Norman resident Robyn Estrada is currently fostering an eight-week-old baby boy. It's the youngest placement she's taken during her two and a half years fostering children — he's been with her since he was just two days old.
Estrada is a single mother. She adopted her seven-year-old daughter from foster care last year, and continues to foster young children, toddlers, and infants.
To help foster and adoptive parents like Estrada, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services provides reimbursement to cover the cost of things like food, clothes, and school supplies. It's a daily per child rate paid on a monthly basis ranging from 17 to 22 dollars per day depending on the age of the child.
These reimbursement rates, also called maintenance payments, were the subject of Republican State Representative Nick Archer's House Bill 2030. Archer said he was inspired by a conversation with a constituent of his who fosters children.
"She was very distraught because she had a potential placement of three siblings. She very much had the heart, very much had the will to take those kids and to accept that placement. But unfortunately, they did not have the means as a family to really sustain and to provide the home and the care taking on three additional kids would require," he said.
House Bill 2030 proposed raising the maintenance payment rate by five dollars per child per day, which Archer said adds up to a 30 percent increase.
"30 percent increase sounds like a lot. But if you factor inflation since the last time that was increased in 2018, you're really looking at inflation and devaluation of our dollar today at roughly 34 percent," he said. "And so, even that increase of five dollars a day did not get us to where we were in 2018 when it was last updated."
The bill was well-received in the legislature and passed out of the House with a vote of 90 to 4, but it didn't meet the deadline for a final reading this session.
While foster and adoptive parents won't see an increase in reimbursement rates this year, other avenues for support are available.
Andrea Weaver, a child welfare specialist and foster care recruiter for OKDHS, said their partnership with faith-based organization 111Project to host an online support network called the Care Portal connects foster and adoptive parents who need help with groups or individuals in the community who can provide it.
"For our foster families, they may have prepared for one or two children to be in their care and they get a call and are willing to keep four siblings together. Well, that's kind of a big leap. Maybe they need beds. So through the Care Portal, they can put out a request and we can connect them with places in the community that are willing to provide a bed," she said.
Data listed on the Care Portal's website shows more than 45,000 children across all 77 Oklahoma counties have been served since 2015, representing an economic impact of more than 20 million dollars.
Apart from official resources like the Care Portal, Estrada said she has benefited from support from other foster parents.
"The foster community is just such a giving community. I'm in so many different Facebook groups online and people will just post like, 'hey, I'm giving a car seat away, does anyone need it?' And so everyone has really helped each other. And so I haven't felt honestly burdened at all," she said.
While there are many resources available to foster and adoptive parents, Estrada said they may not know about them.
"I just think sometimes, a lot of foster parents probably aren't aware of all the resources. To be honest with you, I didn't know some stuff the first six months. I think since I've been in it for a while now, and I've talked to so many people and my caseworker has told me, oh yeah, you can do this, you could do that, or you can reimburse for that," she said.
Regardless of the other resources available to foster and adoptive parents, Representative Archer said he's not done trying to secure them more financial support.
"I will run this every year that the people of House District 55 send me to the Capitol," he said.
The 2025 Regular Session of the Oklahoma Legislature is nearly over. At the time of publication, there was no line item on the budget specifying additional funding for maintenance payments.
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