Posted on 03/09/2022 7:53:30 AM PST by algore
Some agencies, like in New York City, have staff, or even hire private companies, to figure out which kids to sign up for that revenue, then cash the checks, often without telling the child in foster care or their family.
Child welfare agencies justify the practice as a way to reimburse themselves for the food, shelter and other things that foster care provides. But other children in foster care are not expected to pay for this service–which is required by state and federal laws–with their own resources.
Children get Social Security checks because they are entitled to them, by law, because they or a parent are disabled or because a parent has died. It's estimated that 10 to 20 percent of children in foster care are eligible for these benefits.
Melanie Perez was 12 years old when she went into foster care. She left foster care once, when she was 18, to try to make it on her own. But returned when she was 19.
"For me, I don't have my parent. My Mom (is) deceased," she said. "When I left here at 18, I didn't have a penny in my bag."
Not having money, especially in a place as expensive as New York City, is one reason she returned to foster care, Perez said.
Now 21 and the mother of a one-year-old daughter, she knows that eventually she'll need to leave foster care for good. In New York City, she can stay with her daughter until she's 24.
A few years ago, when Perez was first leaving foster care, she was told that, because of her various disabilities, Social Security had been sending her a monthly benefit check. It totaled several hundred dollars a month.
But the city foster care agency was cashing it.
"It's not OK for them to take something that is not theirs," said Perez.
"I want to use the money to take care of my child," she says of her benefits check. "So it will help me be independent. It will help me pay some of my college tuitions, hopefully."
What’s there to be confused about? NY thinks its not right that feral animals running the streets producing small ferals should have to pay for them, you, Joe taxpayer should have to.
[[Child welfare agencies justify the practice]]
When you have to cover up and sneak around there usually is no justification, only excuses for criminal behavior. That is theft, and it’s a federal offense I believe- defrauding the system
Biden is going to settle it all . . . . .
Why the social security system is going to run out of money in a few years. It’s being used as a supplement to welfare.
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