This story was originally published by The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. Sign up for The Imprint’s free newsletters here.
On Wednesday, more than a dozen Minnesota foster youth and their supporters attended a hearing to implore legislators to set aside and protect their survivor and disability benefits — millions of dollars in federal funds currently fed into county coffers.
“Through the practice of taking federal benefits, we are intentionally diverting critical resources away from the very young people they are meant to serve,” said speaker Ziigwan Frazer, who spent nine years in foster care. “These benefits are not extra dollars. They are lifelines for young people who have abysmal outcomes and who the state has committed to caring for.”
In Minnesota, counties received $2.79 million in benefits meant for foster youth in 2022, according to a legislative report released last year. Frazer, who works with Foster Advocates, called on the state to end what she referred to as the “quiet extraction” of this money, meant to benefit individual children directly.
She and other advocates spoke out at a Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing in support of legislation that would end that longstanding practice.
State Sen. Melissa Wiklund’s bill would require counties to assess children’s eligibility for federal, state, or other cash benefits, and apply for the benefits for as long as the child is in foster care. The money would be deposited into a trust fund account and saved until they turn 18. Foster youth who need the money prior to that date could have their attorneys petition the family court for permission to access it.
Under the currently proposed legislation, the Department of Children, Youth and Families must identify foster youth whose benefits were taken between 1976 and 2026 and repay them money owed. The legislation would allocate $15 million in fiscal year 2027 for that purpose.
Across the country, child welfare agencies have kept federal benefits owed to foster youth whose parents have died or become disabled, using the money to pay for their care and custody. Foster youth and their advocates have said the money should be available for extra items they may need while in state custody, or held in special savings accounts for when they leave the system and become adults.
“We should not be balancing our budgets on the backs of children, especially children whose parents have died, or children who have a disability,” Hoang Murphy told lawmakers at Wednesday’s hearing. He called the practice of taking these funds “ghoulish.”
Murphy, CEO of the People Serving People homeless services provider and former head of the state’s leading advocacy group for foster youth, noted that the federal government agrees with him. In a letter sent to 39 governors in early December, Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families Alex Adams urged states to end the practice, which he referred to as “the orphan tax.”
In recent years, at least 10 states and local governments have taken such action, and another 18 have enacted partial reforms, according to the California-based Children’s Advocacy Institute, which is tracking the issue. Many more are weighing new laws.
At the hearing, Minnesota Sens. Jim Abeler and Robert Kupec expressed support for Wiklund’s bill. Kupec apologized to foster youth for the state’s slow progress on changing the practice, which first caught national attention after a 2021 investigative report by The Marshall Project and NPR.
“Government sometimes does not move anywhere near at the pace you need it to move to fix this problem,” Kupec told foster youth. “But eventually we will get it right.”
Angie Thies, child well-being policy analyst for the Association of Minnesota Counties, said her agency’s support for the bill is contingent on its provision that counties be reimbursed by the state for the money they distribute to foster youth through the trust accounts.
“A decision to require counties to set aside these funds without state reimbursement would create an additional burden at a time of increased financial pressures,” Thies said.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is among the bill’s supporters. In a letter submitted to the state Legislature, he wrote:
“In the end, it will promote and protect a foster youth’s financial stability and education and help their transition into adulthood on a more secure footing.”
