One of Georgia’s Democratic U.S. senators, Jon Ossoff, is pushing for more oversight of a practice frequently called “hidden foster care.”
These are cases where states allege a child is neglected or abused and offer the parents the option to voluntarily give up custody, usually to a relative.
The practice is pitched as a way to avoid traditional foster care and keep children within their extended families. Child welfare courts never get involved.
But there’s little information about how often states intervene in families through this process because they are not required to report these cases to the federal government.
That would change under the bill Ossoff introduced with Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, titled the Foster Care Placement Transparency Act.
“This legislation does not prohibit these practices,” Ossoff said in a press call. “This legislation is aimed at ensuring there’s transparency around the frequency with which these practices are used.”
It would require states to disclose the number of children informally separated from their parents for their safety, similar to the way they report the number of children formally taken into foster care.
The senator said the data would help lawmakers determine whether more federal protections are needed.
While there can be benefits to the informal placements, Melissa Carter, who is executive director of the Barton Child Law and Policy Center at Emory University, said on the press call that parents can feel coerced into the arrangements.
State workers may not connect relatives who assume custody to the financial support or resources they need to care for the child either.
Ossoff also recently led a monthslong investigation into Georgia’s child welfare system and highlighted the story of a child who was killed by a caregiver in one of these informal placements.
