By now, the troubling numbers about West Virginia’s foster care system are all too familiar. A nation-leading rate of kids in the system. A large percentage of those kids in group homes. Far lower success rates at getting money to help transition to adulthood into kids’ hands.
Now, add a new item to the list.
West Virginia is among a shrinking number of states that continues to intercept the federal benefits due to orphaned foster children and use the money to pay for foster care.
For these kids, the money represents their deceased parent’s legacy: money their parent earned and paid into the federal Social Security system. Increasingly, states are agreeing it’s wrong to use that money to pay for foster care, a service they’re required to provide to all children. In the past six months alone, legislators have passed new laws stopping the practice in Kentucky and Mississippi. Governors have signed executive orders to similar outcomes in Alabama, Louisiana and Indiana.
Now, West Virginia is one of only 11 states that hasn’t attempted to stop taking that money, according to data collected by the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego.
“I think it’s a violent abdication of trust when you have the foster care agency, the very agency that exists for the sole reason of protecting foster children, that that agency is taking resources from foster children,” said Daniel Hatcher, a law professor at the University of Baltimore who has written extensively on the issue.
When asked whether state foster care officials believe using survivors’ benefits to pay for foster care or preserving them to help ease the transition to adulthood is in the best interest of children, Department of Human Services spokeswoman Angel Hightower didn’t answer the question.
“DoHS’s primary responsibility is to ensure the safety, well-being, and immediate needs of children in foster care are met,” she wrote. “Decisions regarding available resources are guided by the best interests of the child, with consideration given to both their current needs and their long-term success and stability.”
While the money represents only a sliver of the funding for West Virginia’s system, for an individual child transitioning out of foster care it can make a huge difference.
“These kids have gotten the short end of the stick,” said Cathy Wallace, an attorney who represents foster kids in Kanawha County. “They’ve lost their family a lot of times or they’ve lost a good chunk of their childhood. That money can make the difference in helping them get to school, buy books. It could get them transportation so they could actually have a job. It gives them just a tiny leg up.”
‘I don’t want the state to have the money’
There are between 5,000 and 6,000 kids in West Virginia’s foster care system. Some are placed with family members, while others go to foster homes. Some live long-term in emergency shelters. Some are sent to group homes or institutions.
All of these placements cost money. In 2022, it cost on average about $1,619 per kid per month, for kids who had been in care for at least six months. For slightly more than half of these kids, the federal government picks up half of the cost while the state pays for the rest. But federal data shows that for up to 10% of West Virginia foster kids, there’s another potential source of revenue: programs administered by the federal Social Security Administration.
These programs include the survivors’ benefits owed to the children of deceased workers who previously paid into Social Security. They also include disability benefits: monthly payments for kids who have a disability. While some states have blocked their foster care agency from using any of these payments for kids’ care, most of the federal effort has focused on preserving the survivors’ benefits.
Martinsburg attorney Layne Diehl, who has seen the state swoop in to intercept both types of federal benefits from the foster kids she’s represented, said she can understand why money that’s meant to treat disability can go to reimburse the state for care.
“Death benefits are different,” she said. “They should be used for the purpose the decedent intended.”
In West Virginia, that’s easier said than done.
According to West Virginia’s foster care policy manual, it falls to the child’s caseworker to apply for a child’s benefits. Despite federal policy listing foster care agencies near the bottom of the list of preferred representatives to manage this money for kids, West Virginia’s manual doesn’t leave any ambiguity.
“A child’s monthly income is considered a resource towards the cost of foster care,” the policy says. “These benefits shall be accepted by the Department and applied toward the cost of providing boarding care and other expenses for the eligible child.”
Any money left over is supposed to be set aside in an interest-bearing account and turned over to either the child or the child’s parents, depending on the circumstances. Hightower, the state spokeswoman, said despite the policy’s wording, the state does not recommend representative payees. She added that the state keeps track of the expenses, and the money left, in its internal accounting system.
But Elaine Goodman, who worked as a CPS worker for nearly six years in Kanawha County, said she rarely saw any money left after the department deducted the cost of care. In one case, she was working with a foster kid who turned 18. The teenager was sure there was money from her survivors’ benefits saved and waiting for her.
“When I looked and asked, she didn’t,” Goodman said. The money had all been spent on her foster care, and there wasn’t any left. “They always say you do what’s in the best interest of the kid. I don’t understand how that’s in the best interest.”
There is no formal requirement that the state notify the child or anyone advocating for them that they received survivors’ benefits. Goodman said often foster children were unaware the money ever existed.
When Diehl was assigned to represent Olivia Frausto in 2020, shortly after both of Olivia’s parents had died, she said it was by chance she heard a brief mention that Olivia could be eligible for federal survivors’ benefits, and that the state intended to file on the child’s behalf.
“I seem to recall one of the caseworkers saying ‘Oh, we’re going to get on that right away.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I would prefer you not get on that right away because I want her to be able to have this money, I don’t want the state to have the money,’” Diehl said. “And that went over like a lead balloon.”
After that, she said it became a rush to see who would get to the Social Security office first. Diehl drove Olivia there herself for several appointments, as well as to then-Sen. Joe Manchin’s local office, to make sure all of her bases were covered. The goal was to set up Olivia, who was 17 at the time, as the person responsible for receiving the funds — not the state.
And it worked. Olivia ended up getting about $11,000 in back payments to start her new life. She used the money to buy a car — a used 2013 black Chrysler 200, with leather seats and a sunroof. She bought a new phone, and her first pair of Jordans. And three years later, living on her own and steadily employed, she credits that money with setting her on her current path.
“I definitely wouldn’t have been in the same position as I am now,” she said. “It was definitely a big booster to be able to be independent on my own, to get my own car and to not have to rely on anybody to drive me around places.”
A nationwide push to stop using survivors’ benefits
Increasingly, both Democrats and Republicans agree that these survivors’ benefits shouldn’t go into state coffers.
In 2021, the practice received widespread attention after reporting by NPR and the Marshall Project. In 2023, Biden administration officials sent a letter to state and local child welfare agencies to encourage these changes. In December 2025, Trump administration officials sent another letter to the 39 states still intercepting survivors’ benefits renewing that push, and offering resources to help states end the practice.
West Virginia was one of those states. In a letter dated December 8, 2025, Administration for Children and Families Assistant Secretary Alex Adams urged Gov. Patrick Morrisey to stop diverting these benefits to offset foster care agency expenses.
Since then, many other states have responded, either with legislation, executive orders or regulatory reform. And meanwhile, Adams has been traveling around the country, touting this and other Trump administration foster care efforts. He was in West Virginia in early May, where he appeared with Morrisey to celebrate the state’s embrace of a separate foster care reform program. There, he didn’t publicly mention Morrisey’s silence on the other issue.
A week later, he was in Indiana, where Gov. Mike Braun announced he would sign an executive order stopping the practice in his state. At the press conference, Adams lauded the action.
“If a child is in foster care whose parents died, that child is entitled to their parents’ survivors’ benefits. Too many states are taxing orphans to offset state costs,” Adams said. “Every state has the power to end that today.”
But in West Virginia, at least for now, the practice continues. A spokesperson for Morrisey didn’t respond to emailed questions about whether the governor would consider an executive order directing his Department of Human Services to stop intercepting foster kids’ benefits.
Hatcher, the University of Baltimore professor, says financial concerns are at the root of why states started this practice in the first place, combined with a reluctance to find other funding sources.
“I think the reason is simply money,” he said. “They view this as a way to bring in more revenue and they view it as a way to bring in revenue behind the scenes without taxation and instead taking resources from the most vulnerable citizens in the state.”
Recently, Morrisey has indicated he’s willing to invest millions of dollars in state money to build more in-state institutions for foster kids, but not to pay for programs that help set up foster kids for adulthood. Only two months ago, he vetoed legislation that aimed to expand independent living options for kids aging out of foster care, saying it would inhibit the state’s “ability to develop and implement a cost-conscious program.”
Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, was the lead sponsor of that bill as well as several other related ones. He said he’s aware of the nationwide push to stop using survivors’ benefits to pay for foster care, and is considering a legislative fix.
Burkhammer said he hasn’t discussed the issue with Morrisey. But he believes it will be less expensive for lawmakers to spend money now to help kids transition out of foster care — whether that looks like preserving survivors’ benefits for their use, or providing more housing — then to pay later if they find themselves homeless, struggling with substance use or incarcerated.
“I think you’re going to spend the money somewhere,” Burkhammer said. “The idea of better supporting kids with that money, instead of supporting them on the back end after there’s a problem, just seems to be a better investment.”
But investments aside, when it comes to survivors’ benefits, the money “belongs to them, so it’s their right to have it,” attorney Cathy Wallace said.
For Olivia Frausto, who successfully used her parents’ benefits to start a new life outside of the child welfare system, it wasn’t just about what the money could buy. At that point, she had given birth at age 14, and survived years of neglect and substandard living conditions. She had hopped from juvenile detention to group homes to foster homes that didn’t work out. Despite her parents’ shortcomings, she felt their loss profoundly. This money was their final legacy.
“Knowing that was the money that came from my parents’ taxes, their hard-earned money. It was good to know that it went straight to me.”
This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by Arnold Ventures and the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.