Taxing Vulnerable Children and Families Through Stategraft: It is Time to End Racialized Wealth Extraction in Foster Care
As unjust and counterproductive public policies go, taxing vulnerable children and families is among the worst. For years, experts have been sounding the alarm that foster care “child support”—making parents pay the state when it takes away their children—is bad family policy and fiscal policy. Importantly, critics have also pointed to the myriad ways the practice is unlawful. New guidance from the federal government to the states provides a generational opportunity to dismantle this form of stategraft in the foster care system. In this Case Study we highlight promising legislative and administrative responses to the recent federal guidance.