States send kids to foster care and their parents the bill — often one too big to pay

Just before Christmas in 2017, Daisy Hohman, desperate for a place to live, moved into the trailer of a friend who had an extra room to rent. After Hohman separated from her husband, she and her three kids had moved from place to place, staying with family and friends. Now, two weeks after living at this new address, police raided the trailer.

They found drugs and drug paraphernalia, according to court records. Others were the target. Hohman was at work at the time. No drugs were found on her, and police did not charge her.

But child protective services in Wright County, Minn., placed her kids — two daughters, then 15 and 10, and a son, 9 — into foster care. Hohman, county officials argued, had left the children in an unsafe place.

After 20 months in foster care, her three children came back home.

Hohman got a bill from Wright County to reimburse it for some of the cost of that foster care.

She owed: $19,530.07

An NPR investigation found that it's common in every state for parents to get a bill for the cost of foster care.

And the investigation found that two federal laws basically contradict each other: One recent law directs child-welfare agencies to prioritize reuniting families. The other law, almost 40 years old, tells states to charge parents for the cost of child care, which makes it harder for families to reunite.

For parents like Daisy Hohman, those bills can bury them in debt and make it harder to create the stable home they need to get their children out of foster care — and to keep them from being taken again.

The NPR investigation also found that:

• The fees are charged almost exclusively to the poorest families;
• When parents get billed, children spend added time in foster care and the extra debt follows families for years, making it hard for them to climb out of poverty; and
• Government raises little money, or even loses money, when it tries to collect.

NPR analyzed federal and state data, collected published and unpublished research, and sent freedom of information requests to all 50 states and the District of Columbia for documents, demographic information and other data for state foster care and child support enforcement programs.

"Try living off $10,000 a year"

is meant to be a temporary arrangement for children, provided by state and