How Much Do Foster Parents Get Paid? The Basic Rate and the One People Mistake for It

Foster parents in the United States are not paid a wage. They receive a foster care maintenance payment, a reimbursement set by the state, and at the basic level in 2025–26 that payment runs roughly $800 to $1,300 a month for one child: $27.07 a day in Texas under the Department of Family and Protective Services schedule effective September 1, 2025; $1,301 a month in California under All County Letter 25-45, effective July 1, 2025; and $580 to $861 a month in Virginia depending on the child's age. The payment rises with a child's assessed needs. The much larger figures that circulate online — $137.52 a day in Texas, $3,396 a month in California — are treatment or intensive foster care rates, which applied to about 9 percent of children in care nationally in fiscal 2024. Under Internal Revenue Code section 131, qualified foster care payments are excluded from your gross income.

The two numbers live on the same page

I read spec sheets for a living and check whether a claim traces back to anything. Foster care rate schedules behave the same way. The headline figure and the figure that applies to you sit in the same table, four rows apart, and nothing in the layout says which row is yours.

Texas publishes one table of minimum daily reimbursements a child-placing agency must pay a foster family. Basic is $27.07. Treatment Foster Family Care, five rows down, is $137.52. Both are current DFPS figures, effective September 1, 2025. Whoever quoted you the second one was not lying; they were quoting a rate for children whose placement requires a trained treatment home. In the federal AFCARS count for fiscal 2024, preliminary and missing Washington and Wyoming, therapeutic foster care accounted for 28,365 of the 328,947 children in care on September 30, 2024.

| | Texas (DFPS, eff. Sept 1, 2025) | California (CDSS ACL 25-45, eff. July 1, 2025) | Virginia (VDSS) | |---|---|---|---| | Basic rate to the family | $27.07/day (~$812/month) | $1,301/month | $580–$861/month by age band | | What raises it | Service level: Moderate $47.37, Specialized $57.86, Intense $92.43 | Level of Care: LOC 2 $1,447, LOC 3 $1,596, LOC 4 $1,741 | VEMAT score 0–36 adds $0–$2,016 in $224 steps | | Highest family-home figure | Treatment Foster Family Care $137.52/day (~$4,126/month) | Intensive Services Foster Care $3,396/month | $861 plus $2,016, or $2,877/month | | Age tiers in the base rate | No | No; agency-certified homes band $1,224–$1,483 | Yes: 0–4, 5–12, 13 and over | | Payment cadence | Twice monthly, by days of care | Monthly | Monthly |

The spread inside one state is the point. Texas basic to Texas treatment is a factor of five. Build a budget from the wrong row and you are not off by a little.

Which schedule actually applies to your household

Three things decide your number, and you need all three before the arithmetic means anything.

The state sets the schedule. Rates are not federal. Federal law defines what a maintenance payment must cover and reimburses part of the cost under title IV-E; each state writes its own dollar figures. A number from a Facebook group in Sacramento tells a family in Lynchburg nothing.

The agency you license through determines who pays you and from which line. In Texas and California a private agency receives a larger rate than it passes on, and the family portion is a defined minimum. California's ACL 25-45 makes the split visible: a foster family agency's total rate at the basic level is $2,617 a month, of which the certified home receives $1,224 to $1,483 by age. Both figures are real. One reaches your account.

The child's assessed level of care sets the row. Virginia scores a child on the Virginia Enhanced Maintenance Assessment Tool. Texas assigns a service level. California runs a Level of Care Protocol across five domains.

Ask your licensing worker for the rate schedule as a document with its effective date printed on it, and which row applies to a child of the age and needs you are approved for.

What moves the number: age, assessed need, and the calendar

Age moves it in states that band by age, and the bands are wide. Virginia pays $580 a month for a child aged 0 to 4, $677 for 5 to 12, and $861 for 13 and over. The step at 13 is $184, the state's estimate of what a teenager eats and wears above a nine-year-old.

The timing of that step is worth knowing before you plan around it. Virginia's guidance manual specifies that when an event increases maintenance, a birthday included, the new rate takes effect the first of the month following. A child who turns 13 on the 2nd carries the lower rate another 29 days.

Assessed need moves it further and by more. Virginia's enhanced maintenance runs from $0 to $2,016 a month in $224 increments across a VEMAT score of 0 to 36, with a separate emergency placement rate of $1,120. California's Level of Care Protocol adds $146, $295, or $440 above the $1,301 basic rate at LOC 2, 3, and 4. Two children of the same age in the same county can carry payments differing by more than the base rate itself.

Placement conditions move it too. California pays a $900 monthly infant supplement to a family caring for the baby of a parenting youth, and a $200 sibling supplement. Virginia keeps paying maintenance through a temporary absence of 14 days or fewer, so a hospitalization or a family visit does not interrupt it, and the manual says plainly this exists to stop a short absence becoming a lost placement.

What the payment is required to buy

Federal law defines the term, and every state schedule sits underneath that definition. A foster care maintenance payment covers food, clothing, shelter, daily supervision, school supplies, a child's personal incidentals, liability insurance with respect to the child, and reasonable travel for the child to visit family and to remain in the school attended before placement.

Shelter is the item you cannot itemize. It is already paid for. It is the floor above my head that someone is walking across right now, and it will never appear on a receipt anyone asks you to produce. The rest can be counted, and when families total it honestly the payment lands short. Virginia's manual says so plainly: it is not expected that the maintenance rates will cover all the needs of the child.

The corollary matters more than the shortfall. Service needs are not maintenance. Virginia's manual states that services shall not be paid for with maintenance funds, so therapy, tutoring, and specialist care are meant to be funded elsewhere. An agency that tells you to cover them from your monthly payment is contradicting the state's own guidance.

The question people ask last: is any of it income?

Section 131 of the Internal Revenue Code excludes qualified foster care payments from gross income, difficulty of care payments included, when made under a state foster care program. The statute writes in limits: the exclusion does not extend to payments for more than 10 qualified foster individuals under 19, or more than five aged 19 and over, in one home.

Most people hear tax-free and stop. The consequence they meet later runs the other direction. Money excluded from gross income is generally not earned income, so it usually cannot count toward the Earned Income Tax Credit, and a mortgage underwriter will not treat it as qualifying income. Families counting on the payment to strengthen an application find it does neither. This is where I hand you to a tax preparer who has handled foster care returns. Section 131, a W-2 an agency may issue anyway, and your state program interact in ways a general editor should not improvise.

What arrives outside the monthly payment

A large share of a foster child's cost never touches your budget, and knowing which share separates a workable plan from a frightening one.

Medicaid is the biggest piece. A child for whom title IV-E payments are made is categorically eligible, so medical, dental, and behavioral health care arrive without a premium or deductible landing on you. Under the Affordable Care Act provision now at 42 U.S.C. 1396a, states must also cover former foster youth to age 26 if they were in care and enrolled in Medicaid at 18 or older, with no income or asset test, and the SUPPORT Act extended that obligation across state lines.

Clothing is often funded separately. Virginia's manual sets a supplemental clothing allowance of $347 for ages 0 through 4, $435 for 5 through 12, and $522 for 13 and over, paid on top of monthly maintenance that already carries a clothing component of $65 to $130.

Child care is the item most likely to reach your budget anyway. It is not on the federal maintenance list. The 2024 federal Child Care and Development Fund rule lets states waive copayments for families caring for a child in foster or kinship care, and caps copayments at 7 percent of income for families who pay them. That is a state option, not a guarantee, and a January 2026 proposed rule would rescind the 7 percent cap. Virginia reimburses day care against receipts or pays the provider directly.

Respite is the thinnest strand. There is no national rate. Montana publishes one of the few explicit figures, $32.00 for a full day, capped at 111 hours per child per fiscal year, about $444. Georgia allows 10 paid calendar days a year. Several states pay nothing extra and continue your regular per diem while another approved home covers the days.

The calendar, and what to check when a payment is short

Payments arrive in arrears, prorated by days of care. Texas issues them twice a month, by days in the home. Virginia pays monthly, direct from the child-placing agency. Both count days the same unforgiving way. Virginia's manual works an example: a child placed June 1 and removed June 14 is paid June 1 through June 13, because the last day of placement is the day before removal.

Get three documents before you accept. The rate schedule with its effective date. The care-level assessment or the date it is scheduled, since the supplement cannot be paid before the assessment exists. The agency's payment calendar, including the cutoff after which a placement falls into the next cycle. A placement accepted on the 28th may not generate a payment for six weeks.

When a payment lands late or short, work the sequence rather than the phone tree:

1. Count the days billed against your own placement calendar, including partial first and last days.
2. Confirm the child's service level or care-level score and the date it took effect, since a supplement approved on the 20th may only be paid from the 1st of the following month.
3. Check whether a birthday crossed an age band and when the new rate applies.
4. Ask which funding stream is paying and whether the schedule changed at the start of the fiscal year. California republishes rates every July 1 with a California Necessities Index adjustment, 3.42 percent for FY 2025-26. Texas dated its current schedule September 1, 2025.
5. Request the payment detail in writing, then escalate to the agency's finance contact if it still will not reconcile.

Step five is where I found the discrepancy I would most want a Virginia reader to know about. Virginia agencies currently quote $580, $677, and $861 for the three age bands, effective July 1, 2025. The rate table printed inside the VDSS Child and Family Services Manual, Section 18, still shows the July 2022 schedule of $521, $609, and $772. Both documents come from the same department. I could not reconcile them from published sources, and I would not build a budget on either without a local department of social services confirming which is being paid this month.

Planning for a placement that changes or ends

Reunification is the goal in most cases, so the payment is temporary by design while the costs it partly offsets are not. Car seats, a bed, and a bedroom reconfigured for one more person are spent whether the placement lasts eight weeks or two years.

Where a placement moves toward permanence, the money changes shape rather than growing. Federal law caps title IV-E adoption assistance at the foster care maintenance payment that would have been paid had the child stayed in a foster family home, and applies the same ceiling to kinship guardianship assistance. The amount is negotiated around the child's needs and your circumstances and can be renegotiated later, but it will not exceed the foster care figure.

Kinship carries a live disparity. A federal rule effective November 27, 2023 lets states license relative homes under separate standards and requires that a licensed kinship home receive the same maintenance payment a non-relative home would. Eighteen state plans had been approved as of January 2026. Relatives outside that licensed track sit on a different schedule: Texas pays unlicensed caregivers under its Relative and Other Designated Caregiver program $12.67 a day, about $380 a month, for up to 12 months and only below 300 percent of the federal poverty level, against $27.07 a day for a verified foster home. California pays Kin-GAP and approved relative caregivers at the same rates as other home-based family care. For a grandmother asked to take a placement, licensing is a several-hundred-dollar-a-month question.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a foster parent make each week?

Foster parents earn no weekly wage. At basic rates a week reimburses roughly $190 in Texas at $27.07 a day, or about $300 in California, where the $1,301 monthly rate works out near $43 a day. Payments arrive monthly or twice monthly, prorated by days of care.

How much does California pay for foster care?

California pays $1,301 a month for a child at the basic level of care under All County Letter 25-45, effective July 1, 2025. Level of Care 2, 3, and 4 pay $1,447, $1,596, and $1,741. Intensive Services Foster Care pays $3,396. Rates are recalculated each July 1.

Is becoming a foster parent worth it?

Financially, no. Every state schedule I examined reimburses less than the cost of raising a child, and Virginia's manual states the rates are not expected to cover all of a child's needs. People who foster successfully do it for reasons unrelated to money, and budget as though the payment will fall short.

How much do foster parents receive in Virginia?

Virginia agencies report $580 a month for ages 0 to 4, $677 for 5 to 12, and $861 for 13 and over, effective July 1, 2025, plus a clothing allowance and any VEMAT-based enhanced payment up to $2,016. The VDSS manual still prints an older schedule, so confirm locally.

How much do foster parents receive for a child with special needs?

More, through an assessment rather than a diagnosis. Virginia adds up to $2,016 a month based on a VEMAT score. California adds $146 to $440 for Levels of Care 2 through 4, and $3,396 total for Intensive Services Foster Care. Texas pays $47.37 to $137.52 a day by service level.

Which costs are covered outside the maintenance payment?

Medical, dental, and behavioral health care through Medicaid, for which children receiving title IV-E payments are categorically eligible. Many states add a separate clothing allowance, respite days, and child care assistance. Therapy and other services are funded outside maintenance, and several state manuals prohibit paying for them from the monthly payment.