New York City will stop collecting social security checks from children in foster care

• Children in New York City foster care will now be able to keep their social security checks.
• Until now, city officials collected their benefit checks to reimburse themselves for the cost of their care.

Children in New York City's foster care system will now be able to keep the social security benefit checks they receive after historically having to hand that money over to the city, NPR first reported.

In the past, New York welfare officials collected the benefit checks to help pay for the care of the children while they were in foster care, which is a common practice around the US, and results in millions of dollars being taken from children with dead parents or disabilities.

New York City has announced that they are abandoning the practice, and will now put the benefit checks in savings accounts that the children will later be able to access when they leave foster care, are adopted, or age out of the system, a spokesperson for the Administration for Children's Services told Insider.

"ACS is committed to supporting children and youth both in and after they leave foster care, and this new child-centric social security benefits plan is just one example of that commitment," agency Commissioner Jess Dannhauser told Insider in a statement. "ACS is proud to be one of the first child welfare agencies nationwide to institute such a plan, and it is our hope that other jurisdictions will follow suit."

The move comes after a groundbreaking investigation by NPR and The Marshall Project that reported on the practice and its criticism from children advocates.

The investigation resulted in review of the practice around the US, including in Nebraska, where the legislators proposed a study to related to the use of these benefits.

There is also a proposal in Philiadelphia to stop the practice.

Maryland already puts the checks into savings accounts for the children, NPR reported.

Dannhauser told NPR that children will be taught how to save their money and then it can later be used for college, rent, or other expenses they will face when leaving the system.

"Those resources can mean the difference between a really rocky start to that transition or one that they really have a foundation to launch from," he told NPR.

In December of 2020, there were 15,016 children in New York State foster care.

John DeGarmo, the director of The Foster Care Institute, previously told Insider that children in foster care often arrive in the system with a history of trauma, and even those who don't have preexisting mental-health conditions are likely facing anxiety associated with being removed from their homes, DeGarmo said.

When individuals leave foster care, they're at elevated risk of homelessness, unemployment, and incarceration, NPR reported.