Robbing Birth Parents to Pay for Foster Care
By Richard Wexler
It should be among the bigger scandals in child welfare--though perfectly legal. But so far only one newspaper, The Hartford Courant, has reported on it.
Here’s how it works:
An impoverished single mother, desperate to keep her low-wage job leaves her children home alone because she can’t find day care she can afford. She can’t get day care because federal aid that might provide such day care has been transferred elsewhere. The children are taken away on a “lack of supervision” charge. They are placed in foster care. The foster parents and the bureaucracy supporting them, and the child abuse investigator are paid in part using the money diverted from low-income day care.
It happens because of a side effect of welfare “reform” – the misuse of surplus funds in the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).
When Congress passed welfare “reform,” supporters promised that states could use TANF surplus funds to help welfare recipients become self-sufficient, by providing job training and childcare. But it turns out states are free to use TANF money for many other things as well. And in many states, TANF has become a slush fund for the foster care system, with hundreds of millions of dollars diverted to fund foster homes and even child abuse investigations.
In Connecticut alone, $129 million in TANF money has been diverted from basic, concrete help to keep families together into the foster care system that tears them apart. The Courant story, which ran on March 25, is available in the paper’s paid archive. It’s well worth the $3.95.
It should be among the bigger scandals in child welfare--though perfectly legal. But so far only one newspaper, The Hartford Courant, has reported on it.
Here’s how it works:
An impoverished single mother, desperate to keep her low-wage job leaves her children home alone because she can’t find day care she can afford. She can’t get day care because federal aid that might provide such day care has been transferred elsewhere. The children are taken away on a “lack of supervision” charge. They are placed in foster care. The foster parents and the bureaucracy supporting them, and the child abuse investigator are paid in part using the money diverted from low-income day care.
It happens because of a side effect of welfare “reform” – the misuse of surplus funds in the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).
When Congress passed welfare “reform,” supporters promised that states could use TANF surplus funds to help welfare recipients become self-sufficient, by providing job training and childcare. But it turns out states are free to use TANF money for many other things as well. And in many states, TANF has become a slush fund for the foster care system, with hundreds of millions of dollars diverted to fund foster homes and even child abuse investigations.
In Connecticut alone, $129 million in TANF money has been diverted from basic, concrete help to keep families together into the foster care system that tears them apart. The Courant story, which ran on March 25, is available in the paper’s paid archive. It’s well worth the $3.95.
posted by Michael Burns at 9:43 PM
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