Making Parents Pay for Foster Care: A Bad Idea for Families

When children are placed in foster care, their parents have a lot to do. They have a long list of tasks to accomplish to make sure they can bring their kids home safely — the primary goal of the foster care system in New Jersey and other states. But some laws push parents to make terrible choices. New Jersey has a chance to fix that problem.

When children are removed from their homes and placed in foster care, current law requires parents to pay for their child’s foster care stay. That may seem reasonable on the face of it, but the law is actually illogical and counter-productive.