Published 10:48 am Thursday, 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…
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