by Ross Williams, Georgia Recorder, [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]
August 13, 2026
Taking care of vulnerable children in Georgia has gotten a lot more expensive, and lawmakers are hoping to figure out why.
“We’re trying to figure out what happened,” said state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, a Marietta Republican. “And unfortunately, nobody had a whole lot of notice that we were in a deficit situation with that particular population.”
In late 2025, the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, which oversees the state’s foster system, cut services for families and terminated contracts for nonprofits as they faced a projected budget deficit of about $85 million.
“We ended up having to backfill the deficit for the department to the tune of about $80 million,” Kirkpatrick said. “What we need to do is figure out what the right number is without affecting services for the kids, because they should not be the victim of budgetary issues.”
Kirkpatrick is co-chairing a joint House and Senate committee investigating the cost of foster care, alongside Concord Republican state Rep. Beth Camp. The committee is set to hold the first of three hearings Thursday before presenting a report at the beginning of December ahead of next year’s legislative session set to begin in January.
Camp said she plans to enter the process without preconceived notions about where the money is going, but one likely avenue of investigation will be the rising costs of foster services for children. Lawmakers found that those costs were projected to rise 159% since 2022.
“What we’re hoping for and what we’ve requested is to get some actual numbers,” Camp said. “Because we know that the number of children in care has remained static, but from what we’re being told, there are a number of children who are in care who require more services than perhaps children did before in the past.”
Problems obtaining mental health treatment
Mental health policy advocate Roland Behm said he will testify at a future meeting that private companies that contract with the state to deliver Medicaid benefits increase costs by delaying or denying treatment for mental health.
Children who enter foster care are covered by the Georgia Families 360 program, which is administered by Amerigroup. Amerigroup did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Many children who enter into foster care were also covered by Medicaid before entering, Behm said.
Amerigroup has faced criticism from parents and others for allegedly denying claims for mental healthcare.
The companies that administer Medicaid benefits are supposed to provide all medically necessary care covered under Medicaid, but Behm said that’s often not how things work in practice.
“The care that’s needed is oftentimes something that looks slightly different than medical care,” he said. “It’s not like ‘I need to go to an appointment, I need to go to the doctor.’ It’s actually ‘I need behavioral health aides, perhaps at school or at home. I need education for my foster parents to help them understand what the concerns are.”
Behm said in many situations, that care is denied because the companies do not consider those kinds of interventions to be clinical care.
“But we did away with the concept of purely clinical or medical care with the adoption of the Mental Health Parity Act in 2022,” he said, referring to the law passed that year requiring insurers to cover mental health treatments equally to physical healthcare.
When care that should have been provided by the companies isn’t provided, Behm said the state pays twice, first for to the companies as part of their contracts and again when they have to arrange for and provide the care themselves.
John DeGarmo, founder of an advocacy group called the Foster Care Institute and a foster parent to more than 60 kids in Georgia, said it’s becoming harder for foster parents to access mental and behavioral healthcare at the same time the need for it is increasing.
“There’s a rise of teenage suicide attempts in America,” he said. “There is a rise of child anxiety and depression, teen anxiety. All of these are post-COVID mental health issues, and a lot of the foster parents today really aren’t equipped for that.”
“Even putting aside all the abuse, neglect and trauma issues a child may have before coming into foster care, when they come into foster care, that’s a time of great anxiety as well,” he added. “Because now they’re being placed into a home with strangers. They may have questions like, ‘What did I do wrong? Will I ever see my mom or dad again? Does anybody love me? Who can I trust?’ so it’s a great time of anxiety when they come into foster care, and now on top of that, we have so many other issues.”
Support from the next governor’s office
Kirkpatrick, who also chairs the Senate’s Children and Families Committee, said she has faith that the committee’s report will inspire legislation when lawmakers return in January with new leadership after November’s election.
“I am very confident because of who the people are, the gubernatorial nominees,” she said.
Georgia’s next governor will be an advocate for foster care and adoption, whether it’s Republican Rick Jackson or Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Jackson often speaks about his own time as a child in the foster care system and his rise to business success, and Bottoms and her husband adopted all four of their children after she previously worked as a court-appointed advocate for children in the system.
“I’m optimistic that that’ll be a priority for the new governor, and we’ll be able to continue our work,” Kirkpatrick said.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jill Nolin for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.