Elections Have (Child Welfare) Consequences
Some Thoughts On the Last Election and the Next Few Years
Today, President Donald Trump was inaugurated, and in his inauguration speech, he sketched out his vision for the next four years. As far I’m aware, he didn’t mention foster care nor child welfare in this speech, and it never came up in his campaign (I’d be delighted to be proven wrong). That isn’t exactly surprising: foster care isn’t typically discussed on debate stages, journalists don’t ask hard-hitting questions on how to fix the child welfare system, and voters never list it as one of their top issues.
Though this isn’t surprising, it is still tragic, for while the foster care system might not be a priority for most candidates, the issues these candidates do care about all have implications for the foster care system. It will be these implications — these consequences — that I will discuss in today’s newsletter.
For those that may not know — mainly for the international subscribers — not only did Donald Trump win the presidency, but the Republicans (his party) won majorities in both the Senate and the House. With this trifecta, as it is called, they have promised sweeping changes across a variety of dimensions, many of which will affect the foster care system. The direct impacts will be easy to see, but it will be the indirect ones that need to be discussed a bit more. Before I discuss them, however, let me give readers a semi-lengthy preamble about politics and child welfare reform.
Way back in the 2020, during the height of the pandemic, I had an internship with a well-known child welfare advocacy organization. While there, I learned a ton, but one of the lasting lessons was about how advocates should approach politics. My supervisors at the time — two of the kindest, smartest folks in the field (they read this newsletter but I promise even if they didn’t, I’d still say nice things about them) — told me that while many advocates can afford and are often incentivized to be overtly partisan, this is not the case for child welfare advocates.
During the pandemic, a slew of bipartisan bills were enacted to shore up the system and support the children involved in it, and my supervisors were wheeling and dealing this whole time, chatting with staffers for politicians left and right and building a coalition to muscle this legislation through. I’m sure many advocates were working the phones these last few months as the bipartisan Supporting America’s Children and Families Act was debated, shaped, and ultimately passed. In short, there is this bipartisan element of foster care which provides a bit wiggle room when it comes to legislation.
The subscribers of this newsletter reflect this tentative bipartisanship. They come from all over the political spectrum. There are several that supported the President (and some did so reluctantly), and several that worked diligently to defeat him (including on Vice President Harris’ campaign). Some are libertarians, who see the ability of the state to remove children from their parents as the epitome of government overreach. Others are democratic socialists, who view child welfare as an expansive concept involving supporting kids at the start, rather than a narrow system that focuses specifically on addressing harms after they occurred. All, however, are united by a concern for foster children.
This might sound very…optimistic. And maybe it is. Maybe the disagreements far outstrip any minor agreements that may exist. All I’ll say is that the potential for agreement still exists, and I’ve seen this play out in my own life. I’ve met with lawmakers and laypeople alike and was able to forge common ground on issues that might run counter to their stated ideology. Plus, given how narrowly divided the country is, we (being child welfare advocates) must figure out a way to get folks of all stripes onboard with our vision. Easier said than done, but still, it must be tried.
Okay, two last notes before beginning:
Folks, you might be able to guess that I am not a fan of President Trump. To be transparent: it’s true, I am not a fan. However, I strove to keep this analysis as unbiased as possible. I simply looked at his campaign promises and analyzed them using what we know from social science and history. I minimized my own commentary on the issue itself and instead looked at how that issue intersects with the foster care system.
From tariffs to TikTok, Trump has made a ton of promises (as all candidates do), and virtually all of them have some impact on the well-being of children and families. I can’t discuss all these issues in a single newsletter, so I stuck with the most prominent and most straightforward of issues.
Let’s begin.
(Sorry, one more note: I intend on having an audio version of this newsletter posted by Wednesday, so be on the lookout for it!)
Mass Deportation and the Foster Care System
President Trump has promised time and time again a campaign of mass deportation. Of the the list of 20 core promises listed on his campaign website, the second reads as follows: “Carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” According to Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, deportations are set to begin tomorrow — they might have already begun as you read this. Trump has said that the US military might be used to facilitate these deportations. I could go on, but the point is clear: Trump seems very serious about this. Let’s unpack what this might entail for the child welfare system.
Millions of US-born children have parents who are not citizens. Estimates vary, but according to the American Immigration Council, there were approximately “4.4 million U.S.-citizen children under the age of 18 [who] lived with at least one undocumented parent as of 2018.” We can only assume that this number has grown in the past seven years, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s stick with his 2018 figure. What happens to children that are citizens of the United States when their parents are deported or detained? There are a few possibilities:
Families Will Be Deported Together: I am not an expert on immigration, and I’m not well-versed in constitutional law, so I don’t know how legal this possibility is. With that said, legality might not matter to Trump and his immigration team, for they’ve said repeatedly that families can be deported together, regardless of the citizenship status of the children in these families. For example, here’s Tom Homan in November on 60 Minutes:
Cecilia Vega, 60 Minutes Correspondent: "Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?"
Homan: “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.”
Again, the question remains: can a US citizen be deported? The law seems to be clear that they cannot, but what if the citizen in question is a four-year-old? We shall soon find out.Children Will Remain With Extended Family: Another possibility is that US citizens with deported parents will live with whatever family that remains in the US. This could mean that a parent, an aunt, or a cousin with citizenship could assume responsibility for that child. This is only possible, of course, if that child has folks in their life that are willing and able to raise them at a moment’s notice.
Children Will Be Placed in Foster Care: Should a child with citizenship remain in the country without family, they will undoubtedly be placed in foster care. This would be absolutely chaotic for all parties involved, and here’s a quick hypothetical that underscores why:
Let’s assume that just 1% of the 4.4 million US-citizen children are placed in the foster care system. This is likely to be a very, very conservative estimate, but let’s just run with it
1% of 4.4 million is 44,000 children. As of 2022, there were 368,530 children in foster care. This deportation operation, then, could constitute a 12% increase in the number of foster children.
This would destabilize the foster care system — a system not prone to being stable in the first place. Survey the US states and you will find a system struggling to care for the children already in foster care. For example, several states are struggling to even house children, opting to place them in hotels, in offices, or to send them out of state.
If you think that this is an issue that will only impact Texas and California, you’d be wrong. For example, as of ten years ago, 56,518 children in Tennessee were US citizens living with at least one undocumented family member. This number is certain to have grown in the last decade. Tennessee is already sending hundreds of foster kids out of state due to “insufficient in-state resources” and are placing children “with no known disabilities in group homes designed for disabled adults.” How will the state handle another, say, 500 foster children?
Mass deportation will be an already extraordinarily costly undertaking, and I think the people who are advocating for it need to grapple with how the perpetually under-resourced child welfare system will respond to an influx of children.
An Eviscerated Social Safety Net
Some context: the tax cuts enacted by Trump in 2017 are set to expire at the end of this year, and Trump intends on extending these cuts. Scott Bessent, Trump’s selection for Secretary of the Treasury, said during his confirmation hearing that if these tax cuts are not “renew[ed] and extend[ed], then we will be facing an economic calamity.”
However, extending these could cost $4 trillion over the next ten years. To pay for these cuts, dozens of competing proposals have been advanced over the last few months, and nearly all of them have involved substantial cuts to the social safety net. Given the connection between poverty and foster care involvement, these cuts will certainly have an impact on the child welfare system. Let’s take a look just one of the proposed cuts being discussed:
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): We don’t have to do much speculating here: the previous Trump administration tried to cut SNAP benefits — or food stamps, as they are more commonly known — multiple times. Here’s the gist:
Trump’s last budget proposed a cut to the food stamp program by approximately 30 percent over the next ten years, and proposed regulatory changes that would boot 700,000 people from the program. His 2019 budget called for cutting approximately $213 billion over the following decade. His 2018 budget called for cutting $193 billion from the program over ten years. We should expect these efforts to continue in the next four years.
A list of cuts have been circulated by House Republicans, and within this list there were two line items regarding SNAP. One idea was to reform the Thrifty Food Plan (which helps determine how benefits are calculated), which the document estimates could save up to $274 billion. Another was to “reform” SNAP benefits in order to yield $22 billion in savings (the reforms themselves are left unstated). All together, about 40 million participants could have access to benefits curtailed.
How does this pertain to the child welfare system? Well, several studies have found that there is an intimate connection between access to food stamps and child maltreatment. To cite one example of many, one study found states with more accessible food stamp benefits have between 8.2 and 9.3 fewer CPS-related investigated reports per 1,000 children. To cite another example of many, a group of researchers found that “increasing access to benefits may reduce CPS and foster care caseloads from 7.6% to 14.3% for every 5% increase in SNAP caseloads.”
Some might ideologically agree with the proposed cuts, but if you do, you should at least familiarize yourself with the consequences: when folks can’t afford food, they find themselves unable to care for their children. If efforts to cut SNAP benefits succeed, we must be ready for a potential increase in children entering the foster care system.
This is just SNAP. House Republicans are also considering cutting $2.3 trillion from Medicaid, a health insurance program for people with low incomes. This alone accounts for nearly half of all the proposed cuts. There’s a lot to unpack here, but consider this: the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid “reduced risk factors for child neglect and child abuse.” Specifically, researchers found that Medicaid expansion was associated with reductions 13.4%, 14.8%, and 16% in the average rate of child neglect reports for children aged 0-5, 6-12, and 13 - 17, respectively (per 100,000 children).
Collectively, should these cuts succeed, the people advancing them must be held to account if we see skyrocketing rates of abuse, neglect, and entry into foster care.
Odds and Ends
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that one benefit might actually be expanded over the next few years: the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The official 2024 Republic Party platform states that in addition to making the tax cuts permanent, the party seeks to “expand the Child Tax Credit.” In brief, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 expanded the CTC from $1,000 to $2,000 for qualifying families, and if the aforementioned tax cuts expire, then the CTC will return to $1,000.
However, in August, Vice President Vance stated that he’d love “to see a child tax credit of $5,000 per child.” This, importantly, will apply to any taxpayer, regardless of income level. As far as I can tell, Trump has not commented on this proposal, nor has there been any chatter about it from Trump or Vance recently. But should this latter figure be approved, it would be a major deal for low-income families. Let’s take a quick look at the last expansion of the CTC and how it impacted families:
In 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act temporarily expanded the CTC to $3,600 per child younger than age 6 and $3,000 per child up to age 17. This credit was made fully refundable — meaning you get it even when you don’t owe any tax — and half of it was disbursed in monthly payments for the first six months, as opposed to once a year. This expansion expired at the end of 2021.
Put simply, the expanded CTC had a monumental impact, evident in the following statistic: it cut child poverty nearly in half in 2021, from 9.7 percent to 5.2 percent, and lifted 2.9 million children out of poverty.
In addition to the above, the CTC also kept kids safe: one study found that it led to a reduction in the number of child abuse and neglect-related visits to pediatric emergency department visits in Atlanta.
So, if the Trump-Vance Administration are able to enact such a substantial expansion of the CTC, it could mean less impoverished children, reduced rates of neglect and abuse, and reduced entries into foster care. I should note that if the other cuts we discussed earlier are also enacted, any benefit from an expanded CTC might be muted.
In terms of the foster care system itself, some have speculated that the Administration that took office today could be far more committed to keeping families together than we might think. For example, one advocate wrote that because of Vance’s upbringing — his mother struggled with addiction and he was raised by his grandmother — he will have “an unparalleled platform to champion child welfare reform that honors the sanctity of family relationships.” We shall see.
The American First Policy Institute — an organization founded and staffed by former Trump officials, many of whom will likely work in the next administration — published a report last January spelling out ways to improve the country’s foster care and adoptions system. Specifically, they advocate for the following:
Increase support for faith-based organizations and partners
Implement Expanded Adoption Tax Credits for Foster Families
Support Organizations that Aim to Decrease the Number of Children Entering Foster Care
Better Support Foster Parents (through more training and increased access to mental health support)
Review and Eliminate Burdensome Regulations (such as income and criminal background check requirements)
This report was aimed at developing policy guidance for states, but the above suggestions will certainly factor into Trump 2.0’s approach to child welfare. We can also look at just some of the actions that the Trump Administration took last term to forecast what he might be done in the next few years:
In June 2020, he signed an Executive Order that, among other things, called for increased cooperation between various stakeholders (state and local governments, nonprofits, businesses, and faith organizations) to better facilitate adoptions, support kinship care, and improve data collection on foster families.
His administration filed a brief supporting the plaintiffs in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, arguing that on the grounds of the free exercise of religion that a “taxpayer-funded organization should be able to refuse to work with same-sex couples and others whom the group considers to be in violation of its religious beliefs.” In 2021, SCOTUS decided this case 9-0, in favor of Catholic City Services, finding that its “religious liberties were being violated when its contract with the City of Philadelphia was cancelled because the agency refused to certify same-sex couples as foster parents.”
In 2018, Trump signed the Family First Prevention Services Act. The circumstances that led to the passage of this legislation were unique. After years of trying to get it enacted, it was passed not as a standalone bill but as part of a package to re-open the government during a shutdown in 2018. As far as I’m aware, Trump has never mentioned the legislation on the campaign trail, but did praise it in a statement during his presidency. Given that a recent bipartisan child welfare bill was passed earlier this month, there is the potential for additional legislation to sneak on through.
There was much I didn’t mention here — from child care to vaccines — but in the next four years, I believe (for better or worse) that I will have ample time to cover these subjects. This section simply illustrates that while we can make guesses about what is to come, we should always remember one thing: though the foster care system rarely tops political agendas, it bears the burden of every administration's choices.
Elections Have Consequences
This was one of the closest presidential elections in US history. Seriously. The margin of victory — 49.8 to 48.3 — was the fifth smallest since 1900. But, as the sayings go, the People have spoken and elections have consequences.
I held my tongue on my own personal thoughts on the changes above, but I will allow myself a single sentence that communicates how I feel about some of the proposals under discussion: any policy or practice that harms children, that takes food out of their mouths, that takes their health care away, and that unnecessarily separates them from their families, I stand firmly and resolutely against.
However, given how close this election is, my job is not to simply bash my head hopelessly against the wall in hopes that change will occur. Our job — our mission — is to work on crafting a better world for children and families. At times that means we must fight, and in this fight, “we must not flag nor fail.” However, if experience is any guide, this means we must forge productive relationships with people we don’t agree with to extract whatever win we can with the power that we have. What we cannot do is give up, for there are millions of children and families who will be harmed if we disengage. For their sake, let’s stiffen our spines and strengthen our resolve.
In short, here, and elsewhere, I will continue to criticize attempts to hurt children and their families and celebrate efforts to help them. Wherever you may fall on the political spectrum, I hope you join me in this and know that my inbox is always open for questions, comments, and (constructive) debates.
Given that today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let us close with a poignant and relevant quote of his: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
Current Read(s):
This past week — and the week ahead — I started on what has thus far been one of the funniest fiction books I’ve read in quite some time. More than that, I’m reading a book that is relevant for child welfare. I’m reading Temptation, by János Székely, a book I picked up on a trip to Budapest last year.
Temptation is told from the point of a view of Béla, a Hungarian child abandoned by both his mother and father and forced to live in a foster home ran by a mean, spiteful woman. Béla spends the early part of his childhood contriving new ways to get enough food to eat and strategizing on how he can escape from the circumstances of his birth.
I know the premise sounds anything but funny, but Béla is both tough-as-nails and someone desperately trying to find (and hide the fact that he is trying) some love from anyone in his little hamlet. The book has been described as “Dickensian” by some reviewers, as it shares similarities with Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. Considering that it’s nearly 700 pages, I look forward to another week of reading!
What’s going on in the world of child welfare?:
Kansas Will No Longer Take Money From Foster Children, Governor Says (KSN) — The headline speaks for itself, and what a headline it is! But progress is progress!
The Number of Hawaii Children in Foster Care Dropped to Lowest in Decades (Associated Press) — Some tentatively good news, but we won’t know for sure until this trend is understood better. The state’s Child Welfare Services Branch said “that it isn’t sure what caused the recent drop.”
President Biden Signs Into Law Legislation to Strengthen Child Welfare System and Bolster Child Support Enforcement Rules, Includes Moore-Led Proposals (Urban Milwaukee) — There has been astonishingly little mainstream coverage on this, but one of the biggest child welfare bills in recent memory was passed on a bipartisan basis and signed by the President.
Discussions of Foster Care Reform in this Legislative Session (Idaho News) — I’ll pull a quote from this article that is still surreal to read: “One big win people are talking about is the removal of all foster kids from Airbnb's.” We should celebrate this, of course, but wild that this was occurring in the first place.
Mississippi Pilot Program Offers Driver’s Education for Foster Care Students (Mississippi Free Press) — Very cool news! I know so many former foster youth who emancipated having never sat in a driver’s seat, and they take years to actually get their driver’s license.