Divided NY Court Upholds ‘Host Homes’ for Vulnerable Kids

A New York appeals court has upheld the legality of “host family homes” for children — a model of temporary care in which struggling parents place their kids with volunteer caregivers who are vetted by nonprofits but do not have to be licensed as foster parents. 

Critics say the model skirts longstanding social service oversight laws and could result in inadequate care or unnecessary family separation. In 2022, three children’s advocacy groups filed a lawsuit against the state, alleging then-new Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) regulations created a harmful “shadow foster care system” without proper legal authority, and failed to ensure modern standards for out-of-home care. 

In a 3-2 decision issued April 10, a majority of justices on an Albany appeals court panel disagreed. They upheld a lower court decision in the state’s favor that found the child welfare agency’s program to be legal. 

“Petitioners’ argument that OCFS exceeded its authority when it created the Host Family Home program is unpersuasive,” wrote Elizabeth Garry, a presiding appellate court justice. She called the regulations “a valid exercise of OCFS’s rulemaking authority.”

Garry’s opinion noted that ‘host homes’ operate in at least 38 other states and constitute “a safe and reliable pool of volunteers for parents otherwise lacking ‘a village.’” 

The state’s Office of Children and Family Services calls its host home program a “bold, new initiative” that “will support New York’s families without requiring the involvement of the child welfare system.” In an emailed statement, a spokesperson praised this month’s ruling: “We agree with the decision and look forward to having additional opportunities to provide services to children and families to forestall any need for engagement with the child welfare system.”

Two appeals court justices strongly opposed the majority’s decision.

A stinging dissent authored by Justice Stan Pritzker warned that “OCFS has gone rogue” and created a program that threatened to leave kids “in an administrative mousetrap with no way out.” 

In a joint statement last week, the plaintiffs — which included the nonprofits Lawyers for Children and the Legal Aid Society of New York City and the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo — said they intend to appeal the decision.

“We are thrilled to be one step closer to saying ‘yes’ to parents who have been asking for this vital community-based resource.”

— Laura Galt, Safe Families for Children

The host homes model has been championed over the past two decades by the faith-based Illinois nonprofit Safe Families For Children. More than 90 affiliate organizations nationwide have provided more than 75,000 overnight placements for children. Those groups match parents facing setbacks such as hospitalization, homelessness or other crises with hosts who are typically recruited from churches — the model’s “backbone” — with more than 4,000 involved in the effort.

Children usually remain in these volunteers’ homes for less than a month, according to the organizations’ website. 

The website also includes a letter signed by founder David Anderson, which states that the host home movement’s goal is “enabling the global Church to return to its historic role of caring for the orphan and the widow” and to “serve as a pillar to our volunteers and exemplify love in action.” 

The leader of Safe Families for Children’s New York chapter celebrated last week’s ruling that could allow OCFS to begin approving host programs like hers.

“We are thrilled to be one step closer to saying ‘yes’ to parents who have been asking for this vital community-based resource,” said Laura Galt. “It has been incredibly painful to turn away families in need, knowing they lack the support and resources they deserve.”

The host homes movement has received favorable coverage in national and evangelical media. One mother states in a promotional video on the New York City chapter’s website that nonprofit’s volunteers are “just like having extra family members in your life that you would have never had any other way.” But five years ago, opponents in New York raised a series of concerns, after a local chapter of Safe Homes for Children sought authorization from the city and state.

State court officials, the American Bar Association and parent and childrens’ advocates criticized the regulations the Office of Children and Family Services eventually produced because they lacked requirements for foster care agencies to avoid family separations, or provide adequate services to end placements as quickly as possible, among other concerns. 

A 2020 letter of opposition written by Gerard Wallace — a leading advocate for kinship caregivers — called the state’s regulations “a hydra-headed quasi-foster care monster, with all of the hallmarks of foster care but none of the legal protections the law demands.”

Nonetheless, later that year, the state’s Office of Children and Family Services finalized the regulations, and soon received at least one application for approval from Galt’s organization.

“The Host Homes program would allow children to be placed in the homes of strangers indefinitely without any legal protections or support.”

— Plaintiffs‘ attorney William Silverman

The three legal aid groups quickly filed suit against the state in a Rensselaer County court. They also issued a statement with a group of local mothers who have faced child welfare investigations. The mothers warned that parents placing kids in host homes “may risk fighting for the return of their children from Host Homes or even losing them to the child welfare system.”

But more than three years after New York’s child welfare agency finalized host home regulations, it’s not clear whether such placements are being made yet. The state spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether it has approved any nonprofits to place children in host homes. And Galt said although she’s submitted an application to the state and had a handful of requests for host homes every month, to date none have been fulfilled, because “the lawsuit stalled everything.” 

New York’s Office of Children and Family Services rules for nonprofits making host family placements include warnings in bold that acknowledge concerns: Parents are only to participate “completely voluntarily,” and may not participate “if they are a subject of an open investigation of a report of suspected child abuse or maltreatment.” Other requirements include training hosts in “parents’ legal rights, race equity and cultural competency, implicit bias, trauma-informed care and the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) on child development.”

But those and other provisions have not satisfied the plaintiffs. They have argued state law requires that kids and parents be provided legal representation “whether they are displaced from homes voluntarily or involuntarily,” and that kinship caregivers be given priority over strangers. The state’s “host family home” regulations address neither issue.

“We are deeply disappointed by the Court’s failure to recognize the Host Homes program as an unlawful abrogation of the rights of the children placed in these homes,” said a joint statement, forwarded by their attorney William Silverman of the corporate law firm Proskauer Rose. “The Host Homes program would allow children to be placed in the homes of strangers indefinitely without any legal protections or support.”

The statement also highlighted the dissent from two of the justices in last week’s panel decision. 

“Respondents’ refrain that the intent of the regulations ‘is not and will not be to create a new form of foster care’ will fall deafly on the ears of a child placed outside of their home with strangers,” wrote Pritzker. “Not only do the Host Family Home regulations lack legislative mandate, they dispense with the hard-fought, constitutionally grounded due process rights of children who have no say as to their fate, no counsel, no permanency hearings, no judicial oversight at all.” 

He concluded with a derisive quip: “What could possibly go wrong?”