Massachusetts struggles to recruit and retain qualified foster parents. Foster parents, including licensed kinship caregivers, provide temporary homes to children in the custody of the state. By some reports, Massachusetts has lower rates of kinship foster care than other states. Foster parents receive stipends, ranging from $34.12 to $40.39 per day, which are often well below the compensation required to reimburse the costs of care. For instance, foster parents are often expected to pay for daycare out of pocket. State agencies studying the problems of retention and recruitment have noted that the foster care model is predicated on an unrealistic expectation of a full-time stay at home foster parent, foster families with expendable financial resources, or underpaid kinship care.

Over the years, foster parents have created support networks to advocate for themselves and the children they support. Foster parents have long argued that the state-provided support is inadequate given the nature of the work. Private agencies, licensed by the state, have emerged to offer additional support beyond what the state provides. Even with the influx of private agencies, by one estimate 40% of foster parents leave the “thankless job” each year due to the lack of available support. But in recent years, foster parents in Massachusetts have championed a different way to address the needs of foster parents: collective bargaining rights.

The Push for Foster Parent Collective Bargaining Rights

For the past three legislative cycles, Representative Tricia Farley-Bouvier has introduced a bill that would grant foster parents the right to collectively bargain with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Family. Reintroduced as H229 last January, the bill is currently in the Joint Committee on Children, Families, and Persons with Disabilities. Although the bill is likely to stall out again, foster parents’ efforts to win a union illuminates their role as paid caregivers and their relationship to the state.

While foster parents often provide care in isolation, many participate in support and advocacy groups. The idea for the bill emerged in one such support group in 2019, when a foster parent shared her experience of belonging to a union in her capacity as a daycare provider — that same union would go on to advocate for the adoption of H229. 

The effort gained steam in 2020 as the pandemic highlighted systemic problems related to communication, safety, transparency, and inconsistencies in the implementation of the program and the expectations placed on foster parents. Foster parents worried about the risk of exposure from new placements but feared that refusing to take a new placement would lead to retaliation. Closed schools placed an increasing strain on foster parents, who had no input when DCS ended daycare placements. 

If enacted, H229 would classify foster parents public employees of DCF for the purpose of collective bargaining with the state. Foster parents would not qualify as public employees for other purposes such as state employee workers’ compensation or retirement benefits, and they would be prohibited from engaging in any work stoppages. 

Proponents argue that H229 would give foster parents an avenue to advocate for themselves and the children they support. Under H229, foster parents could win union recognition by following the procedures for public employee unionization in the state. After recognition, the union, representing all currently licensed foster parents, would bargain over mandatory subjects including the responsibilities of foster parents, training, pay rates and reimbursements, expansion of respite care or time off, participation in the development of plans for foster children, and dispute resolution processes. 

Foster parents supporting unionization see the legislation as the state recognizing their value not as a placeholder, but rather as advocates for foster children. They argue that having a union would give them a voice, resulting in increased retention of foster parents while protecting foster parents from retaliation by DCF. And increased resources would enable more kinship foster care; more support would enable more relatives to care for children in the custody of DCF.

The supporters of H229 introduced the legislation in its earliest form as a complement to another law, the Foster Parent Bill of Rights, enacted in 2022. While some proponents of H229 argue that the Bill of Rights has no method of accountability that is not directly tied to DCF, many have heralded it as an important step in winning a voice for foster parents. The law creates processes to give foster parents more information and resources, including no less than ten paid days of respite care. In other states, foster parents often must pay for respite care or rely on others to provide unpaid respite care. Some foster parents who supported the Bill of Rights, however, oppose H229, indicating their discomfort with the idea of foster parent unionization. In fact, two presidents of the Massachusetts Alliance for Foster Families (MAFF), the advocacy group that backed the Bill of Rights, disagree over H229 — the founding president had the idea for H229, but a recent president voiced opposition to the bill, arguing foster parenting should not be seen as employment. 

The History of Foster Parent Advocacy and Employment

While opponents characterize the bill as creating conflict between the needs of children and foster parents and an adversarial relationship between foster parents and the state, the question of foster parents’ status is not a new one. Florida, for instance, authorized a state partnership with the non-profit Neighbor to Family, Inc. that allowed foster parents to become employees of Neighbor to Family. In addition to a yearly salary, foster parents received childcare and respite care. The program showed successful results in increasing retention of parents. Neighbor to Family has continued to press for the professionalization of foster parents, and other programs operate with professional foster parents. Massachusetts has foster parents who work for agencies as employees with salaries and benefits, and foster parents who use private organizations often receive higher pay rates, greater support, and even sign on or referral bonuses.

Nor is H229 the first attempt to win statewide collective bargaining rights for foster parents in the country. In 2006, Washington foster parents advocated for a similar bill. After seeing the success other paid caregivers, such as daycare and home care workers, had in winning collective bargaining rights, the Foster Parent Association of Washington State affiliated with the Washington Federation of State Employees. While the legislature ultimately dropped WFSE’s proposed language authorizing collective bargaining rights for foster parents, foster parents nonetheless won improvements including state health insurance and quarterly meetings with Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services.

Each time foster parents have sought collective bargaining rights, they have passed legislation in the process. Foster parents and advocacy groups continue to push for support — MAFF, for instance, has identified increasing pay as a priority during the upcoming budget cycle. Beyond the legislative process, foster parents have sought recourse through other legal avenues to gain improved conditions. In California and Washington, advocacy groups brought lawsuits claiming inadequate reimbursement rates under the federal Child Welfare Act. And while many advocacy groups have remained silent on the question of statutory collective bargaining rights, that has not stopped foster parents and those advocacy groups from continuing to work collectively to seek better conditions. Even without formal collective bargaining rights, foster parents have won improvements, like the Foster Parent Bill of Rights, for themselves and the children in their care. If foster parents want a seat at the table with DCF, though, they will need collective bargaining rights.