James Wooden’s mom struggled with dependancy, and he typically discovered himself adrift, not realizing what day or month it was. “I didn’t perceive how time labored,” he mentioned.

When James was 14, his mom died of pneumonia, and he entered California’s foster care system. As a minor with a deceased father or mother and a incapacity, James was entitled to federal advantages, totaling $780 a month, a few of which his mom had accrued in the course of the years that she labored as a nurse.

However James by no means acquired the advantages. The federal government obtained the cash as a substitute, in line with James and his adoptive father, Wayne Stidham.

It’s a longstanding apply for a lot of states or counties to use for the federal advantages of foster kids, typically with out their data, after which use the cash to cowl among the prices of their care, in line with authorized advocates for youngsters and congressional researchers.

Every year, roughly 27,000 foster kids are entitled to those advantages as a result of they’ve both misplaced a father or mother or have a incapacity. There are at present about 390,000 children in foster care in the US.

“It’s incorrect,” mentioned James, who’s now 16 and lives in Grass Valley, Calif., situated within the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. “Foster youngsters may make plans for that cash.”

The advantages, the advocates say, ought to be put aside to supply further sources for the kid like summer season camp or artwork lessons. And when the kid leaves foster care, they are saying, the cash may very well be used to pay for school or for a safety deposit to lease an house.

Some state and county officers say the federal funds are getting used to learn the youngsters and that if cash is left over, the kid receives the funds upon getting older out of foster care.

A spokeswoman for the well being and human providers division of Placer County, Calif., which oversaw James’s foster care, declined to touch upon his state of affairs, however mentioned the county is required by the state to use for the federal funds and use them for the “good thing about that particular person little one, which incorporates meals, shelter, clothes, medical care and private consolation gadgets.”

However this apply, which was been beforehand dropped at gentle by advocates at Children’s Advocacy Institute and journalists at The Marshall Project and NPR, is more and more being questioned in courts, in Congress and by officers within the Biden administration. Many states have additionally been altering their legal guidelines to make sure that a minimum of among the kids’s cash is conserved.

“We see state companies attempting to fund themselves off the backs of the very kids they’re presupposed to serve,” mentioned Amy Harfeld, nationwide coverage director of the Kids’s Advocacy Institute, which works to enhance high quality of life and protections for foster care youth. “It’s outrageous.”

In a press release, the Social Safety Administration mentioned this week {that a} little one’s federal advantages should be spent on their “present wants and upkeep” and that if there was cash left over, the state “should preserve the remaining funds for the kid’s future use.”

The company added that it had lately issued a letter reminding state foster methods “how you can use and preserve S.S.A. advantages and to supply them help in complying with our necessities.”

Ms. Harfeld, who began pushing to vary these practices 15 years in the past, mentioned that in lots of instances, the cash by no means will get conserved by states.

She added that kids whose federal advantages are collected by the state obtain the identical foster care providers as those that don’t obtain the profit.

“There isn’t any such factor as foster care plus,” Ms. Harfeld mentioned. “The one distinction is that some kids are being charged for his or her care whereas all the opposite youngsters are having their care paid for by the state.”

The apply displays the scattershot ways in which states have traditionally paid for foster care. Within the nineteenth century, a mixture of non-public and spiritual teams and a few state companies supplied boarding providers for the care of foster kids.

At the same time as foster care got here to be managed by state and county governments within the twentieth century, federal policymakers had been reluctant to allocate an excessive amount of cash to those methods for worry that some folks may grow to be foster dad and mom merely for the cash, mentioned Catherine Rymph, a dean and professor on the College of Missouri, who wrote a e-book on the historical past of foster care.

That has left a system that in lots of locations is stretched, Ms. Rymph mentioned. “It’s so poorly funded, states will claw again no matter cash they’ll.”

However kids say their cash — notably advantages from a deceased father or mother — shouldn’t be used to backstop the system. When Anthony Jackson was 12, his mom died of a coronary heart assault in a motel room the place he and his siblings had been residing.

He regarded his mom as a “powerhouse,” a fixture in her St. Paul, Minn., neighborhood who drove a city-run shuttle transporting older folks to physician’s appointments and to the grocery retailer. Whereas she labored, she paid into Social Safety, which might entitle her kids to survivor advantages.

After his mom died, Mr. Jackson, now 20, bounced between totally different kin earlier than being positioned in foster care in 2017.

Whereas in foster care, Mr. Jackson realized from his former girlfriend’s mom that kids with a deceased father or mother may be entitled to survivor advantages. However when he inquired with the Social Safety workplace, Mr. Jackson was instructed that the state was receiving the advantages on his behalf.

“That was one thing that was hers, and I didn’t obtain it,’’ Mr. Jackson mentioned.

He mentioned the cash may have helped him attend an artwork faculty in Savannah, Ga., that he was focused on however couldn’t afford. Mr. Jackson attended faculty domestically in St. Paul, however is now not enrolled.

In a press release, the Minnesota Division of Human Companies mentioned when the foster care system applies for advantages on behalf of a kid, the cash shouldn’t be “used to fund the state’s little one welfare system broadly.” The assertion additionally famous {that a} new state regulation handed this yr says that the cash can “solely be used for the care of the kid.” The state may also require that kids be notified if the state is receiving federal advantages on their behalf.

Throughout the nation, the tide is shifting. Greater than a dozen states, counties and cities have established new guidelines or permitted laws requiring that a minimum of among the advantages be conserved for the youngsters. There are additionally payments which have been launched in additional than a dozen different states that will mandate conserving the cash or require kids to be notified about their advantages.

In a series of congressional hearings in March, Martin O’Malley, commissioner of the Social Safety Administration, instructed the company may have greater than the present algorithm to make sure states will put aside and preserve among the advantages.

At one of the hearings, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, mentioned she “practically fell out of my chair” when she was instructed of this apply.

“Seizing the advantages that go to a few of our most weak kids simply to finance different elements of state authorities simply isn’t proper,” she instructed Mr. O’Malley.

In a 2021 report, the Congressional Research Service mentioned that in 2018, states had used $179 million of federal advantages that had been owed to about 27,000 foster kids, which is a comparatively small quantity out of total funding for foster care.

James Wooden remembers his mom, who died when he was 14, giving him three items of recommendation: Don’t use medication; don’t observe the identical path she did; and begin making profession plans by freshman yr of highschool. “It actually caught with me,” he mentioned.

James, who’s within the ninth grade and was adopted final November, determined to pursue a profession in regulation enforcement. He’s going to honor his mom’s needs and desires the federal government to honor the intent of survivor advantages.

“In case you ask anybody, I believe it is vitally disrespectful to vow somebody one thing and take it away,” James instructed a state legislative committee in Sacramento final month. “Particularly when it’s a child with a deceased father or mother.”