Arizona governor robs poor families to give middle-class foster parents a giant pay raise

 

It’s almost as if Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs stole a page from Donald Trump’s playbook. She’s moving to attract greedy potential foster parents to join the majority who are not in it for the money. And the way she is doing it is the equivalent of telling poor families: We’re going to build a wall between you and your children – and we’re going to make you pay for it! 

Fresh from giving a giant rate increase to a group home operator (and generous campaign donor) with a questionable record, Hobbs is lavishing an even bigger rate increase – 50% -- on state foster parents, who already do quite well. 

As of 2022, depending on a child’s age and needs, foster parents got anywhere from $637 to $1,465 per month. That’s per child, not per family. Hobbs says that, with the rate increase, foster parent reimbursement will average between $1,000 and $1,700 per month. 

All of that is tax-free. Foster children’s health insurance is covered, and in some cases, working foster parents can even get childcare aid; the kind of aid that, had it gone to birth parents, might have prevented children being taken for “lack of supervision.” 

I don’t think most foster parents are in it for the money. But wouldn’t we all like to keep it that way? Do we really want someone who says, “I won’t do it for less than $1,000 a month, tax-free, plus health insurance for the kids and maybe a childcare subsidy” to be a foster parent? 

Now, let’s consider who’s footing the bill: 

When Congress replaced “welfare as we knew it” with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the money was supposed to help impoverished families become self-sufficient. But the rules are so vague that some states have turned TANF into a child welfare slush fund. 

In that regard, Arizona is a national leader, diverting more than 60% of TANF funds away from impoverished families.  As ProPublica explained: 

Welfare in Arizona largely goes not to helping poor parents financially but rather to the state’s Department of Child Safety — an agency that investigates many of these same parents, and that sometimes takes their kids away for reasons arising from the poverty that they were seeking help with in the first place. 

How much more good could that TANF money do if it were actually used to help poor people? There’s a clue in why Arizona children are taken away – it’s almost never because of the horror stories that make headlines. 

Of all the Arizona children torn from their families and thrown into foster care in 2024, 87%  did not involve even an allegation of physical or sexual abuse. In fact, almost as many children were taken because of “inadequate housing” as because of physical and sexual abuse combined. 

Hobbs claims the state has to lure in more foster parents with big bucks in order to have places for children now needlessly confined to group homes and institutions. 

Arizona is, indeed, a horrific outlier in this regard. It throws 41% of foster children into group homes and institutions; the national average is 16%. (That kind of makes you wonder why she also gave that big increase to some of those same group homes and institutions.) 

But the solution to overuse of group homes can be found in another ugly Arizona statistic: The state still tears apart families at a rate 25% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in. Stop taking so many children needlessly, often when family poverty is confused with neglect, and there will be plenty of room in the foster homes Arizona already has. 

Hobbs adds insult to family injury by implying that she is providing some special benefit to extended family members who provide kinship foster care. But the giant pay raise applies only to licensed foster parents. Federal law already requires that all licensed foster parents – whether kin or strangers – be paid the same amount. 

The biggest problem in foster care rates is the lack of support for relatives who provide safe, loving homes, but may not be able to meet licensing requirements that can be geared more to middle-class creature comforts instead of only health and safety necessities. Hobbs' giant pay raise doesn’t apply to them. 

And when it comes to discretionary spending, Hobbs took away $6.5 million in support for kinship foster care – and diverted it to group homes and institutions. 

Brick by financial brick, Gov. Hobbs builds an ever-higher wall between children and the families who love them – and makes those families pay for it.