By: Susan Vivian Mangold
This paper provides background to the debate on the relationship
between poverty and the child welfare system by describing the
historical and current entanglement between public assistance and
federal foster care mandates and funding: you must be eligible for
public assistance to be eligible for foster care maintenance
payments. The paper points out the lack of analysis at the
origin of the interrelationship between public assistance and
foster care. The importance of federal funding for foster care
through the public assistance program was minimized and buried in
other public assistance amendments that elicited much greater
attention and discussion. The paper also exposes the
administrative and resource waste caused by the continuation of the
entanglement. The paper proposes that all questions regarding
welfare eligibility be eliminated from eligibility determinations
for abused and neglected children and that all administrative
assessments exclusively focus on the needs of the children and
families in the child welfare system.