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Because of a confusing tangle of bureaucratic rules, adoptive parents in New York City continue to receive monthly government subsidies even after sending their adopted children back to foster care or kicking them out onto the street. The subsidy is meant to encourage parents to adopt "hard-to-place" children out of foster care and to provide for the children's care. But in the event that an adoption does not work out, the city's children services agency will not cut off the subsidy even when it learns that the parents are no longer caring for their kids, blaming restrictive state and federal rules for its inability to act. This means, as one NYC Family Court judge said, that a child in foster care “would not have enough money for a winter coat while their parents were getting a thousand dollars a month from the city.” The city's refusal to act also means the government is in many cases double-paying for the children's care: one set of payments going to the children's new foster homes and another set going to the parents who have turned their backs on them.