The Daily News found that some foster children with disabilities in New York City’s care don’t receive personal Social Security benefits, even though Mayor Adams’ administration introduced a policy two years ago to allow vulnerable children to use their federal benefits to build personal savings.
The policy, which took effect in the summer of 2022, required the city’s child welfare agency to stop using Social Security benefits to cover the costs of housing and other services for foster children who are entitled to benefits due to certain disabilities. In a policy shift in 2022, that money would be deposited into a savings account available to children leaving the foster care system. Adams’ child welfare director, Jess Danhauser, reportedly praised the move at the time.
“It’s their money,” he said at the time. “They have the right to spend it how they want.”
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ACS Commissioner Jess Danhauser is pictured in New York City in 2018. (Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage)
But new documents quietly released by the Child Welfare Administration last month reveal that the agency did not allow foster children to set aside savings if the benefits they were eligible to receive were a form of Social Security called Supplemental Social Security Income (SSI).
In the case of SSI, the agency is directing the U.S. Social Security Administration to stop providing benefits to these children for the duration of their stay in the city’s foster care system, starting in 2022, according to the documents. The agency is doing so because if it allowed these children to receive SSI, the city would be ineligible under federal regulations to receive other forms of funding that help cover the overall costs of the foster care system, according to the documents.
One of approximately 6,455 young people currently in New York City’s foster care system is Shirley, 20, who is eligible for SSI because of a learning disability and a mood disorder. Disabilities that qualify for SSI can include everything from learning disabilities to mobility disorders.
Shirley, who has been in foster care since 2016 and spoke on the condition that her last name not be used, said she recently found out that the Social Security Administration paid $27,956 in Social Security benefits in her name to the Department of Child Welfare between 2018 and 2021. Shirley said the Social Security Administration used the money to cover her foster care expenses during those years but never saw the money because they did not inform her that benefits were being paid in her name.
She said she is working with lawyers to try to recover her SSI benefits retroactively because the 2022 reforms prohibit such practices.
“This money will help me pay rent for years to come and go to college,” Shirley told the News. “My biggest fear is that when I leave the foster care system, I won’t have this money anymore.”
A child welfare official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the city receives about $200 million a year in Title IV-E funding, a type of federal aid that could be partially cut by SSI. If the city allowed all SSI-eligible foster children in its care to receive individual benefits, the official said, the city would have to give up about $10 million a year in Title IV-E funding.
Child Welfare officials argued that even if there were no funding issue for at-risk children, the issue is moot because federal regulations prohibit children from having more than $2,000 in SSI benefits in a regular bank account. Officials told the News that once they leave the foster care system, Child Welfare uses city funds to give SSI-eligible children $2,000 to make up the difference.
“New York City is committed to children and young people, so we are saving money for young people who qualify for SSI,” department spokeswoman Maya Kaufman said.
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Jefferson Siegel of the New York Daily News
The city’s Department of Child Welfare. (Courtesy of Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)
But advocates for youth in foster care say these arguments overlook potential solutions.
Anna Blondell, a Legal Aid Society attorney who represents children in urban foster care, noted that other states and cities, including Washington, D.C., and Arizona, have developed systems that use various forms of savings accounts that allow foster children to legally accumulate up to $100,000 in SSI benefits.
Blondell said there’s no reason the city couldn’t implement a similar system, arguing that the city’s decision to stop SSI benefits for foster children instead runs counter to the city’s 2022 announcement.
“This is really harmful,” Blondell said. “It’s one thing to secure federal funding, but to make it happen at the expense of children with disabilities in foster care – what a money grabber they are.”
Child Welfare Department officials said the city continues to look into the possibility of opening other forms of savings accounts for foster children that could help exceed the $2,000 limit.
It’s unclear how much of the SSI benefits remain undistributed because of the Adams administration’s suspension provisions. According to federal guidelines, a child who is eligible to receive the maximum monthly SSI benefit of $943 is entitled to $11,316 per year.
It’s unclear exactly how many of the roughly 6,400 children in the city’s foster care systems are eligible for SSI.
Some foster children also receive RSDI, another form of Social Security benefit also known as survivor benefits, typically given to minors whose caregivers die. The Department of Child Welfare has not asked the Social Security Administration to halt RSDI and has set up savings accounts to deposit the benefits for eligible foster children. That’s because, unlike SSI, this form of Social Security can be collected without jeopardizing Title IV-E funds, according to documents reviewed by The News.
Most states and cities in the country still take social security payments given to foster children and use them to pay for their care.
When Adams announced in March 2022, two months after he became mayor, that the city would let foster children save their benefits, Danhauser told NPR that the measure could help them pay for basics like rent and college tuition after they leave the system.
“These resources can mean the difference between a very rocky start to the transition or one that has a solid foundation on which to begin,” he said.