‘The bottom line is, money should not be contributing to destabilizing families––it should be supporting the safe home environment that families want.’
Each year, states collect tens of millions of dollars from thousands of parents whose children have been removed from home, using child support payments to pay for foster care. The impact is that parents are financially strained, and research shows that children remain in foster care for longer periods of time as a result.
In 2026, New York issued new state guidance advising that child support referrals are prohibited in any case that would adversely affect the child’s health, safety or welfare, or impair the family’s ability to reunify, effectively ending the practice.
Here, Dr. Jill Berrick, professor of social welfare at the University of California-Berkeley discusses the importance and impact of this policy shift––and further changes to child support policy that are needed.
Q: You’ve been working to change child support policy across the country. Where did that start?
A: I’ve been doing research on child welfare for about 30 years. Back in 2008, I was working on a book called Take Me Home about reunification, following women who had had contact with the system and fought to get their children back. One day, while I was interviewing one of the women, she went to get her mail and came back weeping. She showed me a bill from the state of California for when her children were in foster care. It was for about $20,000, ‘I can’t pay back this debt,’ she told me. ‘There’s no way in my lifetime I’m ever going to pay this back.’
That experience started me down a path to look into this issue.
Q: What do we know about the impact of charging parents for foster care?
A: The best research evidence comes from Wisconsin where, in 2017, Maria Cancian and others looked at the effects of child support enforcement on families who had been separated. Their research showed that, when mothers were required to pay an increase of $100 in a child support obligation, that extended their child’s stay in care by an additional 6.6 months, on average. For Black mothers, the difference was four times higher. And, it’s not only that kids stay in care longer, but 20% of them don’t go home.
Child support obligations put parents in an absolutely untenable situation, forcing horrible choices that have long-term implications for families. When I talked to parents who had been affected by this, the mechanisms became more clear. The vast majority of families involved with child welfare have very low incomes––about a third of parents whose children were separated from them had an income less than $10,000 in the year prior. These parents are trying to meet their case plan requirements to get their child back and face tremendously complicated choices. Sometimes, they have to make choices between whether to pay rent and utility bills or pay their $200 child support obligation to the government.
In California at the time, the average obligation was around $225 a month. Some think, ‘I better pay that money to the government, so I’m going to not pay my water bill this month.’ Then a couple months later, the judge says, ‘I can’t send your child home with you if you don’t have a home, or you don’t have water or electricity,’ and the child stays in care longer.
It can be even more complicated than that. In 50% of these cases, there’s already a child support enforcement case against the father. When the child goes into foster care, the $200 that was coming into the home every month is now going to the government. Now, mom not only has her own $200 to pay to the government, but she’s $200 short of what she was getting from dad. She’s $400 short. Then it’s not just the water bill that can’t get paid.
Q: How did you start addressing this in California?
A: In 2021, I talked to people in California to see if there would be any appetite for change. We knew from the research that this policy was really getting in the way of kids returning home and families returning to each other. I wrote a bill and Isaac Bryan, an assembly member who had spent time in foster care as a child and really cared about the issue, was just a terrific champion. We pushed the bill through and got the governor’s signature.
After that, we wanted to erase child support debt, or arrears, that parents owe the state for their children’s time in foster care. This debt follows families even after they have reunified and continues to accumulate interest, which places a significant financial burden on families. Eventually, the California Department of Child Support Services issued guidance directing counties to cancel arrears for parents whose children were in foster care––providing relief to thousands of families by removing the debt from their accounts entirely.
After that work in California, I realized that there were 49 more states where there was a lot of damage being done to families. I have a couple of undergrads working with me, and we have been tracking different state efforts and sharing research on this topic to get this addressed everywhere. Our website Families Not Fees tracks and showcases state efforts to narrow or end child support collections and arrears for parents whose children are placed in foster care. According to our best estimates, 28 states now have worked towards reform.
Q: In 2022, the federal government provided guidance encouraging states to limit this practice, directing child welfare agencies to assign child support “only in very rare circumstances.” What was the impact of the 2022 federal guidance on this policy?
A: By 2021, the National Child Support Engagement Association developed a resolution saying that they thought that the policy should change. Federal law already said that child support should only be enforced where appropriate and in the best interests of the child. The federal child support commissioner and Children’s Bureau director re-examined the law and used the research evidence to clarify that ‘best interest’ means going home when it’s safe to do so. If the barrier to reunification is money, then clearly that’s not in a child’s best interest. New guidance came out in July of 2022 to reflect that.
There was relief across the country for many who were interested in this issue––and more than half of all states have taken action in response.
Q: In 2024, legislation to end child support enforcement when children are in foster care did not pass in New York, but state guidance came out in April 2026 to end this policy. How did that happen and what can we expect will be different as a result?
A: It was so disappointing when the legislation to address this failed in New York. But my work in California had taught me about the other path: making policy changes through the administrative branch. I reached out to the Office of Children and Family Services and found the staff person assigned to address this issue. We met several times to talk about the minutiae, and she got it done.
The new guidance from the state clarifies the harms that can occur to families as a result of this practice and specifies that referrals to child support should only occur under very rare circumstances. In essence, the child welfare agency in New York closed the door on new child support referrals. New York City had already ended this practice, and this new guidance is going to gradually reshape practice at the local level going forward.
Q: What are the next steps for states like New York that have made these reforms?
A: The guidance in New York does not address arrears or debt, which is a much more complicated issue. New research published last year shows that when families have reunified––but the family is still carrying child support debt––the likelihood of reentering foster care is double what it would be if they didn’t have that debt.
Efforts to address all of the old arrears are going to be slow across the country. By my best count, only 12 states have addressed arrears.
It’s important to develop alliances between the child welfare and child support advocacy communities so everyone is aware that these arrears exist and that they are highly problematic. We need to bring these two advocacy communities together to press for changes, whether through legislation, or figuring out if the child support office can do an administrative adjustment. The bottom line is, money should not be contributing to destabilizing families––it should be supporting the safe home environment that families want.
Interview by Mahima Golani