President Trump Should Protect Foster Children’s Federal Benefits 

Credit First Lady Melania Trump for spotlighting the nation’s foster care system at the president’s recent address to Congress by hosting a foster parent and a former foster youth. President Trump highlighted her guests and the First Lady’s leadership of a scholarship fund for college-ready foster youth. Together, they brought overdue attention to the hundreds of thousands of children living in the child welfare system in the United States. 

To follow up, the administration should enact common-sense reforms to the nation’s child welfare systems to protect the most vulnerable children in society. The first action should end the morally bankrupt practice of foster care agencies covertly seizing the federal benefits owed to foster children.

Between 40,000 and 80,000 foster children are entitled to Social Security disability or survivor benefits. They are owed these benefits if their parent dies after paying taxes into the Social Security system or if they have a disability and qualify for the Supplemental Security Income program. In other circumstances, foster children may deserve survivor benefits if their deceased parent was a veteran. These funds can amount to nearly $1,000 per month. Foster children could use these resources to overcome difficult circumstances and pay for living expenses when they leave the child welfare system. 

But in a gross abuse of authority, state and local child welfare agencies routinely take those funds and use them to offset the cost of children’s time in foster care. In 2018, 38 states and the District of Columbia collected about $180 million in Social Security benefits owed to foster children. This theft amounts to a 100 percent tax of federal income owed to orphans or disabled children. 

This immoral policy has been on the national radar since 2021. But President Biden did nothing to prevent states from applying for and taking foster children’s federal benefits, even though senior members of his administration knew about the problem. For example, former Social Security Administrator Martin O’Malley publicly recognized that seizing benefits was unfair. But he didn’t stop it. 

While Washington has failed to act, state lawmakers across the country are passing laws to protect foster children’s benefits. In 2023, Arizona enacted the first comprehensive law prohibiting child welfare agencies from taking foster children’s benefits. According to the Children’s Advocacy Institute, at least 31 states and jurisdictions have taken some action to protect foster children’s benefits, with more than 20 states considering legislation in 2025. 

But President Trump has the power to issue an executive order directing the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services to prevent states from taking foster children’s benefits. The federal government spends $11 billion on child welfare programs, including roughly $5 billion distributed to states for foster care, and has statutory authority under the Social Security Act to oversee state child welfare policies. 

An executive order to protect foster children could also include other common-sense reforms. For example, President Trump could direct states to ensure that all the funds that Congress provides each year to help youth transition into adulthood reach those who need them. For example, Congress provides funding for education and job training vouchers worth $5,000 to youth aging out of the foster care system. But states don’t reliably promote or distribute all of these funds. In January, the Government Accountability Office reported that 28 states returned more than $6 million in voucher funds that could have helped a foster child with education and job training expenses in 2022. 

It is hard to believe that states couldn’t find teens who would have benefited from a voucher. Haley Ferguson, the First Lady’s guest, said that she rarely finds scholarships for students connected to the foster care community. “I don’t want to become a statistic” but rather “the first person in my family to graduate from college,” she explained. The Trump administration should direct states to do more to find students like Haley who would benefit from these scholarships. 

For too long, politicians in Washington have looked the other way while government bureaucrats have stolen hundreds of millions from the vulnerable children they are supposed to be protecting. The Trump administration should put a stop to it once and for all.