Trump administration tells states to end ‘orphan tax’ on foster kids : NPR

Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Alex Adams during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, DC, July 22, 2025.

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The Trump administration has asked states to end the longstanding practice of accepting Social Security benefit checks from some children and youth in foster care.

In a letter to the governorsSent in early December, Alex Adams, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, called on states to end what he calls the “orphan tax.”

Adams, who oversees federal child welfare policy, has called on states to stop collecting Social Security survivor benefits for children in foster care. The monthly allowance is paid to a child whose mother or father has died but who had worked and paid social security contributions.

States routinely accept these checks from children and youth in foster care as reimbursement for the cost of caring for a child – although by law states are required to provide foster care to all children who need it.

“There is no moral justification why orphans should pay for it themselves,” Adams told NPR. “They are not placed in foster care for any fault. And they certainly should not be asked to pay their own bill.”

A NPR investigation with The Marshall Project in 2021, revealed the problem of states accepting survivor benefit checks from children in foster care.

Since then, Democratic and Republican leaders several states and cities have decided to end this practice.

The average monthly survivor benefit check is about $1,100.

For a child who has lost a parent, this money can help stabilize a family. When the child is placed in foster care, money may be put aside when he or she leaves care and does not have a parent to help pay for school, rent, or a car to get to work.

These Social Security benefits, Adams says, “could be the last resources that your deceased parents could leave to their children. To have them taken away from that child and applied to the costs of state agencies – that’s why I call it an orphan tax. It’s morally shocking to me and it’s morally corrupt.”

He adds: “Charles Dickens could not have conceived such a cynical plot.”

Justin Kasieta knows it. He told Adams his story: He was 13 when his father died of cancer, and survivor benefits kept his family together for a while. But when her mother suffered health problems, Kasieta and her four siblings were placed in foster care.

Kasieta claims Michigan State cashed $18,000 of his checks over three years.

Almost all children in foster care are poor, and almost all come out broke. Kasieta, now 25, won a scholarship and works at an investment bank in Atlanta.

“I like to point out that I am truly the exception to the rule,” Kasieta says. “Unfortunately, the rule is that most kids will end up homeless. They won’t go to college. They will be unemployed.”

“I really think that if we want to make stories like mine the rule rather than the exception, we need to support children as they exit foster care,” he says. “You can’t take their money.”

Adams changed policy in Idaho when he was director of the state Department of Health and Welfare. When he took the job, a colleague sent him an article about the practice of cashing out survivor benefits.

“Frankly, my first reaction in Idaho was there was no way this was going to happen,” he says. When he gathered his team together, they told him it was true. He moved earlier this year to end the practice.

In his new position, heading the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Adams quickly sent notice to the governors of the remaining 39 states to change their policies.

His boss, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., approved the move. “At HHS, our guiding principle is simple: Every child deserves a home and a fair chance to thrive. But when state agencies stack the dice against children, we step in,” Kennedy said in a statement. in a video with Adams.

At ACF, Adams oversees federal funding for child care and Head Start. Late last month, ACF halted payments to child care programs in Minnesota.

The move to guarantee children in foster care their benefit checks has won support across all political parties.

The Biden administration has also taken some steps. Officials from HHS and the Social Security Administration sent letters suggesting states reconsider paying survivor benefits, but gave states room to act.

There is now new momentum as conservatives – within the Trump administration and in the states – tackle the problem.

Amy Harfeld of the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law has long advocated for reform. She says conservatives are on board because they see the issue as “government overreach into children’s private assets. Because it wasn’t state money to take and they took it anyway.”

Some state officials have argued that it is a budgetary issue. They need money.

But Adams rejects this. He also served as Idaho’s budget director, where he cut programs.

“I was considered a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge when I was state budget director. At no time would I have sought to balance our budget on the backs of orphans.”

Adams says states don’t need them because Social Security survivor benefits don’t amount to much. He estimates they total about $34 million nationally.

“That represents a fraction of one percent of the total child welfare bill paid by federal, state and local governments,” he says.

There is a similar problem but more difficult to solve. In addition to survivor benefit checks, states also cash disability checks for children in foster care.

Unlike survivor benefits, there is a limit to the amount everyone can keep in Supplemental Security Incomeor SSI benefits. As a result, state child welfare agencies should take additional steps to return these checks to children in foster care.

Adams said he wanted to take care of it if he had stayed in Idaho. He does not commit to addressing this issue in Washington.

A solution to return these disability checks to foster youth would likely require action by Congress and other federal agencies.