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When Children Become Currency: The Dark Reality of CPS Incentives

Updated: Sep 7, 2025

Every child deserves love, stability, and a safe home. Yet across America, families are being torn apart; not because parents are unfit, but because a broken system has found a way to turn children into profit.


The federal government’s own records reveal the truth. Through the Adoption and Legal Guardianship Incentive Payments Program (ALGIIPP), states are paid millions of dollars for increasing the number of children they place into adoption or guardianship. In Fiscal Year 2024 alone, $61.1 million was handed out to 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Since 1998, states such as California, Texas, and Florida have earned hundreds of millions of dollars in cumulative incentive awards.


You can see it in black and white here:


How It Works

The more children a state removes and permanently places outside of their biological family, the more money they receive. Older children and “harder-to-place” youth come with bigger payouts. Instead of being encouraged to help families heal, CPS/DCFS is rewarded for adoption numbers, not reunification success.


On paper, the program was created to encourage permanency. In practice, it has become a dangerous incentive structure that opens the door to abuse.


Families Like Mine Pay the Price

This is not just numbers on a page. I know the pain personally. San Bernardino and Los Angeles DCFS stole my children through lies, fraud, and abuse of power.


They manipulated reports, lied in court, and ignored the truth—all while destroying the bond between me and my children. I am not alone. Across the nation, innocent families are reporting the same tactics: fabricated allegations, twisted narratives, and decisions made to hit adoption “targets.”


Behind every dollar paid out is a child ripped away from their parents. Behind every “incentive payment” is a family crying themselves to sleep, wondering why the truth was ignored in court.


That’s not justice. That’s an empire of lies, and San Bernardino and Los Angeles have perfected it.


Sold Into Adoption

Let’s call it what it is: when CPS and DCFS take children from loving homes, lie in court, and place those children into adoption for money, it is selling children under the color of law.


The adoption is presented as a “forever family,” but for the biological parents—mothers, fathers, grandparents—the reality is a forever wound. My story proves it. The stories of countless other innocent families prove it.


This is a national crisis that cannot be swept under the rug any longer.


The Warning We Ignored

In 2008, Georgia State Senator Nancy Schaefer bravely stood up to expose corruption in Child Protective Services. She documented how children were being taken unnecessarily, how families were being destroyed, and how federal funding incentives were fueling this destruction (Click Nancy's Letter: The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services).


She pleaded with Congress to act. She warned that CPS was not about protecting children, but about expanding its power and chasing federal dollars.


And what did Congress do? They ignored her.


Now, in 2025, the very abuses she warned about are still happening; families like mine are still being destroyed, children are still being sold into adoption, and agencies like Los Angeles and San Bernardino DCFS are still abusing their power without consequence.


Nancy Schaefer was right. And America failed to listen.


The Evidence is There

The federal government tracks these incentive payments every year. California alone has received tens of millions. Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Oklahoma top the list as well.


How many of these children were truly rescued from danger? And how many were stolen from safe, loving homes because it was easier, faster, and more profitable?


Time to Break the Cycle

This cannot continue. We must:

  • Demand transparency: Every removal must be publicly reported, with clear justification.

  • Push for audits: Independent investigations should track whether financial incentives played a role in removals.

  • Reform the law: End incentive-based funding that rewards separating families instead of reuniting them.

  • Hold DCFS accountable: San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and every other county must answer for the lies they told and the families they destroyed.


A Call to America

This is not just about my story. This is about our children. Every parent, every community, every taxpayer should be outraged that government agencies are being paid to separate families.


Our children are not commodities. They are not statistics. They are not line items in a federal budget.


They are our sons, our daughters, our future.


And together, we must rise and say: No more.





 
 
 

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