Afrigather Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom should determine whether or not to signal a invoice that will shield Social Safety advantages for foster kids.
Lawmakers in California have handed AB 2906 in an effort to finish a long-standing observe within the state that noticed counties intercepting federal Social Safety survivor advantages from foster kids.
These advantages belong to orphaned and disabled foster children however are in a position to be taken by the counties beneath present legal guidelines. As a result of at present’s guidelines, counties can apply for foster children’ advantages with out telling the kid or their consultant, and a decide shouldn’t be required to supervise the kid’s care.
The cash can then be used for their very own funding regardless of the tax {dollars} being designated to maintain the foster kids.
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Foster kids routinely qualify for Social Safety if they’ve a incapacity or had a mother or father pay a sure amount of cash into the Social Safety system earlier than retiring, turning into disabled or dying.
An identical invoice, AB 1512, was handed unanimously final 12 months, however Newsom vetoed the measure, citing price range constraints.
“We’re relying on Governor Newsom to revisit this necessary situation in order that our foster youth can merely not have taken from them what’s rightfully theirs and which they should hold from turning into homeless whereas nonetheless youngsters,” mentioned Robert Fellmeth, Founder and Government Director of the Kids’s Advocacy Institute in a press release. “It isn’t daily that you just get a second likelihood to do the precise factor, however at present is that day for our Governor.”
Beneath federal legislation, foster kids’s survivor or incapacity advantages have to be used to pay for the unmet wants of the kid or saved for his or her future once they flip 18.
Many foster kids graduate with none housing or cash to acquire a monetary training, so the cash withheld from them would go a good distance in securing a greater future as soon as they age out of the foster system, specialists say.
“This invoice is required in the truth that, most of the time, kids in foster care fail to obtain the identical stage of legislative help in lots of states that different teams who face vital financial boundaries obtain,” Alex Beene, a monetary literacy teacher for the College of Tennessee at Martin, advised Newsweek.
Someplace between 40,000 and 80,000 kids in California are eligible for Social Safety advantages, however they typically face poverty or outright homelessness after reaching 18 years of age.
Between the ages of 19 and 21, 29 % of former foster youth skilled homelessness, in keeping with the Kids’s Advocacy Institute.
“These funds quantity to a rounding error for counties,” Fellmeth mentioned. “For eligible foster youth, getting access to their cash may imply a wholly completely different life, one wherein they’ve an actual shot at secure housing, meals safety, transportation, and training. For the Governor to show his again on these most weak kids a second time could be devastating.”
In 2021 alone, the Los Angeles County Division of Kids and Household Companies took $5.4 million in incapacity and survivor advantages supposed for 600 of the county’s foster kids, in keeping with a report from the College of San Diego College of Legislation.
Newsweek reached out to the SSA and Newsom for remark by way of e mail.
To this point, Arizona, Washington, D.C., Oregon and Massachusetts have additionally superior reforms that will strengthen protections for foster kids’s Social Safety advantages.
“There may be already momentum in our largest counties,” Amy Harfeld, Nationwide Coverage Director for the Kids’s Advocacy Institute on the College of San Diego College of Legislation, mentioned in a press release. “Los Angeles and San Diego not too long ago dedicated to voluntarily cease taking kids’s advantages. This cash may present a lifeline for 1000’s of weak California foster kids who might be far much less prone to find yourself on the streets.”
The issue is widespread past the state of California.
Beforehand, an investigation by Resolve Philly and The Philadelphia Inquirer revealed the town took $5 million in foster kids’s Social Safety funds between 2016 and 2020 by transferring them to the final fund.
“In the previous couple of years, some states have confronted criticism and even litigation over denying these in foster care the funds they need to be receiving,” Beene mentioned. “Guaranteeing this help goes a good distance in defending and supporting a incessantly missed inhabitants who usually desperately depends on earnings Social Safety gives.”
