Foster Children Fight to Stop States From Taking Federal Benefits

James Wood’s mother struggled with addiction, and he often found himself adrift, not knowing what day or month it was. “I didn’t understand how time worked,” he said.

When James was 14, his mother died of pneumonia, and he entered California’s foster care system. As a minor with a deceased parent and a disability, James was entitled to federal benefits, totaling $780 a month, some of which his mother had accrued during the years that she worked as a nurse.

But James never received the benefits. The government got the money instead, according to James and his adoptive father, Wayne Stidham.

It’s a longstanding practice for many states or counties to apply for the federal benefits of foster children, often without their knowledge, and then use the money to cover some of the costs of their care, according to legal advocates for children and congressional researchers.

Each year, roughly 27,000 foster children are entitled to these benefits because they have either lost a parent or have a disability. There are currently about 390,000 children in foster care in the United States.

“It’s wrong,” said James, who is now 16 and lives in Grass Valley, Calif., located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. “Foster kids could make plans for that money.”