More than 10 years ago, a wealthy businessman pushed Georgia lawmakers to partially privatize the state’s embattled foster care system — and grounded his case in his own past.
Rick Jackson had entered foster care in Atlanta at age 13, he told lawmakers in a tearful public testimony. He shuffled from home to home, cycling through eight elementary schools and five high schools along the way.
“I believe there has never been a better time to pursue a bold, proven transformation of our child welfare system,” he said.
At the time, Jackson was known as the CEO of Jackson Healthcare and for his philanthropic work with foster children. Today, his history is central to his unexpected and expensive campaign for governor that has jolted the state’s Republican politics.
Credit: bandres@ajc.com
Credit: bandres@ajc.com
Georgia’s child welfare advocates hope his campaign will sharpen the focus on the state’s troubled foster care system, which serves about 11,000 children and has been plagued by issues like overloaded caseworkers and a major budget deficit, and was the focus of a U.S. Senate investigation.
Earlier this year, the Department of Human Services, which oversees foster care, reported an $85.7 million budget shortfall that prompted cuts to specialized programs. The state slashed funding for initiatives aimed at improving graduation rates for foster children, programs for medically fragile children and parent education and training opportunities.
At the time, the department blamed the federal government shutdown that lasted more than 40 days last fall. But the agency also pointed to the rapid escalation of costs to inflation, workforce challenges, decreased federal funding, court-ordered services and children with increasingly complex needs entering foster care.
Providers are also facing a severe shortage of foster families who can’t afford to take care of a child. From 2019 to 2025, the country saw a 20% drop in licensed foster homes. In Georgia, the decline was 40%.
“Right now, we’re in crisis mode,” said Allison Ashe, president and CEO of child welfare organization Wellroot Family Services. “I just hope that any candidate for the governor’s office would be focused on children and families and making sure that children and families in our state thrive.”
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Georgia politicians running for statewide office rarely campaign on child welfare issues. But Jackson has highlighted his story as a foster child who once lived in Atlanta’s Techwood Homes — the first public housing project in the United States — before becoming a billionaire executive.
“I know what it’s like to feel like nobody sees you,” Jackson said onstage after his runoff victory. “That’s why this fight is personal to me. When you grow up the way I did, you never forget where you came from.”
The Republican’s candidacy surprised not only Georgia politicians, but even those in the advocacy community who know him and are accustomed to the issue languishing out of the limelight.
“It’s not a question for policymakers of whether problems exist — there are serious challenges that deserve sustained attention,” said Melissa Carter, executive director of the Barton Child Law and Policy Center at Emory University. “It’s really about leadership choices that move the system forward.”
Foster care on the campaign trail
Credit: HANDOUT
Credit: HANDOUT
Jackson regularly shares details of his troubled upbringing on the campaign trail, a tactic that softened a contentious primary with Lt. Gov. Burt Jones.
He says his mother would often hand him her car keys to drive home when she was too drunk — well before he was old enough to get behind the wheel legally. Other times she would drop him off at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre promising to pick him up after a double-feature, but would never return.
He’d make money by working a paper route, collecting bottles and scalping tickets outside of Georgia Tech football games. He said while in foster care, he saw a family praying together for the first time, sparking his own desire for companionship. And he said his philanthropy is driven by an anonymous Christmas gift one year of $100.
In 2022, Jackson backed a law that gives people a tax credit if they donate to foster care children as they age out of the system. But in 2014, his effort to partially privatize the system was met with pushback from the child welfare community, which raised questions about liability.
The idea is based on Florida, which has a fully privatized system. Jackson was working behind the scenes to rally the state’s top leaders behind the effort.
“It all just came really fast and felt really aggressive in terms of the momentum behind that proposal,” Carter said. “And at the time the outcomes that were being reported out of Florida also indicated that that model doesn’t offer any additional or better assurances of child safety or well-being.”
Jackson’s campaign would not say whether he would push to privatize Georgia’s foster care system if elected governor.
Shortly after announcing his bid, Jackson promised that if elected, he’d “unwind” his company’s state contracts. Jackson Healthcare has received more than $1 billion in payments by state agencies. That included foster care work by subsidiaries with the Department of Human services.
Credit: Sarah Peacock
Credit: Sarah Peacock
Democrats also want to elevate the issue. In his first general election TV ad released last week, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff highlighted his bipartisan investigation into abuse in Georgia’s foster care system and legislation combating child sex trafficking.
Georgia’s Department of Human Services declined an interview for the story. Director Candice Broce has been a vocal supporter of Jackson on social media while criticizing Ossoff for his federal investigation.
And Jackson’s Democratic opponent, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, has her own personal ties to the issue. Bottoms and her husband adopted all four of their children after struggling with fertility issues. Bottoms said she saw firsthand the “heartbreaking challenges” of the foster care system when she worked as a court-appointed advocate for children in the system.
“As governor, I will strengthen oversight, improve accountability, and ensure that the more than 11,000 children in Georgia’s foster care system receive the care, stability, and opportunities they deserve,” Bottoms said in a statement.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Affordability hits the foster care system
The rising cost of living is a major contributor to the steady decline in potential foster care families.
Foster family inquiries are down more than 50% since 2024 for Wellroot Family Services, formerly known as the United Methodist Children’s Home and one of Georgia’s longest-serving child welfare organizations.
“The rates that foster parents are paid haven’t kept pace with inflation — it used to not cost foster parents money to foster,” said Ashe, Wellroot’s director. “But now, families could potentially lose money when they foster, so there’s just less incentive.”
Coupled with the budget deficit and foster children’s increasingly complex mental health needs, Ashe says Georgia’s foster care system needs significant help.
“We need a governor who focuses on the complexity of the issues and is willing to tackle it all,” she said.
A state Senate study committee scheduled to meet this year notes that the “rapid escalation of costs jeopardizes the sustainability of existing programs.” The total price tag for home care services reached $141.3 million in 2025 and is estimated to exceed $164.7 million in the 2026 fiscal year.
“If you keep children out of foster care, you prevent a trauma that impacts them for the rest of their lives and you save money,” she said. “It is much cheaper to fund prevention and keep kids out of either foster care or the juvenile justice system than it is to pay for the for those systems.”
In January, four former directors of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services wrote a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp urging him to use the state’s reserves to cover the system’s budget deficit and publicly affirm his commitment to working with providers and outline long-term funding and policy reforms.
Former DFCS directors Bobby Cagle, Sharon Hill, Virginia Pryor and Tom Rawlings all signed the letter. They warned the “consequences of inaction are immediate and measurable.”
“If there is one lesson our experience has taught us, it is that Georgia’s child welfare provider network cannot be rebuilt quickly once it collapses,” they wrote. “When stable funding erodes, providers lose trust in their ability to continue serving children and families, and capacity disappears. Children bear the consequences”
The amended 2026 budget Kemp signed included $81 million for the Department of Human Services to cover the deficit. But additional cuts were made to programs when Kemp slashed $300 million from the 2027 budget to offset revenue losses caused by an income-tax cut.
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