Foster advocates say collapse of CA system is imminent without support | Opinion
Imagine being a child, taken away from your family and home because of a terrible — often deeply abusive — situation. You’re placed with a new family who, despite all their best intentions, have no idea how to raise a small, angry, sad child who has already racked up years of trauma in such a short life so far.
Most foster families can’t do it alone. And that’s why, for the hardest cases and the most needful of foster children, there exist foster family agencies.
Foster family agencies — commonly known as FFAs — are private non-profit organizations that work to recruit foster parents and help them get certified to host children, or train them to work with high-risk placements.
Many of these agencies specialize in services for medically-fragile children, LGBTQ+ youth, older foster youth and children with unique needs. They undergo rigorous licensing processes and provide 24/7 support to foster families, including reunification services, supervised visitation, assistance with transportation, medical care coordination, respite care and much more.
Ideally, a child would be placed in “kinship care” with another member of their family, but when that’s impossible, they are placed with a foster family. Nearly 20% of foster children in the state are with a family or a program supported by an FFA; and nine out of 10 foster family agencies here are backed by the same insurer, NIAC — the national insurance company, Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California.
NIAC is a single non-profit risk pool, where a group’s total costs are combined to calculate premiums. There are very few insurance options available to FFAs outside of NIAC.
But last June, NIAC announced that it would “be forced to non-renew” many of the state’s foster family agencies soon, “unless immediate changes are made to the judicial process,” citing a handful of financially-damaging lawsuits. NIAC subsequently began its non-renewals in September 2024.
Meanwhile, the state created more stringent Continuum of Care regulations — and therefore higher liabilities — which in turn caused a decrease in foster families willing to take in high-risk children. Reimbursement rates to FFAs from the state stayed stagnant or decreased, but overhead costs remained the same.
Now, California counties, foster care providers and other stakeholders are begging the Legislature to set aside $47 million to ensure the non-profits that care for high-risk foster children, and avoid a total collapse of the foster care system in California.
It’s pivotal that the state includes foster children in its budget, but advocates say they have little hope that Gov. Gavin Newsom will agree.
If California’s FFAs are not given the necessary bridge funding to make it to 2027 when the state has promised to finally implement rate reform — the precarious foster care system in California might collapse, taking thousands of vulnerable children along with it.
Counties are unprepared
Eight FFAs in the state have already closed, and one is scheduled to close soon, “porting” more than 60 children and nearly 50 families to other FFAs, to Short-Term Residential Therapeutic Programs, or to the state’s unprepared Department of Child Welfare Services.
“County child welfare offices (will be) inundated suddenly with foster youth,” said Adrienne Shilton, vice president of public policy and strategy for the California Alliance for Children and Family Services. “What we potentially will see, longer term, are kids in offices, kids in unlicensed settings and actually losing track of kids — becoming homeless and worse. These placements will be disrupted without the 24/7 level of care the FFAs provide.”
In 2023, Sacramento County officials were found housing foster children in cells in a former juvenile detention facility for at least six months. The Bee reported at the time that “state officials had observed children sleeping in cells with metal bunk beds and toilets covered with wood.”
The resulting investigation led to the department receiving five years of Superior Court oversight, but the overall issues that led to Sacramento County housing foster children in a former detention facility have not been solved.
Future depends on state budget
The intentions of the state of California are clearly to reform and serve foster youth to make things better, but the methods are having unintended negative consequences. Increased regulations, with increased barriers and a lack of adequate resources to actually run these programs is making it near-impossible for FFAs to continue operating.
“Our insurance has quadrupled to 401% increase three months after we had negotiated our contracts … from $215,000 to $863,000,” Brittany Lucas, CFO for a Northern California non-profit, said at an April 3 Senate Budget subcommittee hearing on April 3. “We are doing all we can to survive this, while holding our mission and values closely, truly barely making ends meet.”
The collapse of foster care?
The state already has the mechanism to ensure that no traumatized child is ever again forced to sleep on top of a conference room table, on inflatable mattresses between office cubicles, or in a jail cell — but it necessitates funding and insuring FFAs.
The state must continue to have high-expertise foster care environments for children with special needs or behavioral issues. FFAs already provide that service, but California is letting them fail because the state’s leaders will not make room for foster children in such a tight budget.
We’ve seen this in the past: When California’s money is tight, funding for the most vulnerable among us gets cut. But if there is any depth of feeling among us for poor and sick children living in squalor and pain, then Californians cannot afford to let that happen.
Save the foster care system, and you’ll save children’s lives; it’s as simple as that.
This story was originally published April 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
