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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People really get $900 for fostering a kid?[/quote]

Yes, in DC.  http://www.nacac.org/adoptionsubsidy/stateprofiles/dc.html shows the rates:  the lowest rate is over $1000 a month and it can go up for older or more medically complex kids.  I don't begrudge foster parents that: maintaining a separate bedroom, feeding a kid, buying clothes and shoes and school supplies, transporting to visits and therapies and school and other stuff, and actually spending the time to raise a kid who's been through a lot should be compensated well.  I would charge more than $35 a day on Air B&B to have a stranger come stay in my house, and I wouldn't have to feed that person or change its diapers.

But when you compare it to TANF, the difference is astounding.  I think there are a lot of families involved in the foster care system who wouldn't be if the parents would get even a fraction of the foster care subsidy.  A family with 2 foster kids gets at least $2021 a month. That same mom would get $427 a month in TANF if she'd given birth to those kids.  Money would not solve everything. Plenty of rich families abuse or neglect their kids.  But with an extra few hundred dollars a month, some families would have a lot more time, diapers, books, relaxation, and other things that really help.[/quote]

That's an interesting comparison between foster payments and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a form of welfare). It's worth noting that DC has made some improvements to TANF recently. These are supposed to improve the success rate of the program in transitioning families to paid work, which was its original intent (the T stands for "Temporary"). This is being done by recognizing the different levels of readiness. For example some people are very close to employable and just need resume and job search help, whereas others need more basic help to organize their lives before they begin to think about looking for a job.

Anyway don't want to derail OP's thread about school segregation but it's an interesting issue. There is some evidence that the financial benefit is one incentive (not the only!) for taking a kid into one's home, and this is not ideal. Plus, many families taking kids are borderline poor themselves. It's not the picture of foster parenting that people have ingrained in their minds from so many Disney and made for TV movies, with the lonely, childless rich couple bringing a ragamuffin into their Upper East Side mansion.

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