Tens of thousands of people in California will get Social Security benefits after Governor Gavin Newsom signs a bill into law. Newsom will make sure that Social Security survivor benefits go to the foster kids they are meant for by signing AB 2906 into law on Thursday.
The new law says that foster children and their legal guardians must now be told when someone applies for Social Security survivor benefits.
These payments were supposed to go to foster children when they turned 18, but the state took them for years. The bill was passed by the state legislature with a vote of all 100 members before it got to Newsom’s desk last month.
Social Security confirmed changes for retirees in this state
Because of the recent news from Newsweek, they sent emails to the Social Security Administration and Newsom to ask for their thoughts. Last year, Newsom vetoed a similar plan that would have given disability and foster youth survivor benefits.
However, the public may have pushed him to accept it this time. The bills were passed earlier this month by the boards of supervisors in Los Angeles and San Diego. About 70 judges in California also signed a letter asking the governor to sign them.
Amy Harfeld, national policy director at the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law (CAI), said that having access to these stolen items could mean the difference between some California foster children becoming homeless when they turn 18 and having a place to live when they do.
Along with doing something about California’s homelessness problem, we are glad that Governor Newsom added California to the growing list of states that are doing something to stop this disgusting practice.
In California, between 40,000 and 80,000 children are eligible for Social Security benefits. However, once they turn 18, many of them end up poor or without a home.
As of 2011, 29% of former foster youth between the ages of 19 and 21 were living on the streets, according to the Children’s Advocacy Institute.
For example, the money they were supposed to get could have stopped this, but for years, the California governments took Social Security money and put it in their own accounts.
Federal law says that when counties give out Social Security funds, they have to put the best interests of foster children first. However, counties have been avoiding these duties without thinking about the kids who will be getting the money.
In the past, counties in California could apply for foster child benefits without telling the child or their representative, and the court did not have to be in charge of the child’s care.
Children who are in foster care can get Social Security if they are disabled or if their parents paid into the system before they retired, became disabled, or died. But because of old rules, a lot of people never got the money they were owed.
Robert Fellmeth, founder and executive director of the Children’s Advocacy Institute, says that these numbers show a rounding error for counties. If eligible foster kids could get their hands on their money, their lives could be very different.
They might have a real chance at going to school, finding permanent housing, having food, and getting around. California is one of many states that want to make sure that these foster children’s Social Security payments are better protected.
In 30 states and cities, steps have been taken to protect foster youth benefits as of this summer. Arizona, Washington, D.C., Oregon, and Massachusetts no longer hold payments from people who are in the foster care system.
Also, people in the U.S. should know that Governor Newsom and lawmakers in California are pushing for coverage of a group that does not get enough attention. This is similar to work being done in other states, says financial literacy teacher Alex Beene.
People who qualify for Social Security as foster care survivors are rarely talked about when protecting Social Security benefits in general, even though they are an underserved group that depends on this money a lot.
Passing this law would be very important for making sure that they get a lot of money from the system in the coming years.
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