I’ve Always Had my Voice

In a single lifetime it is amazing what obstacles can be overcome and the successes that reveal themselves. Being taken away from my home at the tender age of ten gave me a 1^st hand account of State Dependency.  I can personally say State Dependents cannot escape the system or how others view them. Foster care meant constantly paying for the mistakes my parents made at a very high price. I no longer had a Mom and Dad, I lost out on having a childhood, I was often judged,  I moved from home to home, I was stripped of everything I knew,  and I moved from school to school.  I was forced to live my life as a State Dependent; however, I turned my life into a success.


Being a State Dependent made me pay for my parents’ mistakes. Both of my parents made bad choices which lead to significant family problems. My Mother and Father were both drug addicts long before I was born. After my arrival the drug use worsened; my Father used drugs to calm his schizophrenia, and my Mother used drugs just for the high. As years went by, my Father became a raging alcoholic. He began to batter my Mother until her face was purple and his hand was red and swollen. My Mother did not just stand there; fights would break out daily between them until my Mother threated to call the police if he did not leave. After my Father moved out, my Mothers’ drug use continued. When she didn’t have money for drugs, she looked the other way while her friend took a payment he felt was just. In many cases I was the payment. My mother did many of things to make me feel she did not love me. Each time my Mother would enter a relationship things seemed good, until the drugs over took both of their minds. I have been beaten with a hose, cooking pan, thrown into walls, thrown through a window, pushed out of a moving car, and so much more. My Mother would put it out of her mind, and act as though the abuse towards me did not exist.  My Mother always went shopping whether or not she had the funds. She got away with shop lifting for a while, but ultimately she was arrested and we were removed from our home. 


Being a State Dependent took away any hopes of getting the chance to have a childhood. Since age 7, I was forced to stay home and be a mother to my younger sister. I didn’t go to school, I no longer had friends, and I had to grow up much faster in order to gain the knowledge necessary to fend for myself and a young infant.  When my two sisters and I were taken away, my social worker said nobody would want three girls. I used my voice to make it very clear that I did not care what happened to me as long as my sisters stayed together, it did not take long for me to wish I had not said it. Because I did not only miss my family, but I missed being able to protect them and spend time with them.


Being a State Dependent offered justification when others judged me as if I was psychotic. Altering the way my teachers, mentor, peers, and paid staff looked at me.  When asked how the comments made me feel, I tilted my head back and laughed heartily. Cringing inside from nervous laughter, I retreated into my mind, sometimes running away at top speed, and then as I open my eyes, I turn and walk away like stars on the red carpet. How many people could handle being raped in their Mother’s house and know nothing was done to bring their rapist to justice?  After this horrific incident I was the subject of an uncomfortable interrogation.  I was made to feel like a common criminal.   I was also made to relive my ordeal by recording two videos of the incident forcing me to say all the devastating details of what he did to me step by step, over and over for law enforcement. After this incident I began to care not how I look to others but how I look to myself.


Being a State Dependent stripped me of my identity, my freedom, and my family. The only things the system gave me were a county judge and a court appointed social worker. A judge cannot visit me and sooth my hurt or discomfort. When I was 12, I was placed at Polinsky Child Center. The neighborhood was not well known to me, making it hard to plot an escape route. I was denied the privilege to communicate with, or see any of my family members. Without my family I felt lousy, and I did not really know what to do. I chose to be defiant because I was very angry. I would try to make deals with my social worker. I would be good, and in exchange, I was allowed to see members of my family and talk to them. When denied, I would do anything rebellious to make her rethink her decision and I did not care how I looked to other people. Once you become a State Dependent it becomes stamped on your forehead for everyone to know, for everyone to see, without the option to hide. I would run away on a daily basis, but no matter how far I ran I could not change the fact that I was still a foster child.


Being a State Dependent was not something I was proud of; I lied about my life to all of my (so called) friends, with hope they would never know the truth. In eight years I lived in 14 different placements (either in a foster home or a group home) and went to over five different high schools. When moving to a new placement I used my voice to fight for the right to attend public school. No matter what school I was attending I always expressed how I didn’t want to be treated any differently.  One very exciting and interesting event took place in my life on August 10, 2007, the day my case was terminated by the Juvenile Court System of San Diego. I shall never forget overflowing with joy and happiness.  I am not a drug addict. I am not an alcoholic. I am not homeless. I am a high school graduate. I am employed. And I am chasing my dreams. I beat the statistics of a foster child making me the person I am today. Through all my hurt I learned to take all the bad and use it to fuel a better tomorrow. I would like people to see me as accomplished. I beat everybody’s doubt and negativity.


After being a State Dependent I turned my life into a success story.  I still have times where I struggle with flashbacks of my childhood but, then again, I am only human. I am a college student, a mentor, an intern with The County of San Diego, a P.R.I.D.E. speaker (Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education), on the HYPE board (Helping Youth Pursue Excellence,) and a new member to the CAI Youth Board (Children’s Advocacy Institute).  I am a former foster youth who wants to make a difference in the system, to help current youth know that there are options, and provide resources to succeed. I am no longer a victim of the system, I am a survivor.


When dealt a sour hand in a game of cards, the option is always there to redeal the cards. However, in life we do not get that option. It is truly amazing how many obstacles can be overcome and how many successes can be revealed in a single lifetime.  I was treated horribly while I was in the system, and I was only there because of my parents. I have finally escaped the stereotypes and negative views due to the foster system. I have since been reunited with my family. I aim to fix the system and help youth know what is available to them. While growing up in the system I just wanted to be loved and cared about. If I can offer a glimmer of hope to those who feel hopeless, my experiences will have meaning.


About the Author:
Helena Kelly is a passionate advocate for foster children. She spent several years of her childhood in the Dependency system and strives to improve the system for those children who will follow her. Helena is a college student, a mentor, an intern with the County of San Diego, a P.R.I.D.E. speaker (Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education), she serves on the HYPE board (Helping Youth Pursue Excellence) and she serves on the Children's Advocacy Institute's Youth Advisory Board.

What Sort of Parent are You?

Pitching Foster Children’s Issues in an Era of Financial Conservatism and Program Cuts 

As I conduct my advocacy work for the Children’s Advocacy Institute, I am often faced with the challenge of trying to convince socially conservative legislators, staffers, and wonks that it is in their moral, economic, and political best interest to support positive outcomes for foster children.  In an environment where big business continues to spend billions of dollars on lobbying to protect and promote their issues, I am at a distinct disadvantage.

What I do have cornered is the moral high ground, and I have learned some effective tactics to leverage that.  My currency? Guilt, shame, and “family values.” This is how I often spin it:

How many children do you have?

What kind of parent are you?

How are your kids doing?

Many will answer these questions intuitively -- perhaps you have three children, or are one of three children. You are a loving parent who sacrifices for your child, who works to provide your kids with every educational and other advantage, and one who prepares from early on for your child’s financial and educational stability.  Or you were fortunate to have had parents who did so for you. Your children are thriving, or if they aren’t, you are doing everything possible to give them the best chance to do so.

But your family is actually larger than you think -- much larger. Every child who is removed from his or her home and placed into foster care each year (over 500,000 nationwide) becomes a ward of the state. This means that the biological parents temporarily lose the right to care for and make decisions for their children, and the state takes over that role. Perhaps you live in California. As a taxpayer, you are one of the legal parents of the over 68,000 children in foster care in the state.  You probably never considered this before and feel shocked and overwhelmed at the idea. Good. Imagine how they feel.

The children who live in foster care have done nothing wrong. Quite the opposite. They have been abused and or neglected by the very people charged most intimately with their care and well-being--- their parents. This is a devastating experience with serious and far-reaching emotional and practical consequences. Once they are placed into state custody, they depend on the state (which breaks down to each and every taxpayer in a state) to take care of them, provide for their needs, protect them from harm, and plan for their futures. That’s what parents do. Yet, as well as you might be providing this to your own biological children, you have overlooked your responsibility to do so for the many foster children who are counting on you.

When these youth leave foster care to forge independent lives, their prospects are grim. A recent study reveals that by age 24, 22–33% of foster youth are not connected to the labor market. At age 24, foster care alumni who are employed earn less than half, on average, than their counterparts who have no history of foster care. Although most foster youth express a desire to attend college, only about 3% of foster care alumni have earned a four-year degree. Many studies have found that former foster youth experience homelessness at high rates -- some estimate that nearly half of foster youth will have been homeless by age 24.  Many foster youth experience chronic health problems as a result of the abuse and neglect they endured before their entry into the foster care system and up to 85% of foster youth experience mental health issues. Further, recent studies have found that less than one-third of foster care alumni are employed full-time at age 24.

These children in foster care are not “somebody else’s” children. They are our children. Yours and mine. They have nobody else.

It is all too easy to shirk our responsibility for these children. Somebody else had them and failed to take care of them adequately. You have your own kids to worry about. This is their problem, right?  Wrong. If your heart is cold to the sadness and pain of these children, perhaps your wallet is a better listener.  Think again about your own children or childhood.

What would happen if you did not provide your children with proper medical care and treatment? They would endure worse illnesses, increased need for medication, more frequent and longer hospital visits, and probably a greater chance of acquiring a serious and chronic physical or psychological condition. Who pays for these increased medical costs? Yes, you, the taxpayer.

If you didn’t encourage your child to graduate from school and/or attend college, and save for those expenses, what would happen? Job prospects and earning potential are greatly diminished. Chances of relying on public support are much higher. The costs of unemployment, underemployment, or poverty are passed along.  To whom? Right again -- to you, the taxpayer.

If you weren’t there to support your children as they transitioned to adulthood -- by providing them with a place to live during school vacations or during the summer, and then while they saved up for their own place, they would face a much higher risk of experiencing homelessness and ending up either in a shelter, in an ER, or on public benefits. Who does this cost? You got it- you, the taxpayer.

These are the tactics that elicit the greatest understanding and support in this very difficult economic and political climate. Politicians in Washington, DC not only don’t want to hear anything about spending or, heaven forbid, “investing”, they aren’t interested in hearing about anything that doesn’t reduce the deficit or slash spending.  I try to address that mentality in this way: If you take a long-term view of the economic impact of our collective bad parenting, it is clear that not only is it morally wrong to treat these children so thoughtlessly, but it is fiscally irresponsible as well.  Let us work towards reducing the deficit and slashing spending by minimizing the huge financial drain that these children will present us with if we do not provide them with the tools and resources to become responsible and self-sufficient adults.  The 5.7 billion dollars that are spent on the needs of this population once they leave foster could be greatly reduced if we simply committed to being better parents.

Whether you are driven by moral or fiscal considerations, let’s take responsibility for these children who are relying on us to parent them well. We owe them no less than we owe our own children, and they deserve not to be penalized any further for their own parents’ mistakes.

The first step towards doing the right thing by these kids is by answering the questions presented at the beginning of this piece and acknowledging that we ourselves are neglectful parents to the hundreds of thousands of children in foster care, that our kids aren’t doing well, and that we must do better. I must confess that I am not at all sorry when I bring a legislator, staffer, or pundit to tears by framing this issue in such stark terms.  If it is true that the heartstrings are a direct line to the purse strings, let us usher in a flood.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Amy Harfeld has been an advocate, educator, and public interest attorney for over 15 years. A graduate of the University of Michigan, she served after graduating as a Teach for America corps member in Los Angeles, where she taught 7th grade and coached basketball. While in Los Angeles, she obtained her secondary teaching degree from Cal State LA. After getting a front line view into the myriad social injustices faced by at-risk children, she decided to pursue social justice through the law. She obtained her JD from the City University of New York School of Law. While at CUNY Law, she published an article on juvenile and human rights in the New York City Law Review, clerked at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and completed several public interest internships. After graduating, Amy prosecuted child abuse and neglect cases for New York City's Children's Services. She was then hired to pioneer a legal services program for formerly incarcerated parents at the Fortune Society. From 2007 to 2010, Amy served as the Executive Director of First Star, a national child welfare non-profit in Washington D.C. Currently, Amy works as a consultant, directing national policy for the Children's Advocacy Institute and the National Association of Counsel for Children, and working with the ABA's Commission on Youth at Risk.

A few cracks in the system

Medical:

 Many people who are not aware of the cracks that the system has will tell me, “You are doing so well, I guess we are doing something right,” however, deep down inside I know of all of the behind the scenes injustices that are going on. One in particular is that when a youth ages out he/she is not told that their medical insurance will expire unless it’s renewed each year. Failure to renew leads to insurance being cancelled, reapplying down at the county building which takes forever, a three to sixth month response period, then finally insurance may be activated or not.  Yet what’s worse to come is that if the application is denied, this “achieving” adult will be left with no health insurance. Which poses the question: what is the child welfare system doing right?

Financial:

As I look back at the many obstacles that I have  overcome and still overcoming since my first year in college, one that stands out is fighting for my CHAFEE grant. Since my freshman year until now I have calculated an average of five to six visits per academic year to the financial-aid office too simply check the status of my CHAFEE grant. One reason that the financial-aid counselor will tell me that the CHAFEE grant is late is that the state has yet to release its budget. So my options become very narrow with the registrar’s office when having to pay up front registration fees, tuition fees and so forth, or face the consequence of being dropped from classes with a $75 late fee charge. Since my freshman year I have learned my lesson, work extra hard during the summer and save my financial-aid from the previous year in order to pay for the upcoming fees of the new academic year. Even though it limits me to a very strict budget and picking up two jobs in order to pay for everything on time, while the state figures out when to release its new budget. One thing that I keep hoping for is for the state to take education seriously and moreover the education of foster youth since we only make up about 1% of the population who actually graduate from college.

About the Author:
The Author is a member of CAI's youth Advisory Board and a full time college student who spent several years in foster care in San Diego, California.

It Costs More to Kennel a Dog...

Did you know that it costs more to kennel a dog than the State pays foster parents to take care of our neediest children?  It’s true!

Through a cooperative federal-state program, California agrees to reimburse foster parents for the cost of providing foster children with food, clothing, shelter, and other various necessities.  In return for this agreement, the federal government pays 50% of California’s cost for these reimbursements.  It’s worth noting that these are simply reimbursements for costs – we still require foster parents to volunteer their time and they are in no way compensated for their time.  They are simply reimbursed for their added expenses.  In establishing this cooperative federal-state program (also known as the Child Welfare Act), Congress realized the importance of making sure that foster parents don’t have to take from their own savings or retirement accounts to appropriately care for a foster child. 

Unfortunately, California has not lived up to its end of the agreement.  California has never actually calculated how much it costs a foster parent to provide the necessities and has, subsequently, allowed the rates we pay foster parents to drop so low that, depending on the age of the child, we don’t cover approximately half of foster parents’ costs.  This is the reality even when we don’t add in the cost of childcare.  Because of this disparity, California counties have experienced an average decline of 30 percent in licensed foster family homes.  Sacramento, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Sonoma counties report losses as high as 45 to 50 percent, and San Bernardino County has reported a decline of 61 percent.  Because of the increasing shortage of available foster families in California, thousands of children are unnecessarily relegated to institutionalized group homes.  These group homes not only produce worse outcomes for children than family homes (higher incidences of arrests, use of public welfare programs, homelessness, illness, and unemployment), they are, on average 5 times more expensive than foster homes – even if we were fully reimbursing foster parents for their costs.  Yes, you read that correctly, because we are short-changing foster parents and are, thus, diminishing their supply, we are relegating our foster children to live in settings that provide worse outcomes at a higher cost to our State.

Outrageous, you say?  You’re right!  So, what can be done?  We, at the Children’s Advocacy Institute, filed litigation more than three years ago requiring California to come into compliance with the mandates of the Child Welfare Act.  (Find out more about our litigation at http://www.caichildlaw.org/FC_Litig.htm.)  More than two years ago, judgment was entered in our favor.  The Court found that California has not adequately assessed the cost to foster parents of providing foster care and has underfunded foster parents.  Unfortunately, nothing has changed in the past two years.  Rates are the same as they were.  In May of last year, California finally commissioned a study concerning how to set rates by taking into account the cost factors required by the Child Welfare Act.  Unfortunately, we have yet to see either the results of that study or any actual changes to foster parent’s rates.  The Court has given the state until April 8, 2011, at noon, to complete implementation of a new method for determining the rates of payments to foster parents.  While increasing the rates makes sense economically and for the good of our foster children, I’m not holding my breath.  But, we will be ready with further motions to file in Court until this issue is resolved.

In the meantime, you can support your local foster parents.  Contact your local child welfare agency to see where you can drop off needed supplies.  Check with your child’s extra-curricular provider to see if they will donate a spot in karate or dance classes (or any other classes).  If so, again, let your local child welfare agency know.  Or, go here http://www.sleeptrain.com/local-foster-kids.aspx to either donate money online or find out where you can drop off supplies.  They are currently holding a pajama drive because, as a State, we are not providing adequate funding to give our foster children pajamas to sleep in at night.

About the Author:
Christina Riehl serves as CAI Senior Staff Attorney in the San Diego office, primarily handling CAI's litigation and related activities. Before joining CAI, Christina worked as staff attorney with the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles, where she represented minor clients in dependency court proceedings. Prior to that, she interned with the Honorable Susan Huguenor. Riehl is a graduate of the USD School of Law, where she participated in the CAI academic program.

What does 2011 hold for California's Children?

When it comes to crystal balling 2011 and what it portends for California's children, the images that can be seen are fuzzy; decidedly low definition.

For those of us who work on children's issues in or around state government, it appeals to our vanity to emphasize Sacramento politics in our children's forecast. But the truth is that the  schizophrenic nature of the economic recovery will prove more broadly and deeply hurtful to California's children in 2011 than the state budget fiasco.

Every study underscores the tight connection between the financial well-being of families and therefore children and well-being of families and therefore children.

Unsurprisingly, children living with parents who are not economically stressed fare far better than children being raised in families that are barely and frantically scraping by. It is a mistake, however,  to see this as just a problem of material wealth, although, obviously, the urgent concern when times are economically bad is that children have shelter, clothes, food, and health care.

Where their parents are concerned, the radar of children is finely tuned -- their survival depends upon it. And so the devastating and permanently life-altering, non material consequences for parents of joblesness -- fear, depression, stress and anxiety, divorce, drug and alcohol abuse, a loss of hope, a leaden omnipresent sense of failure -- will inevitably change the trajectories of their children, odds are for the worse.

Even while some corporations happily report unprecedented earnings, and even as the capital markets surge toward restoration of pre-recessionary levels, huge swaths of California suffer unemployment rates still significantly over ten percent. But because unemployment rates don't count people who have given up looking or count people who have taken jobs at wages far below what they were making before, an unemployment rate of, say, 12 percent comes nowhere close to revealing the true number of children and families that will cry or be scared or feel anxious or go without meals or go without healthful meals or needed health care or happy birthdays in 2011.

The now apparently permanent chasm between the fates of Wall Street and Main Street and what it foretells for the well-being of California's children in 2011 and beyond is to me the single most frightening portend for our State's (and nation's) future. When meshed with an appreciation for the might of the former to dictate the policies that shape the lives of the latter, the prospects for the vast majority of our children to live better lives than mine look dim and grim, for 2011 and beyond.

Which brings me back to Sacramento. Governor Jerry Brown's budget is not so far different that Governor Schwarzenegger's last budget where children are concerned to warrant much ink. Both make wretched slashing cuts to programs benefitting children. Those cuts will irrevocably hurt tens of thousands of blameless kids. Some children will die in abusive homes when no CPS worker is available to searchingly review their circumstances. Some children will be forever crippled by failing to obtain needed health care. Many will be homeless or less visibly end up in desperate cul-de-sac lives of crime, drug abuse, or  dysfunctional and violent relationships because government programs that can successfully break the cycle of poverty no longer exist or are insufficiently available.

The budget also utterly fails to twist state bureaucracies toward articulated goals and priorities, toward sunshine and changing the way services are delivered to be more friendly and less expensive. And, even while everyone knows the nexus between poverty, illiteracy, poor health, and broken families and costly prison stays, the budget makes cuts that are fiscally stupid; cuts that would get any investment advisor fired, if judged by an ROI (return on investment) point of view.

The 2011 proposed state budget is in the main common.

None of this is predestined. All of it is symptomatic of who pays and who doesn't pay the costs of political campaigns of both parties.

If a few children were billionaires and looked out for other children the way labor or chambers of commerce represent their  members, these cuts would never be spoken of aloud, let alone proposed.

Thus, the similarity between these budgets should not raise an eyebrow. Elected officials must make daily decisions within a context and reality they didn't make with typically little bandwidth both to do the urgent thing and the long term thing of changing the reality they work in at the same time. The way overall politics dysfunctions under the last governor is the same as for the new one.

What is really different, however, about this  Governor isn't his budget. It is his apparent commitment to use the full wattgage of his ambition, intellect, strategic experience, and boldness, to present the argument for government as a needed component of civil society squarely to the California electorate.

By premising his budget forthrightly on tax increases and by already laying out in stark terms the civil consequences of a denuded social fabric, this Governor at this early stage appears courageously poised to call the question on what kind of civil society Californians want to have.

Like Kirk re-programming the supposedly unwinnable Kobayashi Maru Starfleet test, Brown is apparently seeking to do what very few politicians ever do: win by changing the context within the game that is being played. Democrats of uncommon eloquence and brilliance have shrunk before this challenge -- Clinton, Obama -- in favor of short run, needed progress.

The decision of these two presidents to get what was immediately gettable legislatively wasn't necessarily wrong. Yet to lay the foundation for a rejiggered economy where the vast majority of families and children benefit from  the brilliance of  market-provided prosperity, we need to talk candidly substantively and unpopularly about first principles; about wealth, about generational opportunity, about the commonweal and the common good, and come to some consensus about what we are willing to pay for.

We need to talk about what government means and doesn't mean. Governor Brown seems eager to have that conversation and the one word that keeps bouncing around inside my skull is:

Finally!

About the Author:
Ed Howard is CPIL/CAI Senior Counsel. His expertise in California legislative politics and policy stems from his years as Special Counsel and Chief Policy Advisor to a State Senator and Chief Consultant of two standing California legislative committees. During his years as a staffer in the Legislature, he spearheaded the enactment of numerous and nationally trend-setting laws in the areas of privacy, technology, IT procurement, the regulation of licensed professions, health care, and consumer rights. His legislative portfolio not only included detailed legislative drafting, research, negotiating, and advocacy within the Capitol with elected officials and their staff, but also major speechwriting and political strategizing.

Howard received his B.A. from The George Washington University’s political science program in Washington, D.C. and received his J.D. from Loyola Law School, where he was awarded the American Jurisprudence Award for Constitutional Law and was selected as Chief Justice of the Moot Court. He is a member of the State Bar of California, and as well is admitted to practice law before the Ninth Circuit and United States Supreme Courts.

SANTA? I’ve been a very good boy this year. Can I please have a brand new loving foster family AND an “educational liason” for Christmas?!

After researching the process of becoming a foster parent and digesting the statistical realities facing the youth in our current foster care system, it is safe to say that the current state of affairs is rife with inefficiencies.  Most of the issues stem from the fact that agency workers have to play “dual roles” throughout the foster care process.  As a result, potential parents are blindsided by the realities of the support they will receive, and what their own generosity will reap in terms improving the life of a child.  

With the ultimate goals of increasing the number of foster parents, lowering the barriers to those considering becoming foster parents, and increasing the widespread success of foster youths transitions into society, the system must address certain systemic failures that have existed for quite some time.  Under the current system, many foster parents become discouraged that they are really making a difference.  Without more effective actions, to make tangible improvements, public perception will remain that those youths involved are inevitably headed down an irreversible path to failure.  

Since Assembly Bill 490s inception in January of 2004, and continuing through the 2007 California Foster Youth Education Summit, the identified areas of concern regarding youths in the foster care system have persisted.  A major factor that was thought to contribute to poor educational statistics is that foster children are frequently moved from home-to-home and school-to-school.  The transitional problems mentioned included misplaced school records and failure to give proper course credit.  Also, the learning process was interrupted and ultimately disjointed by these school and home relocations.  Despite keeping the “child’s best interests in mind”, these relocations did not necessarily yield the best result. 

At the time of the Assembly Bill 490, it was clear that one step in the “best interest of a child” would be to provide them with an “educational liaison” who could help with the educational and school transitions affecting the foster youths.  Most of the issues identified with these transitions were not difficult to correct.  They simply needed to be addressed in a timely and complete manner.  

At the 2007 California Foster Youth Education Summit (CFYES), educational statistics had not improved.  75% of foster students still functioned below their grade level with 83% still being held back by the third grade.  Since AB 490 was passed, high school statistics had also not improved with a 46% high school dropout rate with still fewer than 10% of the youths enrolled in college.

What is mystifying is that in the years between AB 490, and this CFYES, the same culprits were identified but evidently had not been addressed sufficiently.  “Instability” related to multiple home removals and school changes were again identified.  Another hinderance mentioned was a lack of “consistent educational monitoring, intervention, and support”.  

Apparently, the suggestion of an “educational liason” mentioned in AB 490 was not effectively put into action.  Instead, what was done was to simply continue on the same path of stretching agency workers duties to include that of serving the quasi-role of an “educational liason”.  Deliniating a separate “educational liason” was a much needed change that did not occur.  

At the 2007 CFYES, additional “systemic issues” were metioned concerning a “lack of clarity between child welfare and educational personnel about shared responsibility for the educational outcomes of the foster youth.”  If a youth education summit regarding California’s foster youths cannot show improvement in previously identified educational problems, how can parents new to the foster care system, be expected to succeed when the foster care support structure they are a part of remains flawed?  

This lack of clearly defined roles and agency workers continuing to act in “dual roles” appears to be the achilles heel of the foster care system.  Agency workers functioning in “dual roles” is prevelant throughout the current recruiting and screening processes of potential foster parents, as well as with the “ongoing education” efforts provided to parents.  

Now it is nearly 2011.  Is the problem solved? Not quite.  With new federal funding available, we are faced with a perfect opportunity to fund an initiative to place “educational liasons” with all of the students in the foster care system.  A conscious effort must be made by California agencies to assign an “educational liason” (EL) to each foster child.  With an entirely separate role from the other agency workers involved, ELs can monitor students through their entire school careers- elementary, middle, and high school.  In coordination with tutors (if necessary) and agency workers, ELs can become familiar with the students academic history, their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their family history.  As a result, we can ensure that the majority of these school-related transitional issues can be avoided.  

Without a reliable support network at schools via the presence of effective and singularly focused educational liasons, the educational survival of California foster youths falls on the doorstep of the foster parents.  Parents who are unable to pick up the slack regarding the educational transition of these youths will then subject themselves to the negative fallout that a foster child in their care will be unable to succeed on their own; in both school and their adult lives. 


About the Author:

Brian Reed is a student at the University of San Diego School of Law. He is currently taking part in the Children's Advocacy Policy clinic and is working on issues related to increasing the number of foster parents in California's foster care system.

CAI's Homeless Youth Outreach Project

 Kriste Draper has been a tireless advocate for homeless youth for over a decade. After Law School, Kriste started the Homeless Youth Outreach Project. The Project provides homeless youth with assistance designed not only to get them off the street into housing, but also to help them build a solid foundation of education, career, and healthy living that will help them to get on with their lives and stay off of the street for good. Learn more about the Homeless Outreach Project, and how it works here: http://www.caichildlaw.com/hyop.htm

The Homeless Youth Outreach Project needs funding to continue helping these youth, and you can help. The Project was recently selected to compete for $50,000 in funding from Pepsi Refresh. Please take a few moments of your time to sign up and vote, then vote for the project every day. The top 10 projects at the end of December will get $50,000 in funding. There are also projects competing for $5,000, $25,000 and $250,000 in funding (though only two projects will be chosen for $250), so feel free to vote for projects in other funding categories as well. Your support is very much appreciated and will make a world of difference for homeless youth in San Diego. 

Follow this link to help support the Homeless Outreach Project in San Diego. http://www.refresheverything.com/homelessyouthoutreachproject

Thank you for your support!!