California’s private foster care agencies are running back to Sacramento, demanding another taxpayer bailout to cover rising insurance costs. Cal Matters reported recently that the state’s foster family agencies want another $30 million, on top of the $31.5 million they got last year.
One of the many reasons these agencies should not get a bailout — or any other help — can be found in the very reason they’re in trouble: …
When state legislators started easing statutes of limitations to allow child abuse survivors to sue, the lawmakers probably had in mind institutions like churches, the Boy Scouts, etc. But it should have come as no surprise that a great many lawsuits have targeted private foster care agencies, because so very many children were abused on their watch (in the name of “child protection,” “child safety,” and “erring on the side of the child,” of course).
Particularly vulnerable: agencies running the worst form of “care” – group homes and institutions. As a result, their insurance premiums have skyrocketed. Some agencies even had to close.
Here’s the most important thing to understand: Private agencies that run group homes and institutions having to shut down is not a crisis or a calamity. On the contrary, it’s great news! As I posted two years ago:
The group homes and institutions are harmful even when they´re not rife with physical and sexual abuse. The whole model is a proven failure, and there are far better alternatives. But these giant, greedy, well-connected agencies are scarfing up all the money for such alternatives. (And when I say greedy: Have you seen Ron Richter´s salary for running one of them?)
[Update: he’s left, but continues to ally with those wedded to a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare.]
But the agencies are doing what they do best: predicting that horrible calamities will befall children unless they get some kind of bailout and/or near immunity from accountability to all those children horrifically abused on their watch.
Two years ago, California agencies predicted foster children would suddenly be homeless if they had to close. I explain here why that is nonsense. Sice them, at least 19 California agencies reportedly have closed, and yet the counties that run child welfare in California apparently are coping just fine. It helps, of course, that California has been safely and steadily reducing the number of children torn from their families in the first place.
Nevertheless, California fell for the fearmongering, at least in part. So far, New York has not.
But according to Insurance Business, an insurance industry trade publication, those greedy agencies are trying again. This time, they’ve gotten at least two lawmakers to introduce a bill to provide a so-called $20-million “bridge fund.” Worse, the bill would require the state agency that sets rates for these places to make absolutely positively sure the rates are set so high they cover the entire cost of insurance.
This is a backdoor bailout. Under this provision, no matter how abominably agencies allow the children in their care to be treated, and how much that jacks up their insurance premiums, they need never change, secure in the knowledge that taxpayers will pick up the tab.
And if anyone needs another reminder of why that’s a bad idea, check out this lawsuit settlement in California – in a case where, one would have thought, the private agency would have been especially vigilant.
Image from Easy Peasy AI
Last month, I wrote a column for the New York Daily News about the attempt by New Yorks´s private foster care, group home and residential treatment agencies to get a taxpayer bailout of up to $200 million. Why do they say they need it? To pay settlements in some of the hundreds of lawsuits filed by survivors of abuse in their foster homes, group homes and institutions, going back decades. Otherwise, the agencies say, the could go out of business.
They say the going-out-of-business part as if it´s a bad thing. On the contrary. The group homes and institutions
are harmful even when they´re not rife with physical and sexual abuse. The whole
model is a proven failure and there are far better alternatives. But these giant, greedy, well-connected agencies
are scarfing up all the money for such alternatives. (And when I say greedy: Have
you seen Ron Richter´s salary for running one of them?)
Losing a few of these places would be a net plus, something
I discuss in detail (along with Richter´s salary) in the Daily News column.
Fortunately, New York State lawmakers rejected the bailout.
They didn´t buy the agencies’ b.s. – though, unfortunately, some media that
should know better did.
And, it seems, the agencies have at least one lawyer for the
survivors on their side. According to the
child welfare trade journal, The
Imprint:
“These victims’ lives have been ruined forever. They deserve justice,” Helene Weiss, a lawyer whose firm is representing dozens of survivors suing under the Child Victims Act, said in an email. “It is incredibly disappointing that New York State decided not to prioritize the needs of survivors of sexual abuse — survivors who were harmed under the State’s watch.”
No, Ms. Weiss. The
state decided not to prioritize the very agencies on whose watch these
survivors were abused. It would be perfectly reasonable to create a bailout
fund that would apply to survivors of a given agency only after that agency had gone out of business – but not one to keep
the agencies alive.
The story also claims that “All sides of the lawsuit [sic]
had urged passage” of the bailout. It´s
not clear if this means all survivors bringing all the lawsuits, those
represented by Ms. Weiss or something else.
No survivor is quoted. But certainly for those who haved
endured the unendurable, if presented by their lawyers with a claim amounting
to something like: “look, if the agencies´ claims about going broke are true, this
may well be the only way you´ll see any compensation for what was done to you”
no one could begrudge them supporting it.
But what if it were presented a different way? What if it were presented like this:
If the agencies´claims about bankruptcy are true and if
bailout fails, your payment will be delayed: it´s possible you´ll never see a
dime. But if the bailout passes, the
message to the agencies will be: You can let this keep happening to children on
your watch over and over and over, for decade after decade after decade. The agencies will get the message that
they´re too big to fail and they can get away with anything.”
In that scenario, the survivors get payment – but would they
view that as justice?
I hope no survivor ever has to make such a choice. But if it came to that, I would begrudge no survivor any answer they chose to that question. I just hope someone asks.