Most
of the stories in the media about foster care seem to take the most horrendous
cases into account, portraying foster children as extremely disturbed or
dangerous delinquents and painting foster parents in an equally unflattering
light.
One
such unflattering assumption about foster parents which makes me laugh is that
“Foster parents just take in kids for the money.” Clearly, anybody who believes this has never done foster care.
Michael
and Sarah Gerstenzang were an upper middle class couple who were living
in New York City with two young children when they took their first foster
placement because, among other reasons they wanted to “give back to society and help a child.” Michael was an attorney and as a social
worker Sarah always had an interest in child welfare. When reflecting on her personal experiences, Sarah shared her feelings about the low reimbursement rate foster
parents receive:
[My
husband ] “and I were asked numerous times by our
friends and acquaintances if we thought that many foster parents were “doing it
for the money.” (I think middle class
people sleep better when we assume that adults are being paid to care for
children whom we as a society are responsible for.) We would first explain that there wasn’t much
money in foster care for foster parents, to which some people replied, “Yeah,
but if they take in like ten kids?” And
then we would patiently explain that taking in ten kids wasn’t permitted. But for argument’s sake, if one could take in
ten kids, economize, and have a little left over, would it be worth it to have
to live with ten kids?”
Thank
goodness for reforms which limit the number of children in a foster home and
thoroughly screen families before giving them a license to make sure they’re
fostering for the right reasons. In our
state, one of the requirements for fostering is that the family must be
financially independent enough that they don’t have to rely on foster care as a
source of income (as verified by income tax returns and paycheck stubs) which
hopefully helps to weed out the people who are just doing it for the money
versus those who are truly interested in making a difference in the life of a
child.
Realistically,
it’s not accurate to say that you get PAID for doing foster care- you get reimbursed with a stipend because
children not only require much of your time and attention, but cost money to
raise. I love how Gerstenzang continued to explain
about stipends, drawing on her background of studying social policy as a
graduate student:
“The practice of reimbursing foster parents
for some of the costs of caring for a child dates back more than one hundred
years. Stipends were initially paid to
discourage families from putting children to work to earn their keep. They
were intentionally set at levels slightly lower than the cost of covering the
child’s expenses. The basic argument for
the low level of reimbursement applies today:
Foster parents have to want to foster for humanitarian reasons, not for
profit. So the people who make the most significant difference in quality of
life for the foster children, the foster parents, are the only ones not getting paid; who does get paid
are lawyers, judges, social workers, and administrators. Because they are not employees, foster
parents also forgo health insurance and Social Security benefits. Since the foster system depends on career
foster parents and children benefit from their experience, it is a shame that
the system doesn’t support and encourage these parents. And if
children can’t be cared for in foster homes (due to either a lack of homes or
the child’s difficult behavior) the next step for them is often a group home,
which can cost two hundred dollars per day or more, depending on the level of
care.”
On
a related note, because of a legislative
audit last year, my state’s Division of
Child and Family Services is shifting its focus on how to spend funds for
children in foster care, including less reliance on group homes as well as
investing more money on in–home services in an attempt to reduce the number
(and cost) of children being placed in out-of-home placements.
A
newspaper article explaining the changes the recent audit
prompted stated, “While in-home placement provides
better outcomes for children, it is unsafe for some children to remain in their
own homes.”
Hence the need for foster families!
Herein lies the problem, which the article continues to state:
“The low basic financial reimbursement rate may discourage some
people from the 24-hour, seven days a week commitment that foster care
requires, national advocates say.”
Props to Utah DCFS Director Brent Platt who was quoted in the
article as saying "The reality is, people don’t do it for money. These are people who want to help children,
to give back to their communities."
