An insurance crisis continues to rattle California’s foster care system, threatening to displace thousands of vulnerable children. Cayla Mihalovich from out partners at CalMatters, has more.
More than two dozen nonprofit agencies that recruit, train and support foster parents have shut down since 2024. That’s according to the California Department of Social Services.
These nonprofits are called foster family agencies and they find certified homes for about 20 percent of children in foster care. Diana Boyer is with the County Welfare Directors Association of California, a nonprofit group that works to improve social services.
“Foster children are the state’s children. And we all collectively need to be doing more to support them and ensuring that they have homes and families to go to.”
These closures are coming two years after a key insurer backed out of covering foster family agencies because of rising legal costs. Since then, agencies have had to scramble to find other coverage…sometimes seeing rates skyrocket by over 200%.
Pete Weldy is the chief executive officer at the California Alliance of Child & Family Services. The agency represents about 200 foster family agencies around the state.
“We really need to make sure that these agencies are shored up and to really continue to encourage insurance carriers to come back to the market and work with foster family agencies to make that they have the coverage they need so they can provide the important benefits to children and youth.”
The rising legal costs come on the heels of a California law that lifted a statute of limitations and allowed survivors of sexual abuse to sue government agencies. Survivors have filed thousands of lawsuits, and hefty payouts have driven up insurance costs for public agencies across the board, including foster agencies.