Making parents pay for foster care: A bad idea for families

By Jill Duerr Berrick, Lenna Nepomnyaschy, and Cassandra Simmel

When children are placed in foster care, their parents have a lot to do. They have a long list of tasks to accomplish to make sure they can bring their kids home safely — the primary goal of the foster care system in New Jersey and other states. But some laws push parents to make terrible choices. New Jersey has a chance to fix that problem.

When children are removed from their homes and placed in foster care, current law requires parents to pay for their child’s foster care stay. That may seem reasonable on the face of it, but the law is actually illogical and counter-productive.

Why illogical? Typically, parents whose children are separated to foster care are some of the poorest parents in America. One study found that almost half of parents had zero income in the year prior to their child’s placement into care.  Another study found that about one-third of parents had an annual income below $10,000. Asking parents to pay $100 or $200 per month toward the cost of their child’s foster care placement may seem reasonable, but it’s hardly reasonable if parents don’t have the income to pay. Often, parents go into debt to the government, and then taxpayers spend enormous sums tracking parents and pursuing enforcement. Studies in five states have shown that the costs of enforcement outweigh the benefits by at least 3:1.

Why counter-productive? Parents need to offer evidence that they can safely parent their children. Some may need to attend mental health counseling, others may need domestic violence support, or perhaps some require treatment for substance use challenges. In addition to meeting these requirements, parents also must maintain their home, their job, and their income so that they’re ready for their child’s return.

But we ask parents to make impossible choices: Pay the rent or pay the government. Pay the electric bill or pay the government.  Rigorous studies show that when parents pay these fees, their meager finances are turned upside down and the whole family suffers. Kids remain in foster care over six months longer than they need to, and in 1 in 5 cases, children never go home.

It gets worse. Kids’ stay in foster care in New Jersey is usually about 17.3 months, on average, but the financial hole that creates for parents can last a lifetime. Parents who are unable to pay go into debt to the state – a debt that often follows parents for years or even decades. Parents in arrears can lose access to credit, have their driver’s license or business license suspended, have their passport taken away, have their wages garnished, and have their tax refunds and unemployment benefits intercepted. These efforts to extract money from parents only serve to deepen family poverty, and research evidence shows that family poverty is associated with multiple challenges, including increasing the risk of child maltreatment.

New Jersey cares for about 3,200 children in foster care, and it collects almost $2 million annually from their very low-income parents. On this issue, New Jersey is one of the most aggressive states in the country.

Recently proposed legislation in the New Jersey Senate and Assembly (S2331 and A3517) would reverse this practice and would bring New Jersey into conformance with federal guidance. Parents whose children are in foster care need to focus on what matters most: The safety of their children. Making parents pay for their child’s stay in foster care is a bad idea that is ripe for reform.

Jill Duerr Berrick is a distinguished professor of social welfare at U.C. Berkeley. Lenna Nepomnyaschy and Cassandra Simmel are associate professors of social work at Rutgers University.