NY Host Family Foster Program Must Be Abolished, Judges Say

A New York child welfare agency wasn’t authorized to establish a host family program that essentially functions “as an alternative to the state’s statutory voluntary foster care regime,” a the state’s high court said Thursday.

The New York State Office of Children and Family Services’ Host Family Home program “must be annulled because it undermines the carefully designed foster system, and contravenes various critical statutory protections the legislature saw fit to include in that system,” the New York Court of Appeals unanimously ruled.

“The statutory foster care system is the product of decades of legislative reform intended to strengthen ...