A new report has found that certain Minnesota counties are holding onto Social Security payments meant for foster kids, instead using the money to offset the cost for them being in the foster system.
Several people are now speaking out, including Foster Advocates Executive Director Hoang Murphy, who joined News Talk 830 WCCO’s Jason DeRusha to talk about social security benefits for foster kids that are being captured by counties.
Murphy shared that his group has been working with the children named in the Star Tribune report for over a year. When describing what has been happening, he said there is only one word for it, “theft.”
When it comes to how counties and foster agencies justify their decisions to keep the money, Murphy thinks they would say they do it to pay for the costs of foster care.
“On paper, it makes sense. Until we think about it a little bit further, which is, you know, that’s what we pay taxes for,” Murphy said, noting that “foster care is paid for.”
Murphy said that if a kid is going to be taken in by the state or a county, a promise is made that they will do better by the kid than if they had left them.
“How can that be true if we are not using every dollar that you have access to for your own benefit?” Murphy asked.
Currently, the legal standard is that the social security payments be directed toward the best interest for the child. While Murphy admitted he isn’t a legal scholar, he said he doesn’t need to be to know that “the best interest for the kid is for them to have the money, and not the county.”
What Murphy says makes the situation even worse is that the counties taking the payments, are not tracking how much they have taken, leaving many estimating the total.
“We have no idea. We know in Hennepin County it’s about $700,000 per year, but we don’t know further than that,” Murphy said. “We have asked the counties for the data, and they have said they can’t produce us.”
Murphy has been working with other advocates and government officials to get the data, but he noted that if they can’t produce it because they aren’t tracking it, then he is left seeing red flags.
“I think [the counties] are aware that this isn’t exactly ethical,” Murphy said.
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