Who Foots the Bill When a Child is Placed in Foster Care in Wisconsin?

Tuesday, April 7th, 2026 -- 1:00 PM

(Natalie Yahr & Brittany Carloni, Wisconsin Watch) Who foots the bill when a child is placed in foster care?

According to Natalie Yahr and Brittany Carloni with Wisconsin Watch, in Wisconsin, it’s sometimes parents and even the kids themselves. Like many U.S. states, Wisconsin allows child welfare departments to take federal benefits intended for children who have a disability or a deceased parent.

The practice means some foster children are paying for care the state is legally required to provide, care others get for free. The state also bills some parents for foster care, even when parents are trying to bring their kids home and struggling to make ends meet.

In Wisconsin alone, these practices cost foster children and their parents more than $10 million a year. Now those approaches are facing growing criticism for prolonging family separation and depriving kids and families of much-needed resources.

In response, some states have enacted bans or restrictions, but Wisconsin hasn’t, despite bipartisan support. Wisconsin child welfare authorities take around $3 million each year in Social Security benefits intended for foster children, according to the state’s Department of Children and Families.

The agency that oversees foster care in Wisconsin now favors ending the practice too. Children who turn 18 in foster care are at a higher risk of homelessness, incarceration and health problems.

For those children, the state’s goal should be to “help launch them into success,” Department of Children and Families Secretary-designee Jeff Pertl told lawmakers at a March hearing. Holding these payments in trust is one way to do that.

“We do a lot of things for kids who are aging out of care as an agency, but I would say (this is) probably one of the areas where we could spend just a little bit of resources and generate pretty significant improvements in people’s lives,” Pertl said.

Last year, Gov. Tony Evers proposed limiting the practice. Under his plan, child welfare departments must screen all incoming foster children for eligibility for Social Security benefits, apply on behalf of eligible children and hold the money in trust. The proposal included $3 million to hire a contractor to apply for benefits and manage those accounts.

The plan would have allowed the money to be used for expenses the agency would not typically cover for a child, as is the case now, but it would have barred agencies from using it to reimburse themselves for the care they’ve already agreed to provide.

Leftover funds would be transferred to the child or their guardian when they leave foster care.  The proposal was one of more than 600 items Republicans on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee removed in a single vote, a move that has become routine in Wisconsin’s divided Statehouse.

Months later, the President’s administration called for an end to the “orphan tax.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent letters in December to 39 governors.

The letters demanded their child welfare agencies stop taking children’s Social Security survivor benefits, which are based on contributions made by a deceased parent. “Every earned benefit dollar belongs to these foster youth, not the government agencies or bureaucrats,” Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary of the department’s Administration for Children and Families, said in a statement.

In February, in the final weeks of the legislative session, Wisconsin state Sen. André Jacque, a Republican from New Franken, introduced Senate Bill 990, which would require child welfare authorities to save Social Security benefits for foster children in their care.

Unlike Evers’ proposal, it does not require authorities to check eligibility or apply for benefits.

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