Emily Putnam-Hornstein is a professor at the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. They lead the project Lives Cut Short, which documents child fatalities from abuse and neglect.
Older teens make up a small fraction of children in foster care but face unique challenges. Their lack of connection to family — either birth families or adoptive ones — and frequent histories of abuse and neglect make them especially vulnerable to mental health struggles and substance-use problems. Those issues can compound to put them at greater risk of exploitation, including sex trafficking.
Governments have a special obligation to look out for these young people, but a new D.C. law only increases the vulnerability of some of them.
Passed unanimously in June by the D.C. Council, the Soul Act — “Soul” is short for support, opportunity, unity and legal relationships — allows foster children 16 or older to establish legal bonds with adults of their own choosing. Under the law, youths in foster care can designate an adult as a “soul caregiver” to whom the government is to provide cash payments until the youth turns 21. They also can select “soul supporters,” who do not receive subsidies but can be granted rights to make decisions on their behalf.
The law is well-intentioned. Foster youths want greater say over their lives. Conceived in 2018 by Annie E. Casey Foundation fellows — young adults with foster care experience — the Soul strategy was first enacted in Kansas in 2024. In the District, the Soul Amendment Act of 2025 was developed by young people in collaboration with D.C.’s Children’s Law Center and the Family & Youth Initiative. The preferences of children matter, and it’s true that many former foster youth have said that their wishes were not taken into account when child welfare agencies and courts determined their placements.
But we have serious concerns about the absence of common-sense safeguards in this law. We also worry about the incentives it creates. Each Soul Act order is a case that D.C. gets to close, with no accountability for what happens afterward. The law bars youth who leave through the Soul program from returning to extended foster care after turning 18, even if the arrangement falls apart. Tellingly, supporters have touted Soul as reducing the annual cost of youth placement in foster care from roughly $45,000 to $24,000. Those savings are real, but they are derived in part from the city’s reduced supervision — no more labor-intensive case management or periodic review.
Worse, while a judge must approve an exit from foster care, the new law requires only a criminal background check of the Soul caregiver. There is no mandatory check of child abuse registries, no screening of other adults in the home and no home study. In fact, under the law, the very parent the child was removed from could become a Soul supporter, even after the state determined the child could not be safely reunified with them. So could someone engaged in criminal activity. Indeed, an adult who is grooming or trafficking the youth could become a supporter. No one likes to think about such nightmare scenarios, but there are dangerous adults who exploit vulnerable teens.
The Soul approach has been described as a “fourth path to permanency” alongside family reunification, adoption and traditional guardianship. But it is not clear why a new path is needed. If the goal were to help youth find permanent homes without terminating parental rights, that could be done through traditional guardianship laws, with subsidies. Federal law already requires that agencies consult children 14 or older when developing case and permanency plans, and children of any age can participate in court hearings. There’s nothing new about weighing a minor’s preferences in decisions in family courts handling divorce and custody cases.
But — critically — courts do not assume that a 16-year-old is able to determine what’s in his or her best interests. And the state is uniquely responsible for the safety of teens in foster care. Nonetheless, Soul’s provisions largely absolve the District of that responsibility when a Soul order is signed.
Let’s say a child was removed from a home because of an abusive father. A youth could designate her uncle as a Soul caregiver, and nothing in the law would prohibit her father from living in the same home; there is no requirement that anyone even ask if he does. In such a case, the state would be paying the uncle to house the child under the same roof as the man she was removed from. Or say a 16-year-old girl designates her adult sister as Soul caregiver. The sister could collect the money while the girl moves in with a 25-year-old “boyfriend” who’s a convicted sex trafficker.
It’s true the courts would have to sign off on these arrangements, but under the D.C. law, the child welfare agency is under no obligation to investigate the living situations or backgrounds of the Soul family. Evidence of danger might never be presented to judges.
Over the past quarter of a century, child-welfare leaders have rightly aimed to create more normalcy in the lives of youths in foster care. These children should be able to see their siblings, participate in extracurricular activities, get jobs and keep their earnings in their own savings accounts. But normalcy means letting teenagers be teenagers. It does not mean handing them decisions that adults should make.
D.C.’s Soul Act asks children to choose which adults have legal authority over them. Sixteen-year-olds outside of foster care would never be entrusted — or burdened — with such a responsibility. Foster youths shouldn’t be, either.
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