Legal Aid Society: NYC is keeping disabled & orphaned children’s social security money
CITYWIDE — NYC HAS BEEN DEPRIVING DISABLED and orphaned children in foster care of their Social Security benefits, the Legal Aid Society said in testimony submitted ahead of a City Council Committee on Children and Youth executive budget. From 2011 to 2022, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) kept $18.8 million in Social Security Survivors Benefits meant for children in order to pay for foster care-related costs, Legal Aid said in a statement Friday. Most of the children are Black and Latino children from impoverished communities, and Legal Aid wants them to be paid back the money that was supposed to go to them.
“These benefits are meant for our clients, some of our city’s most vulnerable children, not for ACS to cover the costs of foster care,” Dawne Mitchell, Chief Attorney of the Juvenile Rights Practice at Legal Aid said in a statement, pointing to other states that preserve the money for the kids.
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View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.