This was particularly true when an older child who had been in foster care for a while was tracked though the system. (He wasn't sure how old a child was before this was used.)
One foster parent called the child Robert another Bob and the third Bobby or Rob...It helped keep track of the child and their funding. Dad who was attorney for welfare, when it was a county agency and before the state combined all counties under one statewide umbrella said that at one point some of the older children were given SS# to help track them....particularly if adoption was not likely or child was placed out of county. It seems that if this was done nationally or in numerous states BO would fall under this pattern. He was older and adoption wasn't likely....Madelyn was named guardian/foster parent. As such she received funds for his care from the state and that money would be tracked through the SS#. Dad has been away from it many years too. But he was remembering some of the changes that were being made WAAAAAY back then.
Are you following? can you confirm? Was it in place in other states? Are SS# used to track foster care funding today? Ir may be the reason he was assigned the number/per an out of state agency as Sven has suggested.
When looking through the web there were many people looking for their birth parents. Many mentioned being wards of both Catholic Services and Federal agencies as Sven had suggested.
[Sorry this post jumps around a bit - I’ve had to get up and sit back down to finish it several times... Trying to wrap up some housework, and then I’ll be able to do some research, and write more clearly as well...]
I think I’ve got ya, HM. I’m not as familiar with the foster care system. (I mostly worked on newborn adoption issues - and helping adoptees obtain their original records.)
I’d have to do some research to find out about the SS#s being used to track foster care expenses/disbursements, etc... It wouldn’t surprise me.
In my personal case I have been told by my adoption agency that my birthmother was working through the Dept. of Children and Family Services to place me, but a private adoption agency was brought in at the last minute. I’m still trying to figure out what happened in my case as my Adoptive Father was a DCFS case-worker in the same county as my Birthmother’s case. From what I’ve been told they have records of my adoption both through DCFS and through the private agency. I suppose until my adoption was finalized I was technically a ward of the state of IL. That would indicate to me that once a child is a ward of the state, no matter what agency is involved in the adoption or foster placement itself the child remains a ward of the state until an adoption is finalized, or they reach the age of majority.
My AFather worked for the brand-new IL DCFS through the transition your father was talking about - from county to state run. He then got a job working for SS when I was 2 years old, and worked there for about 15 years. Unfortunately, he was an abusive jerk who never wanted me to know I was even adopted, and after finding out refused to even tell me the name of the agency. When I turned 18 I called a plethora of agencies until I found the right one - it was then I found out that my AFather had even committed fraud (according to the director, who was a case worker when I was born) on the applications and such that were required by the agency. Which probably explains why he was so loathe to give me ANY information at all about my birthparents, the agency, or anything else.
Sorry to go off on a tangent. I just wanted to give you a bit of background on my situation. I have to do some stuff here for a bit, but I’ll try to do some research and see if I can’t come up with some kind of an answer. It would make sense that the SS# is used because of the dependency status that would most likely change were a child to live with a foster family, even temporarily if aid were distributed.