark. “The Foster Children Self Support Act will prohibit this reprehensible practice and require these funds be used to help meet foster children’s current needs and ease their transition to adulthood. Rather than rob from foster children who have already lost so much, we should help them invest in their future.”

Former foster children are much more likely to experience homelessness and incarceration and rely on public assistance than nearly any other group of Americans. Using children’s benefits to reimburse state governments for their foster care expenditures is therefore incongruous with both laws designed to protect these vulnerable children today and inconsistent with attempts to limit state assistance in the future.

The case of “John G.,” a North Carolina foster child, illustrates the importance of the “Foster Children Self Support Act.” After his adoptive father died of cancer, “John G.” became responsible for mortgage payments on his family’s Habitat for Humanity home. The State of North Carolina claimed his Social Security benefits as their own, denying him the financial wherewithal to make the necessary payments until a court intervened. After initially agreeing to travel to Washington to speak about his situation at a Congressional briefing, “John G.” changed his mind when the North Carolina Department of Social Services denied his travel request.