TOPEKA — A new mandate from Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly requires federal cash benefits, like social security and disability, to go directly to foster children after decades of using them to pay for state agency operating costs.
The policy change will create savings accounts for kids in state care, and those accounts will follow the child when they age out of the system.
Kansas is neither the first in the nation to make such a change, nor is it the only state that has used federal benefits for state agency costs, but it is the first to change course through executive order.
“Federal benefits are not — and were never meant to be — a state revenue source,” Kelly said at a Friday news conference. “Redirecting these funds to the children is the right thing to do.”
The executive order creates a roughly $9 million gap in funding for the Kansas Department for Children and Families, which oversees the state’s foster care system. That gap will likely have to be filled through general fund dollars, Kelly said, urging the Legislature to codify the order.
Nearly 1,000 children in foster care are entitled to federal cash benefits.
Under the new mandate, agency staff will apply for federal benefits on behalf of children who might qualify. The agency would manage a child’s funds by depositing them into accounts unless another adult can act as a fiduciary until a child reaches adulthood.
The money can be used for a child’s school trip or saved for a car or housing when a child turns 18.
Gabriella Pogány, who appeared with the governor at Friday’s news conference, was in Kansas’ foster care system in her early teenage years, during which she was entitled to receive survivor benefits through the Social Security Administration.
“I would have greatly benefited from having an account to save it in,” she said.
Now an advocate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a charitable children-focused organization, Pogány offers her voice to ensure policies actually benefit those they’re written for.
The new mandate is one piece of many solutions attempting to prop up Kansas’ troubled foster care system. Morgan Rothenberger, communications director for the Children’s Alliance of Kansas, said it’s prudent to look at everything the state is doing to support youths because they are often vulnerable.
“It’s not just about money,” Rothenberger said. “It’s not just about jobs and things like that. It is really about making sure that we all have lifelong connections because that is what changes lives.”
