Since 2021, Resolve Philly reporters Julie Christie and Steve Volk have dug into how the city of Philadelphia took Social Security benefits from foster kids without telling them. Then, they wanted to expand their investigation to see if other foster care agencies in Pennsylvania were doing the same thing.
Working with Spotlight PA, Christie and Volk requested detailed data from all 67 counties in the state. Each request asked for three years of data, including individual accounting for each child from whom they took Social Security money, the total money taken, and any records showing they notified the child, the child’s attorney, or advocates that the county was seeking to be the recipient of those benefits.
For more than a year, counties slowly sent the newsrooms their data. Some were hesitant to hand it over, citing concerns about the privacy of the children in their care. However, the information was easily redacted. Some counties weren’t sure what the requests were asking for, so reporters ended up sending examples to them or negotiating for records in several mediations with the Office of Open Records.
Some counties rejected the requests outright. Reporters went into mediation with a number of counties. Lackawanna County took the reporters to court in an attempt to prevent providing their records. But with the help of legal support from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the data was acquired.
Requesting the data was one challenge. Cleaning and standardizing the data was a bigger one. No two counties kept records in the same way, nor did they all produce records that could be easily analyzed. Fifty-four counties sent data in a format that could be opened and analyzed on a computer. Among those, 47 had data that could confidently be processed into a single database.
For months, Christie and Volk pored over the hodgepodge of provided data, coming to the startling conclusion that Philadelphia was not alone.
Counties across Pennsylvania are taking millions of dollars in Social Security benefits owed to kids in foster care, a practice some child advocates equate to stealing.
These local agencies contend the practice is allowed under law and needed to offset the cost of care. But it’s often done without a child’s knowledge, and how some counties use the money is unclear.
Since 2020, at least 1,300 children in Pennsylvania have had money taken from them this way, to the tune of at least $15.7 million, according to the newsrooms’ analysis.
The Resolve Philly and Spotlight PA investigation also found:
Now, two state lawmakers are trying to pass legislation that would stop this practice.
