2013 NFPA Conference -- Day 4

Judge Thomas "Britt" Hammond was awesome yesterday! He had us grooving to music while encouraging foster parents to keep at it -- because a child's life depends on it.

Conference attendees, please stop by the Message in a Bottle display to write a quick note -- funds from each bottle "purchase" will go toward NFPA's Youth Scholarship Fund. Here are a few that we have already:

Our board has also been having a little fun while working hard ... public policy chair David Sharp will surely appreciate this message in a bottle:

Well, today we find out who's the best-dressed beach dude or dudette during lunch. Don't forget to check out the photos later!

On our agenda today:

Foster care education reform signed into law

by David Sharp

The National Foster Parent Association (NFPA) joined in a letter of support for the A Plus Act, also referred to as the Uninterrupted Scholars Act (S. 3472 and H.R. 5871). The legislation amends the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to enable child welfare agencies to access the educational records of children in foster care to help improve their educational success. The agency may disclose the records to other parties with a court order.

FERPA, originally created to protect the confidentiality of education records, has been a barrier to child welfare agencies, as well as foster parents even when educational agencies are willing to collaborate in the exchange of information. Bipartisan sponsors in the Senate are Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Al Franken (D-MN). The House lead sponsors are Reps. Karen Bass (D-CA), Jim McDermott (D-WA), and Michelle Bachmann (R-MN).

This bill was passed by Congress on January 1, 2013, but was not enacted before the end of its Congressional session, however was signed into law by President Obama this week! While this bill will be a big WIN for children and their agencies, it does fall short of giving the most important stakeholders, i.e., foster parents, access to their dependent children's school records.

NFPA will continue to work with congress to amend this bill to include all stakeholders in a child's life.

David Sharp is the Public Policy chair for NFPA.

From our mailbag: A letter of thanks to David Sharp

I would like to tell you about our experience with the National Foster Parent Association and what they did for us in a time of need.  

Getting educational records in a timely manner

Dear foster parents,
The National Foster Parent Association is participating on the National Education Workgroup for Children in Foster Care. Our participation involves at least two national conference calls per month and information gathering for the workgroup. On our last call, we were asked to gather information on any concerns foster parents may have about receiving education records on children/youth placed into their care at placement or within a few days after placement.

Support the Expansion of the Adoption Temporary Taxpayer Identification Number

As the primary voluntary caretakers of children in foster care, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) allows foster parents to claim the children in their care on their federal taxes. However, in the past decade, in an effort to prevent divorced parents from both claiming children on their taxes, the IRS has begun requiring all parents to provide the children’s social security numbers on their tax forms. According to a senior IRS official, this has resulted in a dramatic decrease in “double dipping” by divorced parents.

This new requirement has inadvertently prevented foster parents from claiming children in their care on their federal taxes because the Social Security Administration has a memorandum of understanding with states that prevents the states from sharing social security numbers with foster parents in an effort to protect children’s privacy. Foster parents cannot claim children without access to social security numbers. This means that any birth family member with the child’s social security number may claim the child on his taxes and there is no way to track or stop this. Only when a counter claim is made by the person actually providing the daily care for the child can the situation be investigated.

This oversight in the regulations needs to be changed to ensure that a child’s actual caretaker, rather than a person who simply has access to the child’s social security number, receives the tax benefit. Fortunately, there is a straightforward solution that will fix the situation: expand the availability of Adoption Temporary Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ATIN) to foster parents.

ATINs are routinely issued by the Internal Revenue Service as temporary taxpayer identification numbers where the pre-adopting taxpayers will be adopting within the next two years and do not have and/or are unable to obtain the child’s Social Security Number. Allowing foster parents to request and receive ATINs would eliminate the need to obtain the child’s original social security number and permit foster parents to legitimately and appropriately claim tax deductions for children in their care. It would also protect the children’s privacy by limiting access to their social security numbers. This simple change would increase tax fairness for foster families, protect children, eliminate fraudulent claims by non-custodial parents and would not have a large federal fiscal impact.

Sarah Gerstenzang, NFPA's Region 2 Advisor