The Cost of Living
 There are over half a million children living in foster care in the United States. Most of these children are cared for by foster parents – persons who open their homes and their hearts to care for young persons who have experienced hardship and often abuse and/or neglect. In order to help support these children, child welfare systems are required by law to provide payments to foster parents to “cover” expenses for basic needs such as food, clothing and simple school supplies. However, there is currently no minimum rate of payment, nor has there ever been a standardized way to compute how much it costs to care for a foster child.
A recent analysis revealed that across the U.S., current payments must be raised by an average of 36 percent in order to adequately support children in foster care. This study, developed and implemented by Children’s Rights in collaboration with the Ruth H. Young Center (RYC) for Families and Children at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and the National Foster Parent Association (NFPA), also found that several states “report using no particular methodology to determine their rates” (p. 1) and thus the amount of monetary support a foster family receives is relatively arbitrary.
Using cost of living expenditure rates across the country, the Foster Care Minimum Adequate Rates for Children (MARC) was calculated by considering what would be adequate funds to meet not only a child’s basic needs, but also to cover the costs of “normalizing” childhood activities, such as after-school programs. The authors note that such social activities are especially important for children who have previously experienced trauma and/or isolation and thus need to feel supported and included in everyday experiences.
States such as Missouri, Nebraska, and Ohio were estimated to need to more than double foster care payments in order to meet a child’s needs. In contrast Arizona and the District of Columbia were found to provide adequate funds for caring for a foster child.
Recommend increases in expenditures and standardizing
Questions for Discussion:
- Do you think that raising the amount of money allotted for foster care increase the number of foster parent applicants?
- Do you think it will increase or decrease the quality of foster care applicants?
- Do you think more money would increase the stability of foster placements?
- Currently, states pay foster families what they believe to be enough to cover the essentials – food, clothing, shelter, schools supplies, and “daily supervision.” What else should funds be able to cover?
Your thoughts…
Comments:
 It is unlikely that a few hundred dollars a month would prevent many children from going into foster care because the reasons that they go into foster care are not directly related to their access to small amounts of funds. The issues that are involved with placement are generally much more signiifant and involve lifestyle choices, impaired mental health, domestic violence, cogntive impairments and children beyond parental control. None of these is directly related to income to the extent that the foster care payment is likely to prevent them, although there are certainly times when some income assistance and housing assistance is need to help restore a safe family environment. Posted Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 01:22 PM
My comment is more of a question for those in the foster care business to think about. Would we have less children in foster care if the stipend paid to foster parents was paid to biological families to keep and rear their own children? We know that everyone is not able to parent their children but many of the parents whose children are in care are there because of poverty not abuse. Posted Monday, December 10, 2007 at 12:26 PM
I am a licensed foster parent in Wisconsin and completed an extensive 4 month training program in '07. Obviously foster parents are 'fully advised' of potential problems with the children. I didn't feel 'advised' about the costs involved that would be coming out of my pocket. I had to cover the $400 Driver's Ed fee, as the State feels driving is optional and not necessary. What? I was also responsible to cover my foster child's underage drinking ticket and subsequent educational classes from an incident prior to the her placement with me. Friends that I met in training shared with me that the Department laughed when they asked for $100 reimbursement to cover costs of cleaning lice from the children after a visit to Mom's.
Wisconsin offers a 'one-time' clothing allowance of $200. They must overlook the fact that children grow out of their clothing. No additional monies or allowance is set aside for these children to be involved in extra-curricular activities or structured programs/ classes of any kind. It has been a huge financial obligation on my part, one that I probably won't pursue again. Posted Wednesday, November 28, 2007 by Karen at 07:42 AM
I believe the pay to foster parents should be based on a child support scale for a medium wage person. When someone is requesting to be a foster parent that they need to be fully advised that usually the children have many issues and that the child they get will not necessarily be a "Perfect child." Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 09:42 AM
All questions are no-brainers--of course, increasing the pay to foster parents will increase the number, quality of care, and placement stability. It don't take a ph.d to figure that out.
Why is it that for most all kinds of work, with the exception of foster caregiving, increasing wage rates has a direct relationship to the services provided?
Foster parents have too long subsidized the state in caring for challenging young people and been made to feel guilty for being compensated, miserable as the rates are. Who else goes around repeating the mantra that they "are not in it for the money"? If that aint the result of brainwashing, I don't know what is! Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 08:14 AM
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