Minnesota is stealing survivor benefits from foster youth

By Ziigwan Frazer, Op-ed contributor Tuesday, May 12, 2026

The national spotlight has been on Minnesota for fraud investigations in recent months, but another form of theft is quietly happening largely under the radar — stealing funds from vulnerable foster youth.

If this sounds crazy to you, this process occurs in an insidious manner.  After losing a parent, a foster (someone who has experienced the foster care system) may still have one financial lifeline: Social Security survivor benefits. In Minnesota, that lifeline is quietly intercepted and redirected to county funds. We have known that this has been happening for years, but what we have not seen is action. 

Since 2022, reporting, advocacy, and the voices of young people have made clear that counties take Social Security survivor benefits meant for children in foster care and use those funds to reimburse themselves for the cost of care. The facts are not in dispute. What remains in question is whether Minnesota will act. 

As a foster myself, I know what it means to grow up inside systems that make decisions about your life without you, around you, and too often at your expense. I also know what it means when harm is clearly named and still allowed to continue. Over time, that inaction sends its own message: not just that the system failed, but that the failure was acceptable. 

Survivor benefits are Social Security payments a child can receive when a parent dies, based on that parent’s work history. They are part of what a parent leaves behind to help their child survive and build a future. For young people in foster care, those benefits should be protected. Instead, government agencies in Minnesota have too often applied for those benefits in a child’s name and used the money to offset public costs. 

This issue is not new. We have had the evidence and the testimony of Fosters, who lived through it, yet we are still waiting for action that matches the seriousness of the harm. Awareness without action sends a clear message to young people who have already endured profound loss: even when the truth comes out, systems may still choose convenience over what is right. 

One Foster leader we know describes losing her mother at 13, entering foster care at 15, and being homeless with her first child from ages 15 to 18. She knew about survivor benefits because they had helped her family survive before she entered care. She asked about them repeatedly, only to be told accessing them would be “double dipping,” even while she was living in a shelter. She later asked the obvious question: if she was homeless and the state was not helping her, where did her survivor benefits go? 

At Foster Advocates, we hear from young people who learned years later that tens of thousands of dollars intended for them had been taken while they were in care. One young person discovered this only after becoming homeless. Money connected to the parent they had lost had not been preserved for their future; it had been used instead. What happened was not experienced as a bureaucratic detail, but as betrayal. 

Supporters of the current practice point to real pressures. Foster care is expensive, counties face financial strain, and survivor benefits are legally accessible. But those realities do not justify taking money that belongs to bereaved children. Funding models should not depend on using a child’s death benefit to balance a budget. 

Survivor benefits can total tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a childhood. If a funding model depends on using a child’s death benefit to balance a government budget, the problem is the funding model. Public care is a public obligation and should be funded through public dollars, not through the quiet extraction of a child’s financial assets. 

In Minnesota, that harm is not evenly distributed. Fosters are disproportionately black, indigenous, and youth of color and are more likely to experience poverty and instability. Taking survivor benefits from children in state custody deepens inequities that the state says it wants to address. 

In December 2025, the Administration for Children and Families issued guidance urging states to stop using foster youth’s Social Security benefits to reimburse themselves for care and instead protect those funds for the child’s future. Minnesota is not operating in a vacuum; it has clear federal direction, alongside years of testimony from young people, pointing toward the same solution. 

Minnesota has a path forward in Senate File 4635. Viable legislation would prohibit the use of survivor benefits to reimburse costs of care and require preservation of those funds for foster youth. Yet it has stalled, in part due to resistance from the very agencies responsible for care. 

This is not just a policy question — it is an ethical one. Continuing this practice, despite clear harm and available solutions, is difficult to defend. Minnesota has an opportunity now to set a precedent by choosing a different path. 

Our own Governor has spoken about his family surviving and living with dignity due to these very benefits. Foster youth should not be excluded from that opportunity.  

Protecting these benefits is not complicated. What has been missing is the will to act. Foster youth continue to carry the impact every day. Will Minnesota finally do the right thing?