California Foster Care News

Foster Children Struggle To Recover From Identity Theft

2011-12-06T13:01:00.001-08:00

Foster Children Struggle To Recover From Identity Theft
Huffington Post, Dec. 5, 2011

"Burdened Beginnings" is a series examining the problem of child identity theft.

SAN DIEGO -- After bouncing between a dozen foster and group homes here in this seaside town where the Pacific shore meets the Laguna Mountains, Mercediz Hand wanted at least one thing in her adult life: a stable home.

But after aging out of foster care, Hand discovered someone had been using her identity since she was 10, taking out a mortgage and racking up $3,000 in unpaid cellphone bills.

Her credit was ruined. This summer, she slept in her car, a 2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, because she could not qualify for an apartment. Then her car was repossessed because she defaulted on a loan with a 21 percent interest rate -- the lowest rate that lenders would offer. She finally found a landlord who did not check her credit, but she wants to move because her apartment is infested with roaches and termites.

Sitting outside a coffee shop on a recent afternoon, the 24-year-old mother of two said she is considering filing for bankruptcy.

"It should be easier to get these things fixed, but it's not," she said in an interview. "It doesn't go away."

Experts say foster children are particularly vulnerable to identity theft because their personal information passes through many hands, increasing the chances their Social Security numbers will be used to commit fraud.

Now, lawmakers and child welfare advocates are looking at ways to protect the financial reputations of foster children amid growing concern over child identity theft. With increased frequency, thieves are hijacking children's unblemished Social Security numbers to take out credit cards, car loans and mortgages, thereby destroying the credit histories of young adults.

This fall, President Obama signed a law with a provision that requires all states to run credit checks on older foster children and help resolve cases of identity theft before they age out of the system.

But experts say that is not enough. The real problem, they say, is that foster children's Social Security numbers are overexposed. Matt Cullina, who has adopted three foster children, said he receives five to seven ID cards each year that include their full name, date of birth and Social Security number -- more than enough information to commit identity theft.

"There's probably no other segment of the population that has ID cards with those three pieces of information on it," Cullina, chief executive of Identity Theft 911, said at a July forum on child identity theft.

Rep. James Langevin (D-R.I.) has introduced legislation, the Foster Youth Financial Security Act, that goes further by prohibiting states from using Social Security numbers to identify foster children. The bill, which is still pending, would help protect foster children from identity theft by reducing the public exposure of their sensitive information, according to Amy Harfeld, a policy consultant for the Children's Advocacy Institute in San Diego.

"The point is, we need to stop putting kids' Social Security numbers on their ID cards and passing them around like candy," Harfeld said at the forum, which was hosted by the Federal Trade Commission.

Last year, more than 18,000 child identity theft complaints were reported to the commission, compared with about 6,500 cases in 2003. The increase comes as the recession has left many Americans with greater need for clean sources of credit, making the temptation to hijack a child's pristine record even greater.

But the real figure is probably much higher, experts say, because the crime often goes undetected until victims turn 18 and find their damaged credit is preventing them from acquiring student loans, jobs or apartments. ID Analytics estimates more than 140,000 children are victims of identity theft each year, based on a one-year study of those enrolled in the firm's identity protection service.

The profile of a child identity thief takes different forms. In some cases, family members who have ruined their own credit steal the identities of their children. In others, organized criminals target institutions such as foster homes where children's identities are lying around virtually unguarded.

Last February, Felix Nkansah, 28, of New York, was sentenced to six years in prison for participating in an identity theft ring that stole records of children in foster homes to file fraudulent tax returns.

Experts say such cases highlight the porous security of children's data in foster care, where personnel are focused on protecting children, but not their identities.

"Record management at foster agencies is a joke," Dan Hatcher, a professor at University of Baltimore Law School who does research on poverty issues, said at the forum. "Caseworkers either are not looking for these issues, or when they spot it, they don't know what to do."

In a study of about 2,100 foster children in Los Angeles County, more than 100 children (about 5 percent) had accounts opened in their names, with an average $3,600 in debt. One foster child was found to have a $217,000 home loan, according to the study, which was released in August by the California Office of Privacy Protection, a state agency.

Thieves who steal the identities of foster children are targeting a group that already faces financial obstacles. Less than 3 percent earn four-year college degrees after leaving the foster care system. By age 24, less than half find full-time jobs, and nearly 40 percent have been homeless, according to a study by the Children's Advocacy Institute and First Star, a nonprofit that works with victims of child abuse and neglect.

Mercediz Hand has been homeless twice, but not for a lack of money. She has a steady job working at a homeless shelter. But her credit is so damaged that she and her husband, who ruined his own credit, and their two children, ages 7 and 4, are forced to live in an unsafe neighborhood. On a recent night, a stranger assaulted her outside her apartment, she said.

"I don't want to stay where I'm at. It's not a good neighborhood," Hand said, wearing sunglasses to hide her badly swollen left eye. "But this is the only kind of apartment I can get because my credit is so horrible. I'm renting from anyone who is willing to rent to me."

In the foster care system, a wide range of people have access to a child's Social Security number, including parents, grandparents, foster parents, social workers and group home personnel. Each time a foster child is moved to a new home, their personal information goes with them, further exposing data that should be kept private.

Foster children are also less equipped to fix their credit problems because they do not have the safety net that family often provides, according to Lisa Schifferle, an attorney with the Federal Trade Commission. Every year, about 35,000 foster children age out of the system nationwide without being adopted.

"Once these children are emancipated from foster care, clean credit is essential in their process to establishing a strong start to adulthood," Schifferle said at the child identity theft forum.

Foster children are also more likely to become identity theft victims because they come from struggling families who may view their pristine Social Security numbers as a new source of credit, Cullina said. And children are less likely to report family members to police, making it more difficult to remove the fraud from a credit report, he said.

As more foster children have found their credit destroyed, child welfare advocates have sought to help. Over the summer, First Star and Identity Theft 911 taught 30 foster children from around Los Angeles how to protect themselves from identity theft during a five-week training course on the UCLA campus. First Star President Peter Samuelson said he plans to replicate the pilot program, which was funded through donations, across the country next summer.

Here in San Diego, the fallout of identity theft has presented yet another hardship for young adults who have seen their share. Mercediz Hand entered foster care after her uncle, a registered sex offender who lived with her family, tried to molest her, she said.

She discovered her identity had been hijacked when she ran her first credit report at 18. She has only been able to see a report from one of the three credit reporting agencies because she is unable to answer a security question: the amount of her mortgage.

"I keep telling them, 'I didn't open up a mortgage. I have no idea what you're talking about,'" she told The Huffington Post. "I'm a little scared to find out what's on the other reports."

When Suamhirs Rivera aged out of the foster care system in 2008, he tried to apply for an apartment and a cellphone, but was denied. That was when he learned someone had used his identity to rack up $75,000 on 30 credit cards while he was in foster care, he said. His credit score was 350, the lowest possible.

"I didn't know what to do," Rivera said in an interview. "I thought, 'Where the hell am I going to live if I'm not able to rent an apartment? What's going to happen to me? How am I going to get a job or how am I going to be a productive member of society?'"

Rivera, now 21, filed a police report, but still has been unable to remove the debt from his credit report, he said. As a result, he pays steep upfront costs for basic needs, putting down a $460 deposit for a cellphone and a $2,750 deposit for his $795-a-month apartment. He is unable to afford a car because the interest rate would be too high, he said. Three banks have sued him for failure to pay the debt, he said.

"It's been a constant battle," Rivera said.

Helena Kelly says banks would not give her loans because her credit was damaged by identity theft.

Helena Kelly, who was placed in foster care at age 10 after her mother went to jail for shoplifting, lived with 14 different people, shuffled between aunts, parents, cousins and a foster home. Along the way, someone stole her identity to take out student loans and lease cars and an apartment, ruining her credit, she said.

Now a full-time student at San Diego City College, Kelly, 22, said banks would not give her a student loan or a car loan because of her bad credit, so she paid for school and bought a car by borrowing government-issued student loans.

She spent three weeks this summer sleeping on friends' couches because she could not qualify for an apartment. She now lives in transitional housing for former foster children, but must leave soon because she is taking custody of her younger sister.

Meanwhile, someone is still using her identity, she said. When she applied for cable recently, she learned she had an outstanding balance dating to when she was 11. Kelly, along with Hand and Rivera, are working on their credit problems with the help of the Children's Advocacy Institute in San Diego.

Kelly said she feels angry that even after leaving foster care, her fate is still not under her control.

"My whole life in foster care, I was punished for choices my parents made," Kelly said. "Now I'm being punished as an adult for choices a stranger made under my name. I just want to live for the actions and choices that I make."

California Foster Care Ombudsman Office

2011-12-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

The word “Ombudsman” derives from a Swedish term

indicating a person who acts on behalf of another.

The American Bar Association has further defined an Ombudsman as “an independent governmental official who receives complaints against the government (and government-related agencies) and/or its officials from aggrieved persons, who investigates, and who, if the complaints are justified, makes recommendations to remedy the complaints.

In California, the Office of the Foster Care Ombudsman is an independent resource for reviewing issues concerning children and youth in foster care and those who care about them. Its purpose is to provide foster children and youth or citizens with a forum for voicing their concerns regarding the care, placement and services of children and youth in foster care.

The California Foster Care Ombudsman provides the following services:

Maintains a statewide toll-free Foster Care Help-Line (1-877-846-1602).
Conducts objective investigations and attempts to resolve complaints made by or on behalf of children or youth placed in foster care, related to their care, placement or services.
Disseminates information to children and youth in foster care, and professionals regarding services of the Foster Care Ombudsman Office and foster youth rights.
Compiles all data collected on a yearly basis and makes that information available to the Legislature.

The Ombudsman Office receives complaints and concerns from a wide range of individuals including foster youth, parents, relatives, CASAs, attorneys, social workers, and many other interested parties.

They have a detailed complaint and inquiry process, which includes inquiring if the complainant feels safe making a complaint and if there is any fear of retaliation, and will explore various approaches to address the concerns.

Dual Involvement in Child Welfare, Juvenile Justice Creates Major Struggles in Adulthood

2011-11-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

Dual Involvement in Child Welfare, Juvenile Justice Connects to Major Struggles in Adulthood: Small number of troubled "crossover youths" carry high public cost, report finds
November 09, 2011 by John Kelly

Los Angeles youths who exit both foster care and juvenile justice earn less as young adults and cost the public more than youths who only exit foster care, and are more than twice as likely to have been treated for a serious mental illness, according to a study released today by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

“Young Adult Outcomes of Youth Exiting Dependent Or Delinquent Care In Los Angeles County” found that a sliver of the so-called “crossover” youths account for much of the public costs of the larger group when they are young adults.

The findings are hardly surprising; there is wide recognition that crossover youth fare worse than youths who only come into contact with one agency. But the California study shows that in many cases, the crossover youths experience negative outcomes at twice the rate.

“We didn’t realize crossover youth would have such striking distance,” said Dennis Culhane, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study’s six authors. “We knew it would find they’d be troubled, but didn’t expect this difference of degree to show up.”

Crossover youths accounted for an average of $35,171 in public service utilization costs, such as being jailed or receiving welfare benefits, which is nearly three times the $12,532 average for other foster youth.

Eighty-two percent received some state benefits – welfare, food stamps or Medicaid – compared with 68 percent of other foster care exiters.

The research suggests that two major factors for the disparity were treatment for mental health disorders and further criminal activity. Four years into adulthood, 24 percent of the crossover youth had been treated for schizophrenia or psychosis; the comparable rate for foster youths was 11 percent.

Two-thirds of the crossover youths had a jail stay in their first four years after foster care; they were three times more likely to land in jail than other foster youths in the study. The average cumulative cost of jail-stays over the first four years of adulthood ranged from $18,430 for child welfare youth to $33,946 for crossover youth.

A quarter of the crossover youth accounted for three quarters of the public costs associated with the group during young adulthood. Culhane said a follow-up study is already in the works to determine whether other factors can help predict which crossover youths will struggle and require high levels of public assistance.

“To the extent you can do that, there is huge potential for offsetting costs” by making better preventative investments, Culhane said. Mental health treatment, he predicts, “is going to be a major factor.”

The study suggests that connecting more crossover youths to employment opportunities is another potential avenue for improvement. After four years, foster youth had earned an average of about $30,000 and crossover youth had earned $14,000. Crossover youth were half as likely to have consistent employment.

The Los Angeles-based Hilton Foundation plans to use the findings of this study to craft a strategy for working with crossover youth and seek approval for a project this winter, said Jeannine Balfour, the foundation’s senior program officer for domestic programs.

Culhane said Los Angeles County, is an ideal place to pilot strategies for helping crossover youths because of the recently passed state law extending foster care until 21 and the fact that the county has an integrated data system for all of its departments.

“That’s very unique,” Culhane said. “You could pilot something, and have immediate information to make sure you’re getting the right people.”

The study used records from thousands of youths who exited foster care from an out-of-home placement in 2002 and 2004, and juvenile records for any youths who exited probation from 2000 to 2006. Those records were then cross-referenced against service utilization data from the county and state agencies that handle health, criminal justice, employment and welfare.

There were a total of 596 youths who exited foster care in one of those years and also exited probation. On most measures of adult outcomes, they fared significantly worse than the youths who came into contact with one system.

The demographics of the crossover kids, two-thirds of whom were male, ran inverse to racial data of the probation-exiting population: African-American youth accounted for 25 percent of probation exiters but more than half (56 percent) of crossover youths; 57 of teens who exited probation were Latino but they account for only 30 percent of crossover youth.

Improved Outcomes Due to Extending Foster Care Until Age 21

2011-11-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

New Reports Highlight Improved Outcomes for Older Foster Youth in California Eight County Initiative Provides Promising Strategies for Extension of Foster Care to 21 By the Stuart Foundation; Walter S. Johnson Foundation; California Connected by 25 Initiative Published: Monday, Oct. 31, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 31, 2011 -- /PRNewswire/ -- California's leading funders in child welfare, Stuart Foundation and Walter S. Johnson Foundation, issued two reports today with the results of the six-year California Connected by 25 Initiative.

The Premise and Promise of the California Connected by 25 Initiative and Promising Strategies from the California Connected by 25 Initiative highlighting strategies used by child welfare departments in Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt, Orange, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Solano, and Stanislaus counties that improved education, housing, and other outcomes for foster youth ages 14 to 24.

"The California Connected by 25 Initiative was an effort to take a group of disconnected youth and connect them to the anchors that make a difference - education, employment, housing, permanency, and financial skills," explained Teri Kook, child welfare director for the Stuart Foundation.

Every year approximately 4,000 youth emancipate from foster care and many do not have safe and affordable housing, a high school diploma, the skills to find work, and relationships with caring adults that all young people need to be successful. While many young people are struggling in this difficult economy, foster youth, lacking the support of family networks, are more likely to be unemployed, suffer from mental health problems, be a victim of crime, go to jail, become homeless and live in poverty.

Data Shows Education and Housing Success:
The initiative was developed to change the trajectory for youth emancipating from the foster care system. Data collected over a three year period in five of the eight counties, 2008-2011, found that:

Foster youth that completed some or all of their A-G requirements, the college prep courses needed for admission to a UC or CSU, increased from 31% to 45%;

Foster youth passing the high school exit exam (CAHSEE) increased from 44% to 54%; and

Foster youth reporting a safe housing plan increased from 53% to 72%

Reports Offer Strategies to Implement New Law Extending Foster Care to 21
The core focus areas and strategies are described in greater detail in the report Promising Strategies from the California Connected by 25 Initiative. The report will be valuable for counties preparing to implement AB 12, California's Fostering Connections to Success Act.

Starting January 1, 2012, foster youth will be able to continue to receive child welfare supports and services past their 18th birthday, provided that they meet certain criteria, including working towards a high school diploma or GED, being employed at least 80 hours a month, going to college, or participating in a vocational or employment program.

Amy Freeman, program officer for the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, noted "Counties implementing AB 12 will need to encourage youth to stay in extended care and then provide the supports and services they need to maintain their eligibility. This initiative offers a starting point for counties and stakeholders looking to better engage youth and enhance services."

Youth Engagement Key Strategy:
One of the most important strategies that evolved from the initiative was youth engagement and empowerment. Although child welfare agencies and other providers work with youth on a daily basis, staff are not always trained in youth engagement and youth involvement in service planning and decision-making is generally not an institutionalized practice.

"Youth are a critical and equal part of all communities," said Lyssa Trujillo, youth engagement technical assistant for the initiative, "The lives of youth belong to themselves, not child welfare workers, and youth must be involved in the decisions that affect their future."

In the current economic climate, most young adults are struggling to support themselves and rely on family support. Removed from their homes due to abuse and neglect and often disconnected from their families and communities, foster youth are at an even greater disadvantage. They lack a safety net to fall back on and face enormous obstacles on their path to adulthood.

"The transition from childhood to adulthood is a hugely significant time in every person's life," said James Anderson, project manager for the California Connected by 25 Initiative, describing the underlying premise of the initiative. "The fact that so many of our emancipating foster youth are leaving care only to become homeless and disconnected is unacceptable. With the lessons learned from the initiative and extending foster care to 21, we have the opportunity to create promising futures."

The California Connected by 25 Initiative report will be highlighted at a conference on November 1, 2011 at The California Endowment Oakland Conference Center.

For more information about the California Connected by 25 Initiative and to read the report, visit www.californiaconnectedby25.org

The Stuart Foundation is dedicated to transforming public education and the child welfare system so that all youth can learn and achieve in school and life. The Foundation is a partner and convener in melding the resources, thinking, and energy necessary to create and sustain system-wide change in California and Washington. It invests in programs and practices that serve as scalable and sustainable models and that inform policy. For more information, visit www.stuartfoundation.org

The Walter S. Johnson Foundation seeks to help youth become successful adults by preparing them to participate fully in their education, their workplaces and their communities. For more information, visit www.wsjf.org

SOURCE: Stuart Foundation; Walter S. Johnson Foundation; California Connected by 25 Initiative

Immigration: A break for foster kids

2011-11-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

Immigration: A break for foster kids
San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 4, 2011.

Youngsters who are brought to the United States illegally, and mistreated after they arrive, have gotten a boost from a federal appeals court in fighting deportation orders as adults.

The ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco involves undocumented youths who are placed in long-term foster care because of abuse or neglect, based on a judge’s findings that it would be harmful to return them to their home country. That classification, which allows the youngster to qualify for legal residency, was granted to about 1,500 youths nationwide last year, said attorney Kristen Jackson of the nonprofit Public Counsel, which represented the immigrant in this week’s case.

Her client, Jorge Raul Garcia, had been granted legal status as a teenager in 2000 but was deported to Mexico eight years later after being convicted of two minor thefts in the Los Angeles area. The ruling allows him to return and seek to regain legal residency.

The court said Garcia had a tragic childhood in Mexico — his father was convicted of murdering his mother, and during his youth he suffered an injury that left him brain-damaged. He entered the United States illegally in 1992 at age 8. The court didn’t say who brought him, and Jackson, who is handling his appeal, said she doesn’t know. A year later, Los Angeles County authorities said Garcia had been a victim of severe physical abuse where he was staying, and he was declared a dependent of the court in 1994 and placed in long-term foster care. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and diabetes and attended special education classes in school.

The county also applied to immigration officials for legal residency for Garcia in 1994, but it wasn’t granted for more than five years, a delay that the court said may have been due to a missing birth certificate. He left the foster care program in 2004, at age 20, and a year later was convicted of stealing a bicycle in Long Beach and of shoplifting in Manhattan Beach. After he served jail sentences for both crimes, immigration authorities began deportation proceedings.

Deportation would have been mandatory after a serious felony conviction, but non-citizen legal residents convicted of lesser charges can apply for an exemption if they were “admitted” to the United States at least seven years earlier and have lived here ever since. Immigration courts decided that Garcia had been admitted to the U.S. in 2000, when he was granted legal status, leading to his deportation in mid-2008 because his convictions took place less than seven year later. But on Wednesday, the appeals court said federal law recognizes the long-term foster care program for undocumented immigrants, in which Garcia was placed in 1994, as a type of admission into the United States.

The law’s eligibility requirements show “a congressional intent to assist a limited group of abused children to remain safely in the country with a means to apply” for legal residency, the court said in a 3-0 ruling. Those in Garcia’s category “should not be wrenched away without adequate (legal) process,” the judges said.

It’s the first federal court ruling to address the issue, said Jackson, Garcia’s lawyer. Interested readers can view it at www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/11/02/08-73004.pdf

Former foster children have overtaken war veterans as the single largest population in California’s homeless shelters.

2011-04-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

Many Penniless Former Foster Kids Call The Streets Home
Sharma, Amita, KPBS, April 6, 2011.

Former foster children have overtaken war veterans
as the single largest population in California’s homeless shelters.

The average American parent spends $50,000 dollars from the time a child turns 18 until age 26.

Foster children, who leave the state’s care at 18, get $500.

These findings are among a bevy of disturbing facts contained in a new report from the Childrens' Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego. It portrays the grim trail of hopelessness facing the 30,000 young Americans -- including 300 in San Diego -- who leave the foster-care system each year upon reaching age 18. It's a trail Melissa Lechner has tread for the past several years.

“When I left the foster care system, I ended up couch surfing, going from a friend’s house to a friend’s house," Lechner said. "I tried getting my own apartment with two other people. That didn’t work out. I moved into another friend’s place. By 2007, I became homeless.”

Lechner is a 22-year-old Grossmont College student who works part-time as a caretaker. She has been homeless off and on since 2007. In the winter months, home has included the sidewalk in front of the downtown library. During warm weather, home for her and other ex-foster kids was the San Diego River bed.

“We all cuddled together in tents to keep warm, laid out our blankets," Lechner said. "I ended up with staph a couple of times because of the dirt. Churches would come out and feed us.”

Lechner went into the foster care system when she was 10 months old after her mother was killed in a car crash. She spent the next 17 years with 10 different foster families and in a handful of group homes.

“I knew it would happen," she said. "I’m a foster kid. It’s to be expected. Foster kids end up leaving the system and having nowhere to go. They don’t give us any sort of funds to be able to get our own place. They just leave us out to dry.”

But San Diego County Child Welfare Services Director Debra Zanders-Willis said social workers do try to prepare the kids for self-sufficiency. She said six months before foster kids exit care, social workers help them create a transition plan that includes assistance in writing resumes, interviewing skills and finding a job.

She said there is also subsidized housing available for foster kids turning 18 until age 21.

“There are a lot of resources available for foster youth when they exit out of foster care,” Zanders-Willis said.

That statement, according to attorney Kriste Draper with The Children’s Advocacy Institute at USD, is more theory than reality. She said there are about 100 beds in government subsidized housing available in the county even though 300 foster kids are emancipated locally each year. Social workers try to help kids find jobs, she said.

“But that doesn’t always translate into the child being brought to this worker’s place, sitting down doing that (job-application) work, taking time out of their school day or after school, coordinating with the group home to get the rides," Draper said. "Caseloads are so high.”

As a result, Draper said, most foster kids on the cusp of leaving slip through the system’s cracks. And all of us, she noted, are to blame.

“As a state we have decided that a foster child’s parents are not good enough to be their parents," Draper said. "Each one of us through our tax dollars has said we can be better parents. And if we are going to accept that responsibility, then we need to make sure that we are better than the homes we have taken them from. And right now, I think that we fail at that.”

Evidence of that failure lies in the numbers. Nearly 40 percent of foster kids become homeless. Only 3 percent earn college degrees. By age 24, just 50 percent have jobs. And the federal government spends nearly $6 billion a year on foster kids, who can’t function on their own, through public assistance and other expenditures.

“Financially, what we’re doing makes no sense,” Draper said.

But reform requires influence. Bob Fellmeth, executive director of The Children’s Advocacy Institute, said children have none.

“Children are not politically powerful," Fellmeth said. "They don’t vote. They don’t give campaign contribution money. They’re not organized. Of the 1,200 lobbyists in Sacramento, there’s a very, very small, tiny voice (advocating for children) and these foster kids are the tiniest of the tiniest."

Reentry into foster care

2011-04-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

Santa Cruz County's foster kids re-entry rate spikes, prompting review
Hoppin, Jason. San Jose Mercury News, March 28, 2011.

SANTA CRUZ -- The number of local foster children removed from their home after being reunited with parents has spiked in recent years, prompting Santa Cruz County officials to take a new look at how those cases are handled.

At one point, nearly one in five foster children who returned home did not stay for more than a year, with the county's so-called re-entry rate of 18.5 percent rate topping the statewide average by more than 50 percent.

While that number has since declined, children in Santa Cruz are still more likely to re-enter the foster care system than children elsewhere in California.

"We don't know what changed to make it go up," said Judy Yokel, the county's director of family and children's services. "We just know that it did." The statistic is particularly disappointing to Santa Cruz advocates, since local numbers once beat state averages.

The county's current re-entry rate of 15.2 percent now easily outstrips the federal standard of 9.9 percent.

That has prompted the county to change the way it analyzes each case, bringing together groups of people key to a child's welfare before making any decisions on their future.

"We now hold one before we return any kid home," Yokel said. "No kid goes home anymore without team decision-making." Such cases are among the most heartbreaking scenarios for those who work within the foster care system, with parental drug and alcohol relapses often playing a large role.

Storey, a social worker at Felton-based New Families, a regional foster care organization, said courts and the county can often take too punitive of an approach, quickly removing children when parents relapse but offering little help with recovery.

"What they don't understand is that there's a process of healing," Storey said. "The majority of professionals that work in recovery know it takes two years for people to get themselves straight."

Few seem to know what happened to flip the county's number so dramatically. In March 2005, the re-entry rate was 5.3 percent - less than half the state average.

One possibly explanation is the economy -- Santa Cruz County first exceeded California's average during 2008, when the economy was thrown into chaos.

"It's possible. Hard economic times certainly make it difficult for parents to care for their child adequately," Yokel said.

But those statistics reflect the previous 12 months of cases, seemingly predating the economic downturn. And the overall number of foster care cases did not go up, Yokel said.

The re-entry rate is one of the few clouds in an otherwise bright sky. Several years ago, the county formed a committee to oversee improvements to the family care system. Since then, referrals for abuse or neglect are down, the timeliness of adoptions remains high and three-fourths of foster children are reunited with their families within a year.

Ken Goldstein, executive director of CASA of Santa Cruz County, which assists in the court process once children enter the system, said he is aware of the re-entry problem. But he also had few answers.

"Adults learn slowly," Goldstein said. "Sometimes it takes some time to change."

100 Strong for Teens in Foster Care

2010-12-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

San Diego businessmen stand '100 Strong' for foster youths
Cadelago, Christopher. SignsOnSanDiego, Dec. 21, 2010.

ENCANTO — After spending more time in group homes than with relatives, this was supposed to be the year — finally — when the boy with blond shaggy hair and a soft spot for animals celebrated the holidays with a new family.

In the company of foster brothers and sisters, maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about being teased and punched. They’d exchange gifts and sit down to a festive dinner. Surrounded by family and friends, he said, maybe he wouldn’t feel so alone.

I “would have been in Carlsbad,” said Nicholas, 13, a resident at the Center for Positive Changes in Spring Valley. “But I got angry and did things I shouldn’t have … and they said I couldn’t live with that family … I worry that I’ll be in the system until I turn 18.”

On Sunday, Nicholas said he was skeptical when operators of the group home promised a holiday party with haircuts, gifts, lunch and the opportunity to network with business leaders for support, internships and eventually jobs.

“I’ve never had this before,” he said, shortly after arriving at Christmas on Imperial Avenue, the inaugural celebration sponsored by 100 Strong, a fledgling community group in southeastern San Diego. “I think that they are using the kindness of their hearts to give us these presents.”

The collective of businessmen has spent months promoting positive change by investing 100 percent — “not 97, or 98, or 99 percent” — of their energy into the community, co-founder Mario Lewis said. They support street fairs for networking, provide job training and mentorship for youths, and, more recently, work to calm the neighborhood after a fatal shooting.

After the slaying of a 25-year-old man in Oak Park, 100 Strong called for a cease-fire, marching across parts of southeastern San Diego and renaming the intersection of Euclid and Imperial avenues “The Four Corners of Life.” (It had long been known as The Four Corners of Death.)

They’ve knocked on 687 doors in five months, organizing community patrols and trying to inspire people to look out for their neighbors. The efforts generated meetings with county health officials to explore new initiatives to fight physiological problems and childhood obesity.

For its inaugural event on Sunday, 100 Strong targeted teens living in foster care, said Lewis, the owner of Imperial Barber Shop on Imperial Avenue near 65th Street.

“There’s Toys for Tots, and there’s Toys for Joy, but what about the kids, the teenagers, who need more than toys?” Lewis said. “Our goal was to find the most needy ones and then stay in touch with them beyond the holidays.”

The daylong event included free haircuts and hairstyling, a photo shoot by Image Seed Photography and lunch by Chef Rick Catering. The African American Genealogy Association, Bay Vista Fund, Ground-Up Youth Foundation and In the Pinc donated gift cards, digital music players, clothing and basketballs.

Michael Norris, a former photojournalist who now mentors young people out of his Image Seed studio, said it was important for foster youths to know that they’re supported. For Giovany, it represented an opportunity to solicit information about studying criminal justice in college for a career in law enforcement.

Giovany, 16, was born in La Puente and grew up in El Monte. Long a product of the foster-care system, he was transferred here when his mother got sober in San Diego County. He moved in with his family two years ago, but soon got into trouble for destroying property, he said.

Now back in a group home, he’s learning how to live independently and invited the opportunity to meet someone who could help down the road. “We have some programs, some support,” he said. “But I didn’t really expect nothing like this.”

Christmas Wish: No California youth sleeping on the streets this winter

2010-12-23T09:12:00.000-08:00

Covenant House was founded 38 years ago with the mission to help homeless teens and young adults get off the street and into productive lives.

They serve as a refuge to:

young people who are running from abuse at home

youth who've been kicked out of the house (often because of their sexual orientation)

young people who "age out" of the foster care system at age 18 and face the adult world alone.

Covenant House connects these young people with:

Shelter, including a transitional housing program

Access to medical care

Coaching in basic life skills

Opportunities to finish high school

Resources for job skill development

Staff work with youth on developing a long-term plan for their lives.

Covenant House's Transitional Housing Program: Youth pay rent to Covenant House for their apartment, and after 12-18 months when they graduate from the program, they are given ALL of their rent to help them to put a deposit on an apartment and set up a household.

Second annual Children Joining Children for Success event

2010-12-21T12:09:00.000-08:00

Volunteers turn out to aid foster youth
Garcia, Olivia. Bakersfield Californian, Dec. 20, 2010.

If you wanted to measure Bakersfield's spirit of volunteerism this holiday season, you don't have to look any further than the second annual Children Joining Children for Success foster care event recently held at the Rabobank Arena.

About 600 volunteers turned out to mentor, teach and guide foster children who came out to spend a day of interaction, encouragement and learning.

As a volunteer myself, I couldn't help but feel moved by the turnout of support. There were judges -- about 16 in all -- educators, lawyers, oil engineers, church members, court reporters and other business professionals, as well college and high school students, former foster youth, and tons of others helping in so many different ways. Some mentored children whose ages ranged from six to 17 years old. I met a Bakersfield College nursing student who grew up in foster homes and was there to mentor.

She was a quiet young adult. But her words were packed with power and lessons of survival and perseverance as talked to a group of teenage foster youth about growing up without a father, having a mother who was more focused on her drug fix of the moment and worried more frequently than you can imagine about whether she would eat for the day.

Going into foster care was not ideal, but it gave her the stability she needed so she could focus on creating her own destiny.

Sylvia Mendez, founder of the nonprofit Children Joining Children for Success, hoped that the many former foster youth -- success stories in several ways -- who braved reliving their past would ignite a light of hope in the children. In talking to the event's youth board, Mendez said she discovered a common theme among foster children -- many felt left behind.

"They always felt like they did not belong wherever they went," Mendez said. "No one has talked to them, nurtured them. They didn't have a sense of belonging. All of us want a sense of belonging."

And while the event's goal was to impact foster children, these children did the same to the volunteers.

For instance, many of the professionals who mentored the youth shared their own personal stories of childhood obstacles, revisiting difficult times, and in doing so, the adults underwent a healing process for themselves.

"They went in thinking they could help children, but by sharing and sorting through their own past, they were able to find peace with it," Mendez said. "I had some of the mentors tell me, 'I feel I got just as much or more than the children.' For the mentors, it helped them to place things in their lives -- things that were turbulent at one time -- and come full circle now as adults and professionals by expressing themselves and putting closure to those things that were very painful."

While Mendez was pleased with the event's many successful moments, she wished that more foster children could have benefitted. Surprisingly, she later received calls from foster families who said they were unaware. This year, the event reached about 700 foster children. Last year, it touched 1,500 lives. Mendez said the group works through the county in notifying foster homes and plans to review improvements for next year.

"We could have had more kids," Mendez said. "It was rather frustrating."

One of the group's goals is to provide enrichment that can supplement the mandated foster care services provided by the county. "Mandated services are where we live, food and safety," Mendez said. "Those are a given. But all children need enrichment that could lead them to a path of thriving success."

Holiday Bash for Foster Care Alumni

2009-12-14T08:11:00.000-08:00

Holiday bash will help area foster kids
Rohrs, Sarah. Contra Costa Times, Dec. 10, 2009.

Kareena Blackmon, 21, of Vallejo was one of the lucky ones. After 14 years in foster care, she had a place to live and was college-bound when she was emancipated from the system.

But as they approach their 18th birthday, many teens about to age out of foster care face enormous hardships in finding work and housing, and in going to college, said Blackmon, a youth advocate for the county.

Teens in foster care who are 18 or older have needs all year, but they're pronounced during holidays, said Blackmon and volunteers who help foster children.

"I want people to just be aware and try to help them to get into housing programs, employ them and get them enrolled in college," Blackmon said.

To help brighten their holidays, two agencies have teamed up to throw a Holiday Bash, 4 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the American Canyon Community Center, 477 Canyon Creek Dr.

Donations are being sought to put on the bash and give each teen a gift for Christmas. At least 150 teens are expected.

"This is just a holiday Christmas party for this population that is usually forgotten about," said Cynthia Grady of New Beginnings Supportive Services.

New Beginnings is staging the event with Alternative Family Services Solano Independent Living Skills Program, which contracts with Solano County to help teens make the transition to adulthood.

"There is a great need, especially during the holidays," Living Skills Program Assistant Program Director Ella Bell said. "Without their biological families, they feel distant and withdrawn. We try to pull our resources together so that we can provide them with gifts and help them feel part of the community," she added.

New Beginnings helps numerous young adults with food, diapers for their babies, formula, bus passes, clothing and other items. Efforts are also under way to open a transitional housing center for them.

Too often, Grady said, these young adults face homelessness and poverty when they leave foster care.

Further, nearly half the youth surveyed do not complete high school, nearly one-third have spent at least one night homeless, and about one-fourth sell drugs to support themselves, according to an Annie E. Casey Foundation Survey of former foster care youth.

Blackmon said she's faced continuous challenges in the three years since she left foster care, including the need to suspend her college plans due to lack of transportation. She is also now guardian of her 18-year-old sister.

People can help with the Holiday Bash by making a cash contribution, donating gift cards, and providing household and clothing items, such as warm blankets, bed sheets and towels, Grady said.

For more details, please contact Grady at (707) 655-6064.

Donations also can be made through Independent Living Skills Program, 100 Corporate Place, Suite A, Vallejo or by calling (707) 648-2000.

The Season of Sharing Fund is a very good idea

2009-12-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

Aspiring performer now answers to higher calling
Berton, Justin. San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 11, 2009.

San Jose -- If you ever find yourself calling for help, you may hear Erica Quinonez's voice on the other end of the line.

The 25-year-old San Jose resident works as an office specialist in Santa Clara County's Social Services Department, and by the time people call her office, they are looking for a lifeline, someone - anyone - to help them navigate a system that, at first glance, can appear overwhelming.

"I can hear it in their voice and I know what they're going through," Quinonez said. "I've been in those shoes."

In October, Quinonez, who has custody of her four younger siblings ages 14 to 20, had gotten behind on her rent and was handed a three-day eviction notice by her landlord. The family, which Quinonez has kept together despite years of bouncing among foster homes, rents a two-bedroom apartment in downtown San Jose.

"I was wondering where we'd come up with the money," she said. "Then I called someone and they helped me."

Through the Season of Sharing fund, contributors paid the rent for November and December, giving Quinonez time to catch up on bills and help purchase winter clothing for her siblings.

"This is the biggest blessing ever," she said. "This is something no one has ever done for us."

Two years ago, Quinonez's father signed over custody of the children before he entered San Quentin Prison, she said. But for many years earlier, the eldest sibling had already learned the nuances of the system to keep her two sisters and two brothers together as they ricocheted among foster homes, their grandparents' homes and homeless shelters.

Growing up, Quinonez attended 12 schools: "Mount Pleasant for one week, Live Oak High School for one day."

After she graduated from high school, and her parents had regained custody of the siblings during a stint of sobriety, Quinonez headed to New York through the City Year program. In exchange for living in the Big Apple, Quinonez provided one year of community service, determined to work with children who had walked a similar path.

"Since I was in the system my whole life, I wanted to give back and do something that no one else was doing," she said. "I wanted to change lives."

Yet when Quinonez said that when she returned, her parents had relapsed, and she was thrust into the parenting role once more.

"I had to be the backbone of the family," she said. "I had to do the cleaning, get the kids to school, buy the clothes, take care of the kids. I had parents, but they weren't doing anything more than providing some money."

Quinonez set aside her dream of attending college and becoming an actress and singer. She took a job as extra office help through a program for former foster care children in Social Services' Department of Child Support. She excelled, earning two promotions, and has since earned a full-time position with benefits.

She also has developed a bond with God, a relationship she once viewed with suspicion.

During a stay at homeless shelter in her youth, her mother asked her to pray for an apartment, and Quinonez remembers thinking, "If there was a God, he wouldn't do this."

"I used to be an atheist," she said, "but now I realize I can't do this alone."

A few weeks ago, Quinonez was at work when she answered the phone and heard a woman crying. The woman was going through a divorce and had been kicked out of the house and had no money and nowhere to sleep.

Quinonez handled it delicately, gave the woman a rundown on all the resources available to her, and led her to help.

"It wasn't my dream to be in social services," Quinonez said. "My dream was to be an actress and singer. But those dreams are over. I can still sleep and pretend like I'm in Rockefeller Plaza singing a song. Then I wake up to kids arguing over who's going to take a shower first or how cold it is. Maybe he has a different calling for me."

Donations to The Chronicle's Season of Sharing fund help thousands of people in the Bay Area throughout the year. Assistance is in the form of grants paid directly to the supplier, such as a landlord. Individuals cannot receive direct grants. For more information, visit www.seasonofsharing.org

Kids' Data Now Available for All California Cities and Counties

2009-11-18T16:05:00.000-08:00

Spread the Word: Data Now Available for All Communities in California!

Kidsdata.org now offers data for all counties, cities, and school districts in California. These statewide data are available for a wide range of topics measuring the health and well being of children, and more data will be phased in throughout 2010.

To spread the word about this free, time-saving resource, please post this news on your Facebook and Twitter pages, add it to your organization’s newsletter or website, and alert your colleagues.

Lack of consistency in parenting programs and struggles to find safe, affordable housing

2009-10-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Fighting to be a mother again
Banks, Sandy. Los Angeles Times. October 24, 2009.

For women trying to get their children out of foster care, it's more than becoming a better parent and kicking drug habits. It's contingent on finding safe, affordable housing.

It took her 15 years -- one stint in prison, several passes through drug rehab, months of weekly parenting classes.

But this week she had good news to share at her Parents Anonymous session in South Los Angeles: "They said I can have my daughter back."

They are the Los Angeles County child welfare system. Her daughter is a teenager now, flirting with the same fast life her mother led. And the mother is a recovering drug abuser, trying to repair the damage her addiction left.

"Fifteen years ago, I lost my parent rights," she said. She sought to regain custody of her child twice -- in 2004 and 2007 -- but authorities turned her down both times. Then last week, she was summoned to court and told her rights would be restored.

"I never gave up," she said, as the mothers in the room applauded.

Like her, they have all lost children to foster care. And they're trying to become better parents because they want their sons and daughters back.

More than 70% of the parents whose children are in Los Angeles County's foster care program have substance abuse problems. Many also have experienced domestic violence or suffer from mental health problems. Before they can regain custody, the vast majority must attend counseling or parent education programs.

Some programs offer little more than a sign-in sheet and list of dos and don'ts: Don't fill your baby's bottle with Coca-Cola. A time-out is better than a smack across the face of a defiant toddler. A bag of Cheetos is not an appropriate breakfast for a kindergartner.

But other sessions provide a forum for discussion, and often unearth deeper problems -- such as the buried anger of a mother who was abused when she was a child, or the need to earn the trust of resentful children who have seen Mom relapse too many times.

"These parents need a place where they can talk in confidence, without being judged," said Barbara Hill, the facilitator at the Parents Anonymous session I attended. The meeting took place at Broadway Village, a complex built by her agency, Beyond Shelter, which pairs social services with subsidized family apartments. I'm not using the parents' names because the program promises anonymity.

The two dozen parents at Tuesday's meeting had all been mandated to attend. Most were single women, but there was one couple, a few lone men, and a teenage girl there to support her mother. This was their monthly role-playing session, in which they had to offer solutions to scripted parenting dilemmas:

They all agreed that they probably would not call authorities on a mother threatening to beat her misbehaving son in the mall. Instead, they'd confront the woman and warn her to lighten up "because people are watching," one mother said.

They'd have no qualms lying to police about a daughter suspected of selling drugs. But if the allegations were true, the private punishment they would dole out might make jail seem like a walk in the park.

And they would say "no" to a sleepover with a friend whose mom keeps a filthy house, uses drugs and has boyfriends in and out -- even if they liked the mother. Her homegirl's feelings matter less than a mother's responsibility to her daughter, they concluded.

The back and forth about right and wrong was not much different from the conversations I've had over coffee with my own friends from the time our kids were small.

When is it OK to spank? Are the girls old enough to go alone to the mall? What to do about our clueless friend who doesn't know her 14-year-old drinks alcohol?

And I was struck by how universal the challenges of parenting are. And how hard it must be for a struggling mother who knows that her wrong answers in a parenting class might keep her child in foster care.

In last Saturday's column, I vented my frustration about drug-using moms who have multiple children in foster care. This week, I visited the counseling and rehab programs because I wanted to know whether parenting classes can help a drug addict become a responsible parent.

I didn't realize that for some women, finding affordable, stable houses is a bigger obstacle than pregnancy or relapse.

"Women come in here crying all the time because they don't have a safe place to live with their kids," said Gina Johnson, a counselor at New Beginnings Recovery Treatment Center. "The housing issue is the main focus women have when they want to get their children back."

Several factors contribute -- the high cost of housing in Los Angeles; the women's history of instability; their lack of education or skills; and burned bridges among family members who might have been willing to take them in.

But it's also an institutional Catch-22. Drug-using moms who lose their children often lose their government-subsidized housing. Housing aid, their only means of paying rent, is based on family size.

So they can lose those vouchers if their children go into foster care, or if they enter a residential drug rehab program. When they recover, they go to the end of the line, and the waiting list for aid can be months, or years, long.

"They can jump through all these hoops -- the drug tests, the counseling, the parenting classes -- then they can't find a safe place to live," Johnson said.

That leads some to give up, she said. "They feel so defeated, so helpless. Some go back to selling drugs, selling their bodies to get money. It's like a vortex, and they get sucked back in. They feel like they're doomed to fail."

And I think back to that Parents Anonymous meeting and the mother who was so pleased to be getting her daughter back.

She'd persevered for so many years -- writing her daughter from prison with advice, enlisting friends to help keep the girl on track, petitioning the court again and again for the privilege of mothering.

"All I have to do now," she told the parents celebrating her success, "is find a place for us to live."

The needs of foster children don't decrease during a recession - they only multiply

2009-10-24T06:27:00.000-07:00

Letter to the Editor: Fostering Care
San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 19, 2009.

Like so many other state responsibilities, foster care fell by the wayside earlier this year while Sacramento fought over the budget. But the needs of foster children - our children - don't disappear because of a recession, so we were pleased to see that several foster care bills were signed into law.

AB131 was sponsored by the Judicial Council of California and authored by Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa. It would require parents who can afford it to reimburse the state for court-appointed counsel in a dependency case. Another Evans bill to receive the governor's signature was AB154, which brings California in line with the federal Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. The new law doubles financial incentives to adopt foster children who are older or have special needs.

But the governor should have signed Evans' third bill, AB82. The bill would have established safeguards for foster children being prescribed psychotropic medications. Such medications can be dangerous. Ordinarily, a child's parent would provide this kind of support.

It's unfair that the governor has chosen to abdicate this responsibility for the children we're raising collectively.

Residential treatment centers receive massive budget cuts

2009-10-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

State funding cuts to foster care and treatment programs hurting local agencies
Lee, Alfred. Pasadena Star-News, October 14, 2009.

Rosemary Children's Services is facing a 10 percent cut from the state this year.

A 10-percent cut in state funding has forced local foster care and residential treatment programs to eliminate some services and beds for needy children, officials said Wednesday.

The reduction took effect Oct. 1 and was approved by the state Legislature in an effort to fix the state's budget gap.

In Pasadena, Rosemary's Children's Services will lose out on $660,000 in funding and is looking at cutting services, Executive Director Greg Wessels said.

"It's very discouraging. You'd like to think that the work you've chosen for your life is important not just to you but to everybody else. Then you realize that there are much bigger realities," he said.

Keyonna, 16, has been living at one of Rosemary's residential treatment centers for four months after being kicked around the system since she was a small child. Her mother was a drug addict and couldn't take care of her, she said.

"It's been hard for me, and now that I'm here in this program, it's helped a lot," Keyonna said. "It's helping us grow into adulthood."

For Altadena-based children's services agency Five Acres, the cuts will result in a loss of about $800,000 in funding per year, said Executive Director Bob Ketch.

As a result, Five Acres has already shuttered a six-bed group home and reduced staff for foster care services, and the agency is also looking at further cuts in the number of children it serves.

"Every week I read an intake summary...and these are often times histories of kids who have been in multiple placements, who've been abused and neglected by their families and also by the system," Ketch said. "These are kids that are hurting and they need help."

Pasadena-based Hathaway-Sycamores has also closed six beds and made cuts at its residential treatment center, in addition to cuts to its foster care services. The agency will lose out on about $275,000, officials said.

And Hillsides, also based in Pasadena, stands to lose about $450,000 and has made some administrative cuts, said Associate Executive Director Suzanne Crummey.

Such programs had already been struggling, agency officials said. The state has not raised its reimbursement rate for such services since 1990, said Hathaway-Sycamores President Bill Martone.

Hathaway-Sycamores has gone down from 178 beds in 2005 to 34 beds now, although part of the reason was due to changes in program philosophy, Martone said.

"When a child has an acute situation that really requires that level of intervention and it's not there, then I think we have some real problems in our child welfare system, and I think that's the danger of under-funding," Martone said.

Youth needs fall through the cracks

2009-10-13T13:17:00.001-07:00

Changes urged for Fresno Co. social services
County might disband Children and Family Services agency
Branan, Brad. Fresno Bee, Oct. 11, 2009.

Children are at the forefront of a debate over whether to change the way Fresno County delivers social services. (actually, it sounds like children are coming in dead-last)

County administrator John Navarrette wants to eliminate the Children and Family Services Department and move its work to other departments.

The department's child-welfare duties would go to the Employment and Temporary Assistance Department under a new name, the Social Services Department. The county's Behavioral Health Department would take over children's mental-health programs.

Navarrette says the changes are needed to trim costs because federal and state funding for social services is declining. By eliminating four administrative positions and making other changes to consolidate departments, the county would save more than $1 million annually through the plan, he said.

"All of us have to take a hit," he said. "We're all doing more with less."

But critics, including some county supervisors, question his estimates, and say any savings aren't worth reducing quality of service. They worry that the mission of Child Protective Services will get lost in a merger with the county's largest department.

Foster children often need mental-health counseling, so they should be served by the same department, critics add.

But Navarrette and his department heads insist services would not suffer under the plan. To appease critics, Navarrette said he included a policy guaranteeing that 25% of mental-health revenues would continue to be allocated for children.

The Board of Supervisors expects to vote on the proposal Oct. 27. If approved, the reorganization would take effect Jan. 1.

Supervisors Debbie Poochigian, Judy Case and Phil Larson say they're still studying the plan and haven't made a decision. Supervisors Henry Perea and Susan Anderson say they're opposed.

Approving the plan would bring Fresno County in line with the rest of the state, because it's the only county with a Children and Family Services Department providing both child welfare and mental-health services, Navarrette said. Officials at the California State Association of Counties and the County Welfare Directors Association of California could not confirm his statement.

Navarrette said the proposal was motivated in part by changes at Employment and Temporary Services. The department's director, Julie Hornback, announced her retirement this year, and another department official, Steven Rodriguez, left to become Madera County's top administrator.

Under Navarrette's proposal, Fresno County won't hire replacements. Instead, he would move Catherine Huerta, director of Children and Family Services, to head the new Social Services Department. Child Protective Services would be added to a department that has more than 1,500 employees and administers welfare, employment and other services.

Perea, who has criticized Child Protective Services in recent years, doesn't like the idea.

"By putting CPS in the county's largest department, children may be overlooked and put in danger," he said.

Anderson also thinks Child Protective Services won't get the oversight it needs in such a large department.

Navarrette disagreed, although he conceded that workloads would increase in the Behavioral Health and Social Services departments as supervisors assume new responsibilities.

Anderson and Perea also worry about moving children's mental-health services to the county's Behavioral Health Department, which now runs adult mental-health programs.

The idea has been proposed before, most recently by Perea. But Perea said he would only support a merger of mental-health programs if it included Child Protective Services.

Dr. Morton Rosenstein, a physician and chairman of the county's foster care oversight committee, shares Anderson's and Perea's concerns. The committee expects to make a recommendation on the proposal later this month.

"Fresno County is unique in that children's mental health works with Children and Family Services and it has worked very well," he said. If they are separated, Rosenstein said, "they won't work as well together."

Anderson also worries about communication between children's mental-health and protective care, should they be split into separate departments.

"More children's cases will fall through the cracks," she said.

Children in the foster-care system would not notice any changes and would be served by the same people who see them now, Huerta and Navarrette said.

County workers responsible for foster care would continue to communicate with those responsible for mental health, just as they do now, Navarrette said.

Curt Thornton, a member of the county's Mental Health Board, said moving children's programs to Behavioral Health would add to the burdens of an overworked management staff. The board has not made a recommendation, but Thornton said he is leaning toward opposing the plan.

"You've had someone who has been a virtual workaholic, and I don't know how much longer she's going to last," he said, referring to Behavioral Health director Giang Nguyen. "We're talking about a fundamental change."

Nguyen doesn't dispute his assessment, but still supports the plan. "The workload will increase for everyone," she said.

Annual Tea and Fashion Show helps foster care youth to make it in college

2009-10-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

Program helps foster kids finish college
Hulbert, Cynthia. Sacramento Bee, Oct. 12, 2009.

Brittany Chamalbide was more than ready for her Heidi Klum moment.

Makeup? Flawless. Hair? Perfectly coiffed. Chamalbide was rocking a clingy red dress and strappy black sandals, and the runway was beckoning.

"I'm super excited," said Chamalbide, 18, as she prepared for her modeling debut. "This feels like a real fashion show."

It was real, and it was important. The annual event was a benefit fundraiser for scholarships and other educational necessities for foster youths, like her, who have "timed out" of the system at age 18.

Surveys suggest that 80 percent of foster children want to go to college, said Joni Pitcl, president of the Foster Youth Education Fund, the nonprofit group that sponsored Sunday's event. Only 3 percent actually go, however, and only 1 percent finish.

Many youngsters leave the foster care system without the funds, confidence and support to navigate college, Pitcl said. "For these kids, a flat tire can turn their lives into a tailspin," she said. They need support and guidance, but they have nowhere to turn."

The annual Tea and Fashion Show has raised about $200,000 over the past seven years, helping dozens of foster youth go to school and manage their educational expenses.

Each year in Sacramento County, about 250 youths "age out" of foster care, and a shaky economic climate and government budget cuts have hit them particularly hard this year, Pitcl said.

More than 300 people attended this year's fashion show at California State University, Sacramento, which also included a silent auction and raffle of donated items. Part of the proceeds from the event will go to the university's Guardian Scholars Program, which helps needy students with academic counseling, financial advice, social support and mentors.

Chamalbide and some 50 other young models wore outfits Sunday supplied by Macy's in Sunrise Mall, and they wore them proudly.

"I love it," Alex Gonzalez, 20, said of his white shirt with snap buttons, black jacket and jeans. "It works for me. I would totally wear this shirt, if I could afford it. It costs $90!"

As the minutes ticked by and the spotlight got closer, Gonzalez and his fellow models peeked from backstage at the runway that they soon would own. Music was thumping, and the house was packed. VIP seats lined the stage.

"I'm pretty proud to go out there," Chamalbide said.

Sure, they had butterflies. But these models were not easily flustered. After all, each of them had endured far scarier things in their young lives.

"Going through all of that stuff, it's a struggle," said Mark Hamlett, who was separated from his siblings at age 11 and placed in foster care. "But I'm OK now," said Hamlett, who turns 18 next week. "I think I'll be fine."

Chamalbide, Gonzalez and Hamlett all are students at Sacramento State, thanks in part to the Foster Youth Education Fund. So, as they took to the runway Sunday, they did so with plans for diplomas and careers.

"I feel really good," Chamalbide said.

Then she and the others stepped onto the stage, and toward a bright future.

Does privitization help or hurt children?

2009-10-13T12:57:00.001-07:00

Is privatization good for foster kids?
Heimpel, Daniel. Los Angeles Daily News, Oct. 12, 2009.

A 2-year-old boy in foster care died in Siskiyou County this summer. Across the rural, sparsely populated county in far Northern California, people looked to blame someone, something for his death.

Was it the fault of the woman taking care of the toddler, the third foster parent in twice as many months? Was it the fault of Child Protective Services? Or was it the fault of the private, nonprofit foster care agency that the county had entrusted with the toddler's life?

Between sobs, the social worker from the private agency that had placed the boy told me that this was just a tragic and random event. She said that speculating on this incident was hurtful to the people involved.

But I am of a different mind. When a child dies, it is imperative to scrutinize the cumulative cause of a child's passing.

In this case the child was left in the care of a 77-year-old woman. The toddler had been moved from the home of another foster parent three weeks earlier - a home where the young boy was thriving, according to both a CPS report and statements from neighbors.

The foster mother who the toddler was taken from can't stop crying. In the five months that the brown-haired boy lived with her, she had loved him, even wanted to adopt him. She holds pictures in her shaking hand: the boy splashing in a baby pool on her front lawn, of him smiling in her arms and of him lying in a baby-blue casket, a wreath of white atop his head.

And from a well of rage she levels a strong accusation: The private, nonprofit foster care agency that took him from her did so to maintain a placement, keep a kid in care and thus keep state money flowing in. This estimation is cynical. People who work in child welfare, overwhelmingly do so out of a love for children - but that love is not shared by profit's unbending bottom line.

While the director of the private, nonprofit agency that had taken the boy would not discuss the case in detail, he did take time to tell me how business was for the hundreds of private, nonprofit foster family agencies, or FFAs, that have popped up all over rural California and the rest of the country.

"Of course, it is very important that we continue to get placements and foster parents," he said. If not, his agency and all his competitors would be out of business; keeping kids in care keeps bread on his table.

In 1986 the California State Legislature allowed the development of FFAs. The intent was that these private entities would come in to place children with special needs. Despite the narrow intention of the state, FFAs did what profit-driven organizations do: They multiplied, and soon the foothold they had in foster care was an escalator.

By 1996 there were around 14,500 children placed by FFAs in California. And by January 2008, the peak, more than 20,000 kids were placed in FFAs, according to the California Department of Social Services. The number is even more significant when considering the trend of reduced overall numbers of foster children in care. From a peak of nearly 90,000 total kids in care in 1998 the number has steadily dropped to 65,000 in early 2009. Today well over one-third of California foster children are not cared for by the state, but by private, nonprofit agencies.

In rugged Siskiyou County, 110 of 123 total foster children are placed by foster family agencies, according to county's Human and Health Services director. And as agencies like the one that moved the now-deceased 2-year-old have taken over care, the director explains that HHS has "turned a lot of responsibility over to the foster family agencies." In the case of the young boy who died in August, the move was precipitated by the private agency not the public one.

This harkens to a deep-seated belief in this country that if a public service like foster care is faltering, private enterprise can come in and do it more efficiently. In Florida, foster care was privatized after four of five pilot programs crashed and burned. Today there is no way to judge its success because there is no effective monitoring program in place. Kansas, one of the pioneers of privatization, has been lambasted for its performance, and in rural California the results have been mixed.

In Siskiyou County where 87.4 percent of children are placed with FFAs compared with 43.9 percent of the general California foster care population, county social workers were 10 percent less likely to make their mandated monthly visits than their colleagues across the state, according to statistics furnished by UC Berkeley's Center for Social Services Research. Public social workers, pushed to the limits by heavy caseloads, take advantage of private social workers because there is simply not enough time in the day to see every child.

While in Yreka, the Siskiyou County seat, I stopped into another of the foster agencies that dot the small town. I sat with a woman who felt that she was doing God's work by helping children. But she also realized that doing God's work was contingent on keeping the money flowing, on keeping kids in care. "To be honest. It's about the placements, that's the bottom line," she said.

For the young boy buried on the long flank of Siskiyou County's towering Mount Shasta, we may never know how much the bottom line contributed to his death. But the question must be floated: Can we as a society be engaged in privatizing our children?

Every state Governor should know the importance of assisting youth transitioning out of foster care

2009-10-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

Gov. Schwarzenegger signs legislation to provide services and resources to California’s foster children, Gotten, Valeria. California Newswire, Oct. 12, 2009.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a package of legislation focused on expanding and promoting adoption opportunities and increasing services for children in California’s foster care system.

The bills signed into law will create a food stamp program to assist youth transitioning out of the foster care system and help provide housing for former foster youth working toward a higher education degree. The legislation also ensures that California’s foster care system will continue to have the resources necessary to provide the valuable services these children depend on and helps older foster children secure a safe and stable living environment.

“Every child deserves to grow up in a safe, nurturing environment and this legislation will expand adoption programs and services to ensure that opportunity for California’s foster children,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “It is also important to provide youth with the right tools when they transition out of foster care and these bills help make that possible by improving their access to quality education and providing them with resources to be successful as independent adults.”

The Governor announced that he has signed the following six bills:

· AB260 by Assemblymember Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) that will require that a licensed person shall not make any false, deceptive or misleading statement or representation, require a mortgage broker to receive the same compensation for providing mortgage brokerage services whether paid by a lender, borrower or a third party and will prohibit a mortgage broker from steering a borrower to accept a loan at higher cost.

· AB 719 by Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) to create a 12-month transitional food stamp demonstration project that grants federally funded food stamps to foster youth for one year after their eighteenth birthday, when they age-out of the foster care system and no longer qualify for state aid.

· AB 1393 by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) to require the University of California, the California State University and California Community Colleges to give priority for on-campus housing to emancipated foster youth.

· AB 295 by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) to extend the Older Youth Adoption pilot project for six months until June 30, 2010 to provide participating pilot counties with sufficient time to demonstrate the effectiveness of pre-adoption and post-adoption services for older youth who have been in the system over 18 months and are living in group homes or non-related foster families.

· AB 167 by Assemblymember Anthony Adams (R-Hesperia) to exempt a foster youth who transfers from a new school during the eleventh or twelfth grade from completing locally-imposed course requirements that exceed minimum state standards, if those local requirements would prevent the student from graduating while he or she remains eligible for foster care.

· AB 669 by Assemblymember Paul Fong (D-Cupertino) to exempt current or former foster youth age 19 years or under from California State University, University of California and California Community Colleges in-state residency requirements for tuition and fees.

· AB 1325 by Assemblymember Paul Cook (R-Yucca Valley) to create an alternative option to the definition of “traditional adoption,” in the case of adopting a Native American child. In traditional adoption, termination of parental rights of the biological parents must occur for a Native American child to be adopted. Unfortunately, termination of parental rights can be detrimental to Native American cultures. This bill will add the option of Customary Adoption. Customary Adoption is defined as “a traditional tribal practice recognized by the community which gives a child a permanent parent-child relationship with someone other than the child’s birth parent.”

In addition, the Governor signed a series of foster care-related bills that make changes to existing state laws to ensure that California continues to receive important federal funding to maintain child welfare services:

· SB 597 by Senator Carol Liu (D-La Cañada Flintridge) to establish the development of a plan for the ongoing oversight and coordination of health care services for foster youth and the development of a personalized transition plan for a foster youth in the 90-day period before he or she ages out of foster care.

· AB 154 by Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) to specify that any savings in state funds attained from an increase in federal funding for adoption services be reinvested in the foster care and adoption service system. The bill also requires adoption agencies to inform prospective adoptive parents of their potential eligibility for federal and state adoption tax credits.

· AB 595 also by Anthony Adams (R-Hesperia) to tighten requirements for approving criminal background checks for foster care family homes licensing in an effort to prohibit persons convicted of specific offenses from becoming foster or adoptive parents.

· AB 665 by Assemblymember Alberto Torrico (D-Fremont) to broaden the use of the federal adoption incentive awards that are received by the state as a result of increased adoptions of older children to include other legal permanency options available to older foster youth in order to increase the opportunities for these youth to be placed in stable homes. Other legal permanency options include legal adoption, relative guardianship and reunification services when those services were previously terminated.

· AB 938 by the Committee on Judiciary to require that when a child is removed from his or her parents and placed in foster care, the child’s social worker must within 30 days, conduct an investigation to identify and locate the child’s adult relatives and notify them that the child has been removed from his or her parents’ home.

The Governor also signed the following two child welfare-related bills:

· AB 488 by Assemblymember Norma Torres (D-Pomona) to authorize the Department of Social Services to renew or extend beyond a three-year time period specified performance agreements with private, nonprofit agencies that provide child welfare services. This bill also requires the county or private nonprofit agency to fund an independent evaluation of the agency’s performance.

· SB 118 also by Senator Carol Liu (D-La Cañada Flintridge) to direct counties to include information about incarcerated parents who receive services required by the court to reunify that parent with his/her children.

Free dental care for foster care youth in Sacramento

2009-10-03T11:07:00.001-07:00

Verizon Foundation helps 400 foster children
Robertson, Kathy. Sacramento Business Journal, Sept. 21, 2009.

More than 400 foster-care students in Sacramento will get free dental care thanks to a telemedicine project funded by a $100,000 start-up grant from the Verizon Foundation.

The project was created by the California Dental Association, University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry and the California Health Care Foundation to improve access to care.

The grant by the philanthropic arm of Verizon will support the first year of a project at Twin Rivers Unified School District in Sacramento and a second site in Southern California.

The four-year pilot project will improve access to dental services in 15 community locations across California by giving participating dentists the technological ability to examine patients remotely with help from dental hygienists and dental assistants in underserved communities.

After remote exams, dental hygienists and assistants will perform preventive and temporary treatment. More complex cases will be referred to dentists.

The collaboration “demonstrates that when partnerships are formed, we can still do great things in and for our communities even during times of unprecedented budgetary constraints,” Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said in a news release.

4,000 foster youth "age out" of California each year

2009-09-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

The Fight to Make Well-Being a Foster Child's Right
Daniel Heimpel, Huffington Post, Sept. 15, 2009.

In the twilight of his Presidency, George W. Bush signed The Fostering Connections to Success and Increased Adoptions Act of 2008, marking a fundamental shift in the priorities of Child Welfare in this Country. On Tuesday a subcommittee of the Congress' Committee on Ways and Means will convene to discuss the law's lagging implementation.

For the past three years, I have been a mentor and friend to two 18-year-old boys who both spent much of their childhoods in LA County's rambling foster care system.

Roughly 4,000 foster youth age out of California's foster care system every year. For most their 18th birthday is not so much a day of celebration as one of total isolation. Already separated from their biological families by death or abuse or neglect, at 18 the system turns most out -- leaving many with only frazzled wits to face an uncertain future.

Fostering Connections offers states matching funds to extend foster care till 21 and has placed requirements on the public Child Welfare departments across the country to notify kin if a child is taken into state custody, increase efforts to keep siblings together, enhance health care standards and keep kids from bouncing from school to school even if they are bouncing from group home to foster home and back again.

Until Fostering Connections, Child Protective Services' overriding priority was making sure children were saved from abuse, neglect and dangerous living conditions. What the law makes clear is that safety is -- in and of itself -- an insufficient goal, and compels foster care agencies to do what they have never been legally mandated to do before: provide foster children lasting connections with loving adults and increase their overall well-being.

Despite the importance of this law, ossified state and county departments of child protective services have done little to see it implemented and states that have gone as far as draft implementation legislation have been railroaded by a buckling economy.

For the young men I know, provisions like extension of care can be the difference between the abject and the edifying. For John, whose case was terminated by the department on Christmas Eve of 2008, two months after his 18th birthday, life is out of control. Six months ago he left Los Angeles and his then six-month-old son to try anew with his sister in Montana. Four months later he had burned his bridges there and had impregnated his new girlfriend.

For Chris, who knows John from when they were both 15 years old and living in the same South Central group home, life is different because he was among one of a handful of foster youth who have their "emancipation" stayed, by entering into what are called transitional housing programs. Staying in the system has given him the housing and stability to successfully land a job at a fried chicken restaurant. On Wednesday I am taking him to get his driver's license.

The difference for these two young men is that one was allowed to stay within the system while the other was forced to languish without.

If the federal law was a reality on the ground, every dollar states spend on supporting youth like Chris past his 18th birthday is matched by a dollar from the feds. But for states to receive the funds they need to pass implementation legislation. In California Speaker of the Assembly Karen Bass pushed through complicated and essential legislation to ensure the money.

Unfortunately the current budget crisis has put those funds on hold till 2011, though they were meant to flow in 2010. That means one more year that a young man like John isn't afforded the same opportunity as his peer and friend Chris.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), who introduced the bill back in '08, will hold a hearing on the law's implementation tomorrow. The clear message to states during that hearing must be that while the economy has hampered efforts to speed implementation, the commitment to seeing it through cannot falter.

Otherwise John's story will continue to be more common than Chris'.

Editorial calls on Governor Schwarzenegger to remember his commitment to foster care

2009-09-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

Editorial: 'Aged-out' foster youth at terrible risk
San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 2, 2009.

The phrase "at risk" gets tossed around a lot by educators and social workers. Nowhere is the buzzword more applicable - and more poignant - than in its description of foster youth who are "aging out" of the system at age 18.

Talk about "at risk." One recent study revealed that 54 percent of young men and 25 percent of young women are incarcerated within 18 months of leaving the foster-care system. Another survey showed that 70 percent of California prison inmates have spent time in the foster-care system.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders do not need a lecture on the meaning of these numbers. The well-documented struggle of emancipating foster youth, and the failure of an overburdened system to help them, motivated the governor and legislators to significantly enhance the resources and accountability in the system.

What these leaders need is a reminder of why these investments in our most vulnerable citizens are so critical - especially now, when the economy is compounding the challenges on the young people who lack family support and, in many cases, the skills to navigate on their own.

The same Schwarzenegger who in 2006 signed the landmark package of foster-care reform bills recently slashed $80 million from the state support for child welfare services. Those cutbacks would cost California $44 million more in federal assistance for youth.

The result would be a devastating rollback in the state's effort to give these foster youth - our children, our collective responsibility - the services they so desperately need. Social workers would have higher caseloads and less time to identify and address the needs of youth under their charge; there would be less money for transitional housing and independent living programs; there would be cutbacks in programs that allow children to reunify with their families instead of landing in long-term foster care.

These ill-advised cuts become "schizophrenic and counterproductive" when viewed in the context of the Legislature's pained efforts to reduce the prison population, observed Frank Mecca, executive director of the state's County Welfare Directors Association.

"We don't have the option not to protect when the hot line rings," Mecca said. "All (Schwarzenegger) did was pass the buck to others to make the impossible choice of which child's safety and which child's well-being we're going to compromise."

Amy Lemley, policy director of the John Burton Foundation, is among the foster-care advocates who is trying to stir pressure on the governor and legislators to restore these cuts. "If you can't rally to protect abused and neglected children, what does that say about the state's priorities?" she asked.

Schwarzenegger and legislators must work together to restore that $80 million for child welfare services. They should connect the dots, and recognize the much higher costs of the system's failings.

Fostering Connections Act passed... will states deliver?

2009-03-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

Rooftop Foster Kids
At 18, they lose their foster parents and become homeless. A law may help them
Heimpel, Daniel. LA Weekly, March 18, 2009.

The corner of Hollywood and Western is the epicenter of an underground world: a community outside the collective vision of club-hoppers and restaurant-goers rushing by, and one forgotten by public policy. Homeless youth, many cast off at 18 by the foster-care system, root out lives in a dim, moldy labyrinth of “abandos” — abandoned buildings hidden behind storefronts and the busy boulevard.

They “cop a squat” — sit on the hard concrete benches at the Metro station across from City Council President Eric Garcetti’s field office, and climb onto roofs to get above the cops and the sometimes-unsafe world below.

For most foster children, turning 18 means their case will be terminated — although the euphemism long used by the government for what happens to these young adults is “emancipation.”

Social workers and other experts say that, with that sudden loss of any temporary parent they may have known, often comes too much responsibility. A large number of the 1,200 foster youth who “age out” of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) every year can’t cope any more than a teenager suddenly kicked out by parents at 18. The Children’s Law Center says that within two years of losing foster care, half will be unemployed, a quarter will have been imprisoned, and one-fifth will be homeless.

Rico, 21, and Starr, 20, are walking in front of the Starbucks at the northeast corner of Hollywood and Western. Rico is slightly smaller than Starr, who is two months pregnant. A few hundred feet north of Hollywood Boulevard they cut into a parking lot.

“You gotta move kinda quick,” Rico says, wary of police who troll these areas. Rico crouches and moves through a hole cut in a chainlink fence, and wades into high weeds in the forgotten backyard of a slumping apartment building. Nearby stands the skeleton of a burned-out house.

He dashes through an alley and hops through a window, into another abandoned building. Standing inside the black, moldy honeycomb of rotted walls, he hears a sound. “Who’s there?” he calls into the darkness. The noises stop. The air is cold, damp and filled with the pungent odor of rot.

Starr reaches inside a large handbag in which she hoards potato chips and chicken, which, she admits, she steals from Ralph’s. She pulls out a key and opens a locked door on one corridor. Light spills in, just enough to illuminate a sodden floor that’s spongy underfoot. There is a gaping hole in the ceiling’s Sheetrock. The windows are boarded shut, sunlight sketching the gaps along the window edges. Rico lights a candle, shedding faint light on the young couple’s twin bed.

The thumping that Rico had heard appears — a human shadow crosses the doorway. “Just trying to spook you, man,” says Jason, a young man who sleeps on a mattress nearby.

Rico and Starr laugh nervously, but it’s not that funny. In these abandos everything is spooky. Rico hates seeing his breath when it’s cold. It reminds him of ghosts.

Starr reaches for a can of disinfectant and sprays it wildly. “The mildew smell is too much,” she says. “We just come in here to sleep.”

“Yeah, let’s go get some air,” Rico says. The two leave Jason in the depths and re-enter the world outside.

Rico, like two of his four siblings, grew up in L.A.’s foster-care system. At 17 he was involved in a robbery and went to juvenile hall. When he came out at 18, he was already too old. His foster care had been terminated. The best thing that’s happened in the three years since was finding Starr in a shelter for homeless youth.

Rico is one of 25,000 foster youth nationally who grow too old for foster care each year, and his story is not uncommon.

Major changes could be on the way, because national child welfare–policy leaders no longer believe the notion that 18-year-olds can fend for themselves. Last week, a top researcher on the failures of foster youth programs released the first cost-benefit analysis that delved into the idea of keeping youth in foster care past 18, invigorating a drive to change the law.

Former President George W. Bush signed the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, which includes a new law offering federal funding to states that extend the age to 21 for foster youths who choose to stay. But to get that money, states must pass enabling legislation and match those funds, which in rough economic times makes it a daunting effort.

California Speaker of the Assembly Karen Bass is pushing enabling legislation to fund a $70 million program, targeted at 18- to 21-year-olds, for the roughly 4,500 California foster youth who lose their safety nets every year. “At 18, kids with families can’t survive on their own in this economy,” Bass says. “What do you think it’s like when you have nobody?”

The nationwide study released March 9 makes the first fiscal argument for what is claimed by advocates anecdotally — that the long-term costs of abandoning young adults is much more expensive than helping them.

The study, which focuses on the increased earnings these youth earn if they manage to get a college education, concludes that keeping young adults in foster care could mean a $2.40 return on every dollar spent.

The report did not include the price of maintaining a population of former foster kids who hang out on the rooftops of tough urban areas for safety and sleep in abandoned buildings: the increased medical, prison, rehab, welfare and teen-pregnancy costs.

The study’s lead researcher, Mark Courtney, director of Partners for Our Children at the University of Washington, says foster youth are cut off at 18 because, historically, the foster-care apparatus did not want to take on extended caseloads. “If you talk to someone in the [children’s services] department, off the record they will probably tell you it is shameful that we do this,” he says.

In Los Angeles County, juvenile courts are charged with ensuring these youths have ID cards, Social Security cards and some idea where they are going to live, work or go to school — the basics that a parent would normally shepherd. Rhelda Shabazz, head of the Youth Services Department for DCFS, admits that some young people get pushed out of foster care when they are clearly not ready. “Although we know it does happen,” she says, “we trust the juvenile courts to fill their role as partner and gatekeeper.”

Some 400 “transitional housing” beds are available for the 1,200 youth fresh out of foster care each year in Los Angeles, as well as the roughly 2,000 who are still under 21 and, under the rules, can jostle for the same few beds.

Rico leads Starr to a “luxury” apartment building just off Hollywood Boulevard. He hops a gate, unlocks it for her, and in the elevator presses “R.”

The doors open. The air is fresh. The roof commands a view from downtown to the Hollywood sign. Rico takes off his shoes and dips his feet in the rooftop pool. The sun is pulling low and there’s a chill in the air.

Rico used to live up here, before the security guards caught on. Like other kids who try to get up off the streets, sometimes he would sleep under the sky and stare out at illuminated Griffith Observatory. When it got cold, he would climb into the crawlspace under the pool.

Although Starr never stayed up here with him, she immediately sees the appeal. “It’s a funny way to see the city,” she says. “I am always seeing places where I can sleep.”

“It’s really just us two,” Rico says. “If you got a girlfriend, that’s your best friend.” Starr looks at him and smiles. “I don’t know what I’d do without him,” she says. “Now I can understand why those older homeless people talk to themselves.”

In the growing gloom, Rico and Starr descend and head back to their room in an “abando,” hidden from the traffic coursing along Hollywood Boulevard.

Assembly bill would help put new federal policies and money to work for the state's kids

2009-03-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

Editorial: Fixing foster care in California
Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2009.

For years, thousands of California youths were abused or neglected twice over -- first by parents who couldn't or wouldn't provide basic care, then by governmental agencies that sent them to live with strangers instead of extended family, only to cut them off from all support on their 18th birthdays. The state and many of its counties are now doing better, keeping foster children with family members whenever possible, and in some cases continuing care to age 21 to ensure that young adults have a place to live, adequate job training or admission to college.

Outmoded and foolishly restrictive federal laws discouraged humane and cost-saving innovations -- until last year, when Congress adopted a wide-ranging overhaul of federal foster care reimbursements. Now a state bill by two Assembly Democrats, Jim Beall Jr. of San Jose and Speaker Karen Bass of Los Angeles, would help put the new federal thinking -- and funding -- to work for California kids.

AB 12 would permit California to use federal money to pay half the cost of its kinship guardian program, allowing grandparents and other family members to get the same financial help that formerly could go only to group homes or unrelated foster parents. But that's just Part One. The money that the state and county would save because of the new federal participation would then go to extending services to foster youth until they become 21 -- and those dollars would in turn be matched by more new federal money.

The bill would represent a huge step forward in fulfilling the state's duty to see abused and neglected kids through childhood, in the care of loving family members when possible, and into college or paying jobs. But some caution is in order. As final language is hammered out, there may be pressure to divert savings to help with the state's budget woes instead of reinvesting in foster care. That would be a costly mistake; a study released Monday showed a $2.40 return for every dollar invested in extended foster care.

Some attention is needed on the federal side as well. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines issued in the waning days of the Bush administration restrict funding to "new" kinship-guardian relationships, not existing ones the state and counties already pay for. That punishes California for having done the right thing for families while waiting for Congress to catch up. Revising that language would help more kids here and further the purposes of the federal law.

The department also could help by making clear that emotional or mental health problems are sufficient medical reasons for extending foster care for young people between 18 and 21 who are incapable of holding a job or pursuing vocational, secondary or higher education. Lawmakers, both federal and state, certainly did not intend to push onto the street (or into more costly programs) those children most in need of help.

LA County Probation Dept. mistakenly bills foster parents

2009-03-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

L.A. County studying how others bill for detained youths
Hennessy-Fiske, Molly. Los Angeles Time, March 12, 2009.

After coming under criticism for billing foster parents and those of limited means, the Probation Department is gathering information on what other counties are doing.

Los Angeles County probation officials say they are now studying how other counties recover juvenile detention costs, after admitting they mistakenly billed parents for days when youths were held in probation camps and halls.

By law, California counties can bill parents and legal guardians for some daily costs of detaining youths, but only those whose parents can afford to pay. Last year, more than 20,000 youths were admitted to probation camps and halls, and L.A. County billed parents a daily charge of $11.94 for camps, $23.63 for halls.

Chief Probation Officer Robert Taylor declared a moratorium on billing Feb. 13 after The Times and children's advocates raised questions about improper billing.

"We're looking at everything other counties are doing. A lot of what we're finding is that other counties are doing what we're doing," Taylor said. "Out of 20,000 minors, there will be errors, and we're looking at ways to prevent that."

Taylor had been scheduled to meet behind closed doors with county administrators Wednesday to discuss the moratorium and federal monitoring of probation camps. However, after The Times and children's advocate groups questioned why the meeting was to be closed to the public, administrators postponed the session, which could be held as soon as next Wednesday.

Last week, county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky questioned why the county spent $12,800 hiring private lawyers to recover $1,004 from Sally Stokes, a disabled Compton grandmother. That bill was dismissed days later by a juvenile court referee who found Stokes unable to pay.

County lawyers promised to tell Yaroslavsky how much they have spent trying to collect probation debts but had yet to report as of Wednesday. Gordon W. Trask, principal deputy county counsel, said the Stokes case was "the only one of its kind."

Excluding legal costs, last year the Probation Department spent nearly $900,000 to collect just 11% of what parents owed, about $2.6 million.

The department was not supposed to bill foster parents, including relatives or "kin care" foster parents, because the state does not hold them financially responsible for the children they take in. The state reimburses foster parents and kin-care providers for child-care expenses but stops payment for children who are detained.

Because the department does not track which youths in its system are foster children, it is not clear how many foster parents were improperly billed, Taylor said. At least 111 foster youths were detained last year, according to the county's Department of Children and Family Services.

"We're not supposed to bill them, but I know we have," Taylor said.

Among those mistakenly billed was the president of the L.A. County Resource Families Coordinating Council and the California State Care Providers Assn., a group of about 800 foster caregivers.

Aubrey Manuel, 50, of South Los Angeles, a retired Bank of America staffer, said he and other foster parents have fought probation bills for years.

"It just makes sense that you should not be charging foster parents for these children," said Manuel, who is currently fostering six boys, half of whom are on probation. "Foster parents are people who are stepping up to the plate saying we'll help with this problem we have in society."

Taylor said he realized that billing foster parents was counterproductive and might lead people to reconsider taking children in. He said he was reviewing ways to improve the efficiency of billing, such as gathering information about parents when a youth is admitted to detention or at initial court hearings.

Probation officials in other counties with large numbers of youths in detention said they do more to ensure that parents understand their rights and that foster parents are not mistakenly billed.

"You don't want to grind somebody to the point where they say forget it," said Melanie Markley, Ventura County's chief deputy probation officer.

Ventura County screens parents when youths are admitted to detention and at court hearings, notifying them of their right to appeal the bills in writing. Orange and Sacramento county probation officials include a breakdown of charges with probation bills and information about parents' rights.

In San Diego County, juvenile court judges determine who is financially responsible for probation youths, ensure that foster and other parents are not mistakenly billed and that those who are billed understand what they owe, said Derryl Acosta, a probation spokesman. Alameda County probation officials station financial evaluators across from juvenile court so they can find needy parents quickly.

By law, counties must take into account parents' income and "necessary obligations," but so far, Los Angeles' Probation Department has used a 2003-04 income scale to decide how much parents can afford to pay, without allowing for expenses.

By contrast, Santa Clara County takes into account parents' monthly housing, utilities, food, clothing and transportation expenses. Orange County does not bill the disabled, terminally ill, mentally ill and those who owe child support or federal tax debts.

Most counties bill legal guardians and adoptive parents, but some make exceptions. Sacramento County bills only legal guardians who take in children before they turn 10. San Bernardino County waives probation bills for legal guardians.

"Our reasoning is that we do not want to deter those who are volunteering to assist juveniles by making them financially responsible for these types of bills," said Scott Frymire, the county's chief deputy probation administrator.

In Los Angeles, Taylor said he stands by billing adoptive parents and legal guardians, including relatives.

"Otherwise, some parents dump them on the system," Taylor said. "I know it sounds cruel, but if they adopted them, that child is their responsibility, just like a natural child."

Kim McGill of the nonprofit Inglewood-based Youth Justice Coalition, disagreed. If parents are dumping children on the system, she said, the department should send caseworkers to their homes, not bills.

"A caseworker makes a lot more difference than threatening parents," McGill said.

Counties are required by law to recoup medical costs from probation youth with private medical insurance, but L.A. County has not done so, probation and health services officials said.The county has not tracked which probation youths have medical insurance, but after supervisors' staff inquired last month, probation and health services officials began investigating to see how much money the county could save, Taylor said. Medical costs account for about 80% of daily charges in the halls and 38% of daily charges in the camps, according to probation records.

Taylor has not said when the billing moratorium will end but has submitted a proposal to increase the daily charges to parents to $14.96 for youths sent to juvenile camps, $29.28 for those held in juvenile halls.

Before billing resumes, parents want an independent task force to review the system.

"This is a system that has a lot of flaws in it," said Elizabeth Calvin, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch in Los Angeles. "This cannot be fixed piecemeal."

Penalizing foster parents for caring for detained youth

2009-03-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

L.A. County probation's wrongful billing angers foster advocates
Hennessy-Fiske, Molly. Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2009.

Advocates for foster parents of troubled youths are incensed that Los Angeles County probation officials billed them daily for their children's stays in juvenile detention, garnished their pay and placed liens on their homes.

"It would be just as logical to bill the teacher of the child or the Sunday school teacher or the minister," said Bob Thomas, a University of San Diego law professor and director of the Children's Advocacy Institute, calling the bills "inexcusable."

"You could ruin their credit," Thomas said. "It's very serious to send a bill to somebody backed up by sanctions."

Aubrey Manuel, 50, a retired bank worker in South Los Angeles and foster father of six adolescent boys, has been fighting probation bills for years.

"I would send them back saying I don't owe this," said Manuel, president of California State Care Providers Assn. "The next thing I know, there's this lien on my property."

Foster parents often did not have the means to pay probation bills that added up to thousands of dollars. Although the state reimburses them for some of the cost of care, based on the ages and the number of their foster children, those payments stop for a youth who is detained.

Furthermore, foster care groups have long complained that the state payments are too low.

Foster care payments top out at $627 a month for youths 15 to 17, which works out to about $21 a day. By contrast, Los Angeles County probation charges $23.63 a day for juvenile hall stays.

The last foster care reimbursement increase two years ago was 5%, about $22 extra a month per parent. Several foster parent groups sued the state to increase payments; and in October a federal district court judge in San Francisco ruled in their favor, although the state is appealing.

Regina Deihl, executive director of San Francisco-based Legal Advocates for Permanent Parenting, called the billing of foster parents "insulting."

"It's particularly alarming and disturbing in this time of economic stress that you are seeing this going on," said Deihl, who is also a foster parent and has seen the ranks thin in recent years.

"We are losing people," she said.

The number of foster parents in Los Angeles County has dropped about 22% during the last five years, from 8,453 to 6,577. Although the number of children in need of foster care also contracted about 25% during that period as more youths were reunited with their natural families or adopted, Deihl said some of the foster parents who left the system are most needed now: those, like Manuel, who are willing to take in troubled youth, many of whom land in detention.

Both probation and the courts have recently started new programs that target at-risk foster youth, including a Georgetown University Center for Juvenile Justice Reform training project and a pilot program offering intensive intervention and support for foster youth in Pasadena juvenile court. But they do not track how many foster youths are detained each year, and Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Michael Nash has acknowledged that more needs to be done to prevent them from "crossing over" from foster care to detention.

"For kids who do cross over, we need to get a handle on what's going on in their life," Deihl said. "Just billing parents is not the answer."

Children are dying due to lack of timely intervention and oversight

2009-03-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

More children dying of abuse, neglect in Sacramento County
Lundstom, Marjie and Sam Stanton. Sacramento Bee, March 10, 2009.

The number of children who died of abuse and neglect shot up in Sacramento County last year, nearly triple the previous year's toll, a new report has found.

Eleven children died in 2008 from abuse and neglect, compared with four in 2007, according to a self-assessment from Child Protective Services scheduled for delivery to the Board of Supervisors today.

The assessment, required every three years, found that CPS has fallen significantly below the state average for how quickly social workers respond to reports of possible abuse. Of all referrals requiring an in-person response, Sacramento CPS fell to 82 percent for those requiring a contact within 24 hours – well below the 96 percent state average – in the first quarter of 2008.

The report also revealed a worsening record in frequency of local CPS workers' visits to clients' homes. In March 2008, 89 percent of Sacramento children who required monthly CPS visits received them, down from 98 percent in March 2006 and March 2007.

The decline in response occurred even as fewer CPS cases were being opened for investigation, the report noted.

Release of the report comes as CPS finds itself under scrutiny for a series of problems, ranging from the increase in child deaths to revelations that documents inside the agency have been altered – issues disclosed by an 18-month Bee investigation. Soon, a county audit of the agency is expected to be released, and a grand jury report on CPS also is under way.

Until now, CPS has largely blamed its problems on individual workers and their failure to follow policies and procedures.

But this document reveals more systemic issues within the agency, including a widespread lack of training, poorly prepared supervisors, high caseload and "slow and burdensome" discipline for problem workers.

Overall, the report concluded, CPS needs to do more to protect vulnerable children. The last time Sacramento child abuse and neglect deaths hit double digits was in 1999, according to Child Death Review Team figures, which differ slightly from the county's.

"Since March 2008, there has been a significant rise in child abuse-related deaths within Sacramento County," said the report from Lynn Frank, director of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CPS.

Though the report made it clear that "not all of the children were known to Sacramento County CPS prior to their deaths," it said that "immediate action has been taken to examine the circumstances of each death and to examine policies and practice as they relate to those circumstances."

The circumstances of how some children died last year illustrate failings that CPS identified in its own assessment.

For instance, 4-year-old Jahmaurae Allen died July 21. The social worker in that case failed to connect with the family for seven days after a doctor reported suspicious injuries to CPS, even though the agency had flagged the situation for an "immediate response," or contact within 24 hours.

When Jahmaurae's social worker did meet with the family, she closed the case after a cursory review. The boy died one month later; the mother's live-in boyfriend faces murder charges.

The agency pointed out in its new report that it has reduced the percentage of children being sent back to foster care after an earlier removal from their homes. This "foster care re-entry" declined from 21.9 percent of kids returning to foster care in 2004 to 15.8 percent in 2006-07, the most recent data available.

This trend, though, did not help 3-year-old Valeeya Brazile, who died Feb. 5 after being removed from her mother for violence. The little girl was placed with a stable foster family where, by all accounts, she was happy and thriving. She was returned home less than four months later and, the following year, was beaten to death – allegedly by the mother's boyfriend.

Both Valeeya's and Jahmaurae's mothers also face child endangerment charges.

In acknowledging the agency's weaknesses, the report stated that CPS faces high worker turnover, a lack of experienced workers and daunting caseloads.

CPS caseloads in its various programs range from an average 10.6 cases per worker each month to as many as 46.3 cases per month.

The agency has taken pride in recent years in its use of "Structured Decision Making," a check-off list that provides guidance to front-line workers assessing safety and risk in troubled families.

But the new report warns – yet again – that the agency's use of SDM has been "inaccurate and inconsistent."

Last December, 2-year-old twins were shot to death by their father, two years after CPS had used SDM to assess the family following an incident with an older child.

In 2006, the 12-year-old girl – who had three siblings – had told authorities that her stepfather had been beating her with a stick, forcing her to go without food, shaving her head and making her sleep in the garage without blankets, according to CPS documents.

Ultimately, the agency determined that the four children's risk of neglect was "moderate" and their risk of abuse was "low," the documents show. A safety assessment determined that there were "no children likely to be in immediate danger of serious harm."

Two years later, the twins, along with their mother, were shot to death in their south Sacramento home. The father committed suicide.

Over the years, the CPS Oversight Committee has criticized the agency for how it evaluates potential risk to children. The citizens committee, formed in the aftermath of 3-year-old Adrian Conway's brutal 1996 death, has repeatedly told the Board of Supervisors that CPS workers and supervisors are failing to properly use the tools that help assess a child's current safety and future risk of harm.

Financial incentive to support foster care youth until age 21

2009-03-11T16:57:00.000-07:00

Selected recent California newspaper editorials
San Jose Mercury News, March 11, 2009.

San Francisco Chronicle: "To invest in our children"

California not only has a moral obligation to do more for the thousands of foster youth who "age out" of the system every year. It also has strong financial incentives to help support them to age 21.

The Fostering Connections Act, signed into law last year by President George W. Bush, will offer federal reimbursements to states that choose to extend foster care to age 21. To qualify, those foster youth would need to be enrolled in school or a job-training program, working at least 80 hours a month or unable to do any such activity because of a medical condition.

California needs to seize this opportunity to enhance the lives of its foster youth—while improving its bottom line in the process. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County), and Assemblyman Jim Beall, D-San Jose, have introduced state legislation (AB12) that would allow California to tap those federal funds for youths between 18 and 21.

Myriad studies have shown that the period immediately after "emancipation" at age 18 is the most precarious for a foster youth.

These young people—our children, our collective responsibility—are many times more likely than teenagers with family-support structures to become homeless, incarcerated or pregnant. Their chances of getting a college degree are somewhere in the single digits, according to various studies.

A new study of three states
(Illinois, which extends foster care benefits to age 21; and Iowa and Wisconsin, which do not) underscores the cost-benefit ratio of helping young adults get on the right track. The study found that each dollar spent on extended-years support to foster youths returns $2.40 as a result of their increased education alone. If anything, that cost-benefit analysis is extremely conservative, considering the state costs of incarceration, teen pregnancy, homelessness and mental-health programs.

Fortunately, the top leaders in Sacramento understand all this. Bass and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, have long championed the cause of foster care. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed significant reform legislation that has brought more accountability and services into the system.

Bass, Steinberg and the governor's health and human services director all participated at a Monday news conference in support of AB12. If the measure is passed by legislators and signed into law, California would be eligible for federal reimbursement in October 2010.

This one deserves fast, bipartisan approval.

Extending Foster Care to Age 21 is a proven solution

2009-03-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

Advocates Want Foster Care Extended
March 9, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KCBS) - Some California officials are pushing a plan to extend foster care for kids until they are 21-years-old. They cite a new study that says it would save the state millions of dollars in the long run.

California isn't exactly flush with money right now, but the federal government passed a law last fall that offers $80 million in matching funds, if the state keeps young adults in foster care after they turn 18.

Kevin West, 23, spent years in foster homes, group homes, sleeping in cars and on benches and beaches in Santa Cruz. "Many foster youth know too well from their days being in the system that many of them will not make it. And they're not expected to make it, really. Most of them, after emancipation, find themselves living on the streets, they're incarcerated or their lives end prematurely."

A new study of foster extension programs in the Midwest find at least a 2-to-1 cost-benefit for the states, so San Jose Assemblyman Jim Beall said it's worth it for California to continue foster care for the 18 to 21-year-old group. "In states that provide the kind of support proposed by this bill, AB 12, the outcome for foster care youth have been dramatically improved. So this is a proven solution."

Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to support foster youth until age 21

2009-03-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

Governor Schwarzenegger Supports Extending Federal Foster Care
Imperial Valley News, March 9, 2009.

Sacramento, California - Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued the following statement today in support of extending AFDC-FC benefits to California’s foster youth up to the age of 21:

“I am committed to working with Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg on a bipartisan solution that ensures our children and youth in foster care are provided with the tools needed to succeed at life. Along with our federal partners, together we can better equip our youth by making sure they continue to have access to important resources and services as they transition into adulthood. I look forward to continue working across the aisle with the legislature and our federal and local partners on an issue important to so many Californians.”

The Governor last year signed a package of bills aimed at improving the lives of children and youth in California’s foster care system by making it easier for caregivers and providers to access the resources they need to protect one of the state’s most vulnerable populations. The legislation makes it easier for caregivers who receive CalWORKS grants to reapply after relocating within the state, increases access to the alternative foster care programs for youth in need of additional support, and provides for the continuation of federal child welfare funding.

Last year, the Governor also signed AB 2310 and AB 2483 to ensure that youth aging out of the foster care system have access to resources and services, including financial aid, career services and other benefits. In addition, the Governor’s Department of Social Services worked in conjunction with the U.S. Social Security Administration to quickly adopt a federal provision in 2008 to ensure implementation of AB 1331 by Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) making it possible for foster youth to leave foster care with approved benefits in place rather than waiting months to receive them.

In 2007, the Governor signed a series of bills to further enhance foster care services in California. And in 2006, the Governor signed a package of legislation designed to improve California’s foster care system and the safety of children entrusted to the state’s care. Also in 2006, the Governor secured a first-of-its-kind federal waiver that provides unprecedented flexibility by allowing counties to use federal funds to support innovative strategies that keep children out of foster care and in safe, stable homes.

Foster care is one of Karen Bass' top three priorities

2009-03-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

Foster care, front and center
Capitol Alert , March 9, 2009.

When Karen Bass first ascended to the Assembly speakership, she named overhauling the state's foster care system among her top three priorities.

(The other two were balancing the budget and modernizing the state's tax codes.)

Today, Bass and a host of others will hold a press conference to highlight a new report that says California "could realize at least a 2-1 benefit-to-cost ratio in extending foster care for youth to age 21."

Among the attendees will be: Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, former Senate leader John Burton and a bipartisan cast of current legislators.

Bass will press for AB 12, legislation she's co-authoring with Assemblyman Jim Beall, to extend the foster care age and try to capture more federal funds.

Connecting artists, musicians and writers with at-risk youth

2009-01-02T09:52:00.000-08:00

Mentoring organization brings art to at-risk youths
Create Now's Take HeART program runs workshops that connect artists, writers and musicians with youths on probation or in foster care
Holland, Gale. Los Angeles Times, Dec. 30, 2008.

After almost 20 years in the film business, Jill Gurr started a script-writing workshop for youths in detention on a variety of criminal convictions. To her astonishment, several illiterate young men in the class learned to read and write.

When they saw their own words incorporated into a script, they were eager to read it, she said during a break in an art workshop for foster girls at a recent Christmas crafts fair in downtown Los Angeles.

The script-writing project became the seed of Create Now, a Los Angeles mentoring organization Gurr started 12 years ago that connects artists, musicians and writers with high-risk youths.

"L.A. runs on the arts; it's the main economy in the city," said Gurr, the organization's founder and executive director. "We have all the creative people. They may not have money, but they have time." She said art gives disadvantaged youths a voice, makes them feel better about themselves and opens their eyes to good professions.

Create Now is among a number of Southern California nonprofit organizations supported by The Times Holiday Campaign, part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund. Create Now's Take HeART program, which runs workshops by professional artists for at-risk, low-income youths, received $10,000 from the fund this year.

"Gina," a teenager who lives in a group foster home in Pasadena, was decorating address books at the Create Now workshop and thinking about her mother. Art was the last thing they did together before her mother's death, she said.

"I love art; it reminds me of my childhood," Gina said. (The name is a pseudonym because foster care regulations prohibit identifying youths in the system.) "You can tell how people are feeling by the way they paint," said the teen, whose favorite motif is red-and-black hearts and skulls.

Josef Sanchez, a one-time L.A. County Probation Commission appointee on hand at the Create Now booth, said the group is among few organizations that reach youths on probation or in foster care, many of whom have been abused or neglected.

Sanchez, who has spoken at thousands of schools, said "kids are so engaged when they are talking about the arts. Their compassion, their joy is restored."

Gurr said artists involved in the program include drummer Mark Schulman, who has toured with the singer Pink and led a motivational rap seminar at a juvenile detention center in Sylmar. One of the students at the seminar wrote that he was inspired to change his life. That student now works at Universal Studios and attends college, she said.

After a 14-year-old African American girl was killed in the Harbor Gateway area two years ago,partly because of her race, Create Now collaborated on a peace mural with 18 fourth-graders from the neighborhood. At a festival to unveil the project, which featured images of Cesar Chavez and Gandhi, an activist group of Latino mothers invited an African American mother to show African art at their table, Gurr said.

The group also has sponsored hundreds of children to attend performances, including the Ashes and Snow photo exhibition in Santa Monica, Cirque de Soleil and Circus Vargas.

"Many have never been to a cultural event," the executive director said. "One of the youths said, 'What's an intermission?'"

Gurr said she solicits artists through Craigslist or online volunteer sites. "They're thrilled to come for a couple hours," she said. "For writers, it's great to know how to speak the slang they use on the streets."

Fasra Farahani responded to an online call to help out at the crafts booth. A concept artist and art director who recently worked on film director Tim Burton's upcoming "Alice in Wonderland," Farahani said he doesn't have much time for volunteering but feels compelled to do something.

"I feel like I have an amazing family, an unbelievable great family, good friends, and I make a comfortable living doing substantial work," said Farahani, 30. "I want to give back."

Foster care alumna advocates for extending foster care until age 21

2008-12-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

Opinion by Jim Beall
Special to the Mercury News, Dec. 16, 2008.

No caring parent would banish their son or daughter from their home and cut off all relations just because that child became 18 years old. But for many youths who "age out'' of California's foster care system that's exactly what happens.

Take the case of Vanessa Payne of San Jose, who shared her story of all that could go wrong for a youth leaving the system.

After earning her general education degree, Payne was forced out of her group home with her belongings stuffed in a plastic garbage bag. Alone and with no money, no family or support, she became involved with a drug-dealing sugar daddy, a relationship that ended with a narcotics conviction and jail time. By 19, she was an expectant single mother.

But she managed to turn her life around with guidance. Now 25, Payne graduates this month from San Jose State University with a dual major in psychology and behavioral science. She is employed and lives in an apartment with her 5-year-old son.

For every Vanessa Payne who defied the odds there are thousands of others whose lives are consigned to cells, courtrooms or minimum-wage jobs simply because they had no support in making that precarious transition from foster care to adulthood.

"As a foster youth, we need to know we are loved and supported,'' Payne said. "When we are kicked out at 18, we pretty much lose faith in adults; we lose faith in relationships and connections, and that leaves us to our own devices to survive. I really feel that if the state is able to extend foster care to 21, I strongly believe you'd see more youth going to college and being employed. I wish those services had been provided to me. It would have saved me a lot of heartache.''

Today, California has been presented with an opportunity to fundamentally change foster care. In October, Congress passed the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, providing $3 billion to help pay for foster care to age 21.

I have introduced legislation, Assembly Bill 12, to make California's foster care system eligible for those federal dollars by extending state foster care benefits to 21, beginning Oct. 1, 2010. With this subsidy from Washington, we can nurture the education and careers of youths who were removed from their abusive and derelict parents.

It is unrealistic to believe these fledglings, suddenly jettisoned out of the system, are prepared to tackle the harsh realities of life alone.

Consider this: About 4,500 of California's 74,000 foster care children are "aged out'' annually. One in four will be jailed within two years of emancipation; 20 percent become homeless. More than half are high school dropouts; only 3 percent get a college degree. Almost half are unemployed at age 21.

The evidence is clear: A strong bridge of support to 21 not only creates responsible, contributing citizens but will save taxpayers millions in court, prison, and human and social costs.

I am not alone on this issue. Speaker Karen Bass and 11 more legislators have signed onto AB 12.

I also believe every father and mother in California would back this bill, too, for the simple reason they would not want any foster child to be forsaken and forgotten merely because they celebrated their 18th birthday.

-Jim Beall, a Democrat, represents the 24th Assembly District in San Jose. He wrote this article for the Mercury News

Money Makeover for Kinship Care Provider

2008-12-23T10:41:00.001-08:00

Second set of children presents second set of challenges: North Hills woman will have difficulty retiring with modest savings and four adopted kids to provide for
Marsh, Ann. LA Times, Dec. 21, 2008.

Patricia Kimball takes the measure of her life once a month when issues of Parenting and AARP magazines drop simultaneously through the front-door mail slot of her North Hills home.

"I never thought I'd end up with four small kids at this age," said the 65-year-old special education teacher and mother of three adult sons.

The disparate magazines mirror the joy she has with four adopted children, ages 3 to 7, and her concern that they'll be stretching her financial resources, including state funds she receives for taking care of the special-needs children.

Kimball had wanted to retire in a few years, even though she has saved only $69,000. But now she'll have to work a decade longer to pay for the children's upbringing and for her retirement, said financial planner Donald Hance, president of Glenmore Financial in Pacific Palisades.

"Having those kids is a fabulous thing. God bless you," Hance told her, while also cautioning that she needs to save more money. "You don't have the cash reserves to carry you through rough times."

Pixie-small, with a dazzling smile, spiky gray hair and an eyebrow ring, Kimball looks like a hippie version of a fairy godmother. But she doesn't have a magic wand to help her do more for her children.

She earns $85,000 a year at the Glendale Unified School District and receives $32,880 from the state for the children's care. She doesn't live extravagantly, and her only debt is $157,000 left on the mortgage on her home.

But fate has left her without a fortune or much of a nest egg. That she has any savings, much less a home, is more a testament to her perseverance since her husband died from a stroke 22 years ago. At the time, their sons were 7, 12 and 16; she was a housewife and wasn't aware of the family's financial situation.

After her husband's death, she found out that their house had gone into foreclosure and that he had allowed an $8,000 federal tax debt to balloon to $50,000 over eight years.

She sold the home before the bank took it over and used the proceeds to pay a negotiated settlement with the Internal Revenue Service. Nevertheless, she went into bankruptcy, which ruined her credit, and spent eight years in a hodgepodge of jobs, including aerobics leader and teacher at a preschool for autistic children.

In the process, Kimball repaired her credit and took classes to improve her job prospects. At 51, she earned her credentials to teach special education.

Without credit cards for years, Kimball used cash for everything, including her 2002 Honda Odyssey van. And she was able to dip into savings last year to give her son Damon, now 30, a $25,000 loan, which he plans to start repaying soon. Only for her North Hills home, which she bought in 1994, did she need to borrow money.

"I understand where my limits are," she said.

Her expertise in special education gave her a window into the minds of children with special needs, and she decided to adopt a baby girl who might otherwise have spent her formative years in institutions. After three sons, she was ready for a daughter.

But in 2001, a foster-care agency offered her a baby boy, one she couldn't resist. A year later, the baby girl came into the home. The girl's mother then had two more children that foster care quickly sent to Kimball.

"I am grateful to God that she didn't have another" child, Kimball said. Damon has developed a bond with the adopted children and has agreed to be their guardian should anything happen to his mother.

With such family matters sorted out, a debt-free Kimball now faces the challenge of staying that way. If she stops working at 71, Hance figures, she would receive a little more than $4,500 a month from her teacher's pension. However, if she waits five more years, that amount increases to nearly $5,400.

To Kimball, a monthly bump of $850 didn't sound like enough to delay retiring. "I'm getting tired," she told Hance. "I feel like taking a vacation."

But five more years, Hance said, would mean not only an increase in her pension income, but also five more years of income at her top salary.

"She might need that for her living expenses," Hance said. "With raises, that's probably half a million [dollars] she'd be forgoing over those five years."

Kimball acquiesced: "Oh, I hadn't thought of that."

Hance suggested several steps she should take.

He asked her to check with the Social Security Administration to see if she was eligible for survivor payments from her husband's benefits now that she is of retirement age. In a quick call, she learned she was entitled to about $1,000 a month.

Not only will that money increase Kimball's own savings, it will help her save more for her children's college educations. That's important, Hance said, because a retirement fund and four tax-free college savings plans she set up several years ago won't bring in the funds that a brokerage salesman had promised.

The salesman, she said, told her that saving $30 a month for each child would give them about $20,000 each by the time they entered college. But Hance said the most each account would be worth was $6,000, assuming a 4% return to reflect current market conditions. To get close to her goal, she would have to put $100 a month into each account, and that would grow to about $17,000 for college expenses.

He also noted that the salesman had put 100% of her children's savings and 70% of her own into stocks, which means the value of her holdings has plunged recently. She should have no more than 40% of her assets in equities at her age, Hance said, and the balance in fixed income.

Hance also suggested that Kimball make sure she was getting the maximum state support for her children. She said she recently applied for an increase in her oldest son's benefit from $450 to $751 a month because he had developed more problems than were known when he was a baby.

For Damon's debt, Hance said Kimball should create a promissory note detailing the terms of the loan, including a reasonable interest rate, and have her son sign it. Damon's eventual inheritance should be decreased by any unpaid balance.

Because Damon agreed to be the legal guardian of her adopted children, Kimball listed him as the sole beneficiary on her $250,000 term-life insurance policy.

However, Hance said each of her seven children should be beneficiaries, sharing equally. That's the only way, he said, to ensure funds actually go to each child. Otherwise, there is no legal mechanism to ensure one child uses the money for the others.

"It's funny, when people get money, what they do," the planner said.

Given Kimball's discipline with money, Hance suggested she apply for a credit card to accumulate points she can use for airplane tickets and other travel expenses. Kimball brightened at the idea. Recently, another son announced that he was getting married in Virginia, and she wondered how she was going to pay for airfare for the younger children.

"The idea of getting airline miles is critical," she said. "Now we're actually thinking about traveling because everyone is toilet trained."

Do you need a money makeover? Each month, the Sunday Business section gives readers a chance to have their financial situations sized up by professional advisors at no charge. To be considered, send an e-mail to makeover@ latimes.com. Include a brief description of your financial goals and a daytime phone number. Information you send us will be shared with others.

Let's keep moving forward with California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care

2008-12-21T11:27:00.001-08:00

Summit aims to improve foster care outcomes Ukiah Daily Journal, Dec. 10, 2008.

Ukiah,CA - A team comprised of Mendocino County people and teams from more than 50 counties convene in San Francisco today on the subject of foster children.

Today's summit is in regard to implementing the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care's recommendations to reform the state's juvenile dependency court system and improve outcomes for foster children in California, a Superior Court of California, Mendocino Count, report stated Monday.

According to the report, teams will be looking at areas of local concern and also creating the means to enact change at the local level.

A portion of the report names better sharing of information among entities that serve families as a discussion topic among county teams. Other points include, for example, raising public awareness for foster care issues and sharing successful strategies.

The Blue Ribbon Commission is a panel appointed by the Chief Justice of California to make recommendations for improving safety, permanency, well-being and fairness outcomes for children and families.

On Aug. 15, the Judicial Council of California accepted recommendations made by the Blue Ribbon Commission.

Members of Mendocino County's team include: Judge Cindee Mayfield, Sheryn Hildebrand of CASA, Rebecca Wilson of HHSA CFSOC, Julie Spoljaric, attorney and Sandra Applegate of Office of County Counsel.

More information on the Blue Ribbon Commission can be seen online at: www.courtinfo.ca.gov/blueribbon

California level of foster parent compensation violates federal law

2008-12-21T11:26:00.001-08:00

Judge: Calif. Foster Care Reimbursement Violates Federal Law
KCBS, Dec. 9, 2008.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that the way California compensates foster parents for child rearing expenses violates the Child Welfare Act.

The money foster parents receive from the state averages about $505 a month per child, a figure the plaintiff’s attorney’s said does not take into account the actual expenses the guardian incurs providing for the child.

“It’s required to make payments to cover the cost of providing certain basic necessities,” said attorney Rick Ballinger, an associate with the law firm Morrison & Foerster. Instead, he said, “the state’s setting rates based on how much money it wants to pay.”

Ballinger argued that foster parents are being overwhelmed the growing costs of food, clothing, and housing. “Families are in the worst position in times like this. A foster parent who’s real income is shrinking right now has nowhere to go,” he said.

The State Department of Social Services oversees 70,000 children in the foster care system, and Ballinger said fewer people were volunteering to serve as foster parents.

It’s unclear when the agency might increase the amounts it pays as a result of the decision. A spokesman for the agency refused to comment.

Christmas gifts for San Fernando Valley foster care children

2008-12-21T11:25:00.001-08:00

Givers remember foster children
Doyle, Sue. Los Angeles Daily News, Dec. 7, 2008.

SHERMAN OAKS - Despite a down economy, the spirit of giving was up Sunday as hundreds donated tiny trucks, Barbies and holiday gifts for 3,000 San Fernando Valley foster-care children.

Toys, books and board games were stacked high in a 1936 Ford coupe and a 1957 Ford Thunderbird, parked on Ventura Boulevard at Hazeltine Avenue to attract more passers-by to give to the 10th annual event thrown by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association in a Ralphs parking lot.

"These gifts are going to foster-care children, and they are the ones who need it most," said Richard Close, president of the homeowners group, adding that the piles of donated presents Sunday seemed higher than ever before.

"These gifts are probably the only ones they will get."

Presents will serve children from the Chatsworth bureau of the Department of Children and Family Services, which oversees 27,000 foster youth in Los Angeles County.

When Adena Schutzman of West Los Angeles learned of the event, she asked the homeowners group which children get overlooked in toy drives. The answer: teens.

So the 22-year-old bought a $25 gift card to a movie theater chain - a present she hopes a teenager will enjoy.

"We gave it some thought," said Schutzman. "We often forget there are 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds in foster care."

Throughout the afternoon, families toted fuzzy teddy bears and craft sets to the toy drive, and then hopped inside the Los Angeles Police Department's Mobile Command Post and slid behind the wheel of a Los Angeles Fire Department engine, parked in the lot to add fun to the day.

"There are a lot more families in a world of hurt this year," said Zev Yaroslavsky. "This year, more than ever, this program is going to be meaningful."

Carrying a pig-tailed doll and a snazzy 1965 model red Corvette in her arms, Myrtle Lou Gray of Sherman Oaks said she picked out toys that do not require batteries.

"Some kids may not have access to buy batteries," said Gray, pointing at her boxes of toys. "I picked one for a girl and one for a boy."

Concerns over possible false accusations and long-term consequences

2008-12-21T11:22:00.000-08:00

Child Abuse Central Index offers no way out, even for the innocent: An accusation is enough to land people on California's list of child abusers, but only long legal battles can clear their names.
Williams, Carol J. Los Angeles Times, Dec. 7, 2008.

Accused of child abuse by a vindictive ex-girlfriend 22 years ago, Bakersfield stockbroker Scott Whyte ceased contact with their son for years, fearing that another allegation would land him in prison, before a court cleared him.

Craig and Wendy Humphries went to jail after a rebellious teenage daughter fled to Utah and told police there that her father and stepmother had abused her. While the Valencia couple were locked up in Los Angeles County on charges eventually ruled groundless, their two younger children were placed in foster care.

Esther Boynton, a Beverly Hills lawyer who helped Whyte and the Humphrieses fight to clear their names, had her own hellish experience getting off the state's Child Abuse Central Index, a database containing 819,000 names from which even a judgment of innocence isn't enough to secure removal.

Unlike the better-known database created by Megan's Law, which registers and tracks 63,000 named sex offenders, the child abuse index is neither actively managed by the state nor periodically purged of erroneous or unsubstantiated entries -- despite efforts by the wrongly included to escape its shameful stain.

The California Department of Justice has been ordered in at least three court decisions in recent years to create a standard way to remove from the index the names of those exonerated by courts or social service investigations.

But in response to the latest judgment, a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last month that the Humphrieses' privacy rights had been violated, the Office of the Attorney General plans another appeal in defense of the state's handling of the database.

Whyte, 59, looks back on a life irreparably damaged by the abuser label and the threat of punishment for a crime he didn't commit.

When the mother of his then-4-year-old son made the false allegations against him in 1986 and Kern County authorities put his name in the abuser index, Whyte said, his initial anger "quickly gave way to complete terror."

The mother's report was made during a veritable witch hunt that grew out of child abuse allegations against day-care workers in the county throughout the 1980s.

"The atmosphere was such that if you were accused, you might as well turn yourself in to prison and look to spend the rest of your life there," Whyte recalled.

For months after learning of the report, Whyte so feared his arrest was imminent that he left a blank check and the deed to his house with a relative to post bond for him.

"I just couldn't believe that this could happen to a person in this country, that [authorities] would destroy families with nothing but a phone call," said the father who protected his liberty at the cost of any relationship with his son. "There are not any words strong enough to describe that situation, the shame, the travesty. Somebody ought to be shot."

The Humphrieses, still listed as abusers, "are living every parent's nightmare," the appeals court said. It ruled the state in violation of the 14th Amendment because people in the index aren't given a chance to challenge the allegations against them.

The couple's ordeal began in March 2001, when Craig Humphries' 15-year-old daughter from a previous marriage took their car without permission and drove to Utah, where her mother and stepfather lived. She told them she had been abused since being sent to California nine months earlier, and a Utah emergency room doctor who examined the teen reported to Los Angeles County authorities that she had "non-accidental trauma with extremity contusions."

On the basis of that one phone call, the Humphrieses were arrested, jailed and charged with felony torture. The arresting sheriff's deputy filed a "substantiated" child abuse report that got them entered in the index. Their two younger children were placed in protective custody.

"My clients didn't have any idea where their kids were," said Boynton, who, because the case is still in litigation, has advised the couple against discussing their ordeal with The Times.

The Humphrieses got their children back about 10 days later, and California medical records proved that the daughter's bruises were the result of surgical removal of melanoma.

"The Humphries have taken advantage of every procedure available to them, including the California courts," Judge Jay S. Bybee wrote in the 9th Circuit Court opinion. "They went to the dependency court, which found that the allegations were 'not true' and returned their children to them. They went to the prosecutor, who dropped all the charges against them. They went to the criminal court, which declared them 'factually innocent' and sealed their arrest records. None of this had any effect on their CACI listing."

Wendy Humphries, a teacher, had to hire an attorney to avoid losing her credentials, because employers of people who work with children are required to consult the index. The list can be accessed by educational, child-care, adoption, foster-care and child-welfare agencies throughout the country and is referenced about 400,000 times a year, said Abraham Arredondo, spokesman for the attorney general's office.

Boynton landed in the child abuse database in 1990 after accidentally splashing her 17-year-old daughter with hot coffee. She learned three years later, when applying to volunteer as a reading tutor, that the Los Angeles Police Department had reported her to the state based on her expressions of remorse to emergency room personnel for the burn on her daughter's shoulder.

It took two years and much expensive litigation to get their names expunged from the index, and Boynton remains suspicious that distorted records of the incident still linger elsewhere.

The state agreed to make individual changes in its listing, notification and challenge practices in Whyte and Boynton's cases and in a negotiated settlement with Amelia Gomez, a Los Angeles woman denied custody of her grandchildren because of index errors.

"We have an order requiring them to rewrite the regulations. As far as we know, they haven't done anything to comply with it," David Greene, a lawyer with the First Amendment Project in Oakland, said of the state court ruling a year ago that the index violated constitutional privacy guarantees.

Among the changes the state agreed to were the rights of named individuals to see their government dossiers, to challenge inaccuracies and to have their versions appended to the records.

"To the extent you want this index to serve some function, to have usefulness, it has to be accurate," Greene said.

The law now requires that anyone added to the abuser index be notified, but the lawyers say decades of secrecy in compiling and maintaining the list created in 1965 probably means many on it are unaware of their inclusion and the need to pursue removal.

Those listed can now demand a hearing among officials of the reporting agency, whether a county child protective services office or law enforcement.

But the standard of proof of wrongdoing remains so low and the pressure to continue identifying any potential abuser so high that the hearings are often "almost worthless," said Peter Sheehan, a lawyer with the Social Justice Law Project in the Bay Area.

Though the intent of the index was noble in seeking to protect children, Sheehan said, its value and reliability are compromised by its flaws.

A halfhearted and piecemeal effort a few years ago to update the index showed significant error rates -- more than 20% in some counties -- among the few reporting agencies that carried out the reviews, Sheehan said. The 9th Circuit Court ruling in Humphries vs. County of Los Angeles cited a 2004 review of listings from San Diego County that suggested as many as half were erroneous.

Sheehan called the state's request for 9th Circuit rehearing of the Humphries ruling and the possibility of an eventual appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court "the scary part," in light of the high court's conservative majority and its tendency to rule against claims of government interference with privacy rights.

"What happened to the Humphries could happen again today," said Boynton, noting the state's resistance to reforming its administration of the index. "Ultimately there will be critical mass, and the government will have to fix the system."

If you're going to bail out the banks and automakers, you should bail out the children

2008-12-21T11:20:00.000-08:00

Expert calls Tracy torture case a "social services plane wreck"
Benca, Jeanine. San Jose Mercury News, Dec. 7, 2008.

Studies show as many as 15 percent of children in wealthy nations are physically abused by guardians each year, but the alleged torture of a boy who stumbled into a Tracy fitness club battered, half-starved and in chains last week stands out for its cruelty, a leading child abuse expert says.

Cases that severe are "not a very common thing." But they continuously pop up, said Carole Jenny, a pediatrics professor at Brown University's medical school.

Underfunding and a lack of resources for child protective services is a huge problem, said Jenny, who called what authorities say happened to the boy known as "Kyle R." a "social services plane wreck."

It is to everyone's benefit to look after abused children, since a high percentage end up in prisons and mental health facilities, she said.

She recalled treating a boy who had been locked in a box for several years. Of the 1,500 or so abuse cases she sees annually, Jenny estimates two or three include "extreme torture and deprivation."

The circumstances of intense abuse vary and cannot be boiled down to a single cause, she said, though researchers say there are common risk factors among abusers. They include mental illness, a history of abuse and dysfunction in their own childhood, stress, lack of education, substance abuse, poverty and an absence of social support.

Child abuse rates also are tied to economic downturn, as evidenced by increased incidents reported nationwide.

In the case of the boy in a box, "his (guardian) was psychotic and not thinking clearly," Jenny said. "I've seen cases where children have been starved to death, I've seen cases where kids almost died. I saw one case where a 7-year-old girl was kept in a house trailer and the neighbors didn't even know she existed. She was taking care of her disabled mother and her father was also prostituting her."

According to a study published Tuesday in the British medical journal The Lancet, abuse is more common in the United States, Canada and other rich countries than previously thought. But, research shows, as few as one in 10 cases are taken up by child protective agencies.

One reason is a lack of faith in the public welfare system by doctors and others who might suspect abuse but do not report it because they fear foster care would be worse for the child, said Jenny, who wrote a commentary on the study.

"They don't trust social services. And they think they're really going to lose the relationship with the family if they report," she said.

On paper, the story of Tracy's Kyle R. reads like the script for a bad horror movie.

The 16-year-old who appeared seemingly out of nowhere Monday at In-Shape City in Tracy was almost unrecognizable as a teenage boy. Half-naked, shrunken and stunted from starvation to the size of a small child, barely verbal, covered in severe cuts, burns, feces and urine, with a thick chain shackled to his bloody ankle, his appearance was so disturbing that gym workers thought they were targets of a sick prank.

When the reality became clear, some staff members went to another room to weep, out of sight of the boy who crawled into a fetal position under a desk.

The charges leveled against the three adults arrested in connection with the abuse are equally surreal.

Over 18 months, authorities say, Caren Ramirez, Kyle's guardian, and her two housemates, husband and wife Michael Schumacher and Kelly Layne Lau, turned Kyle into a torture object.

In a jailhouse interview last week, Lau said the boy was denied food and kept chained to the coffee table while the family ate dinner and led their daily lives. Authorities say the trio's weapons of choice included belts, knives and an aluminum bat heated in a fireplace, and, they say, Kyle was force-fed pills and alcohol.

When he appeared at In-Shape City, workers say he was covered in soot. A search warrant released Friday said he had been chained to and sleeping in a fireplace.

Authorities say the abuse took place in the presence of Schumacher's and Lau's four young children — one of whom is an aspiring ballerina, according to Lau's MySpace Web site — and within earshot of neighbors who say they attended barbecues at the house.

The case has caused public outrage and raised questions on what causes some to commit atrocities against children. Also baffling is the allegation that Kyle was singled out in a house of five children — police reports indicate Lau and Schumacher's four children, who are in protective custody, appear relatively unharmed — and how the suspected abuse could go unreported for so long.

Empathy — the ability to care about and feel pain for others — is believed to develop in early childhood, but it can be short-circuited by childhood trauma, experts say.

People who were devalued and severely abused are more likely to become abusers as adults, though the presence of at least one positive adult relationship in early childhood has been shown to make a difference in how abuse victims turn out.

Little is known about the backgrounds of the three accused of abusing Kyle, though Lau said during an interview that she was physically abused by her previous husband.

One thing is clear: Kyle's case is not an isolated incident.

The Tracy case bares similarities to a recent East Bay tragedy — that of 15-year-old Jazzmin Davis of Antioch. On Sept. 2, the girl was found dead, her naked, broken body weighing less than 80 pounds, in a bedroom of the home she shared with Shemeeka Davis, her aunt and foster mother.

Davis pleaded not guilty in September to murder in Jazzmin's death and awaits trial for the suspected abuse and torture of the girl and her twin brother. An autopsy found Jazzmin died of starvation compounded by whippings and burns from hot irons.

In both cases, there were serious breakdowns in the government system responsible for protecting children.

In Jazzmin's case, child welfare agents failed to spot signs of abuse during routine visits to her home, while records show Kyle went missing from the system for more than a year.

By age 12, Kyle was living with Ramirez after having been removed from the care of his father, who had abused him, police said. Kyle's mother reportedly gave Ramirez custody before she died.

Kyle and Ramirez's stepson, Austin, were removed from Ramirez's Citrus Heights home and placed in foster care after police were called to the home at least twice, in 2005 and 2006. The second time, it was Ramirez's daughter, 21-year-old Cristina Sanchez, who reported that her mother had beaten Kyle. When police arrived, they found the boy had severe bruises on his buttocks, legs and arms. He said Ramirez beat him with martial-arts sticks, broomsticks and clothes hangers.

In April 2007, Ramirez was charged with four felony counts of child abuse. She plead no contest to one charge, the others were dismissed.

A month later, Kyle went missing from his Sacramento foster home. By July 2007, he was living with Ramirez in Lau's and Schumacher's home, though how he ended up with Ramirez again is unknown. Lau has said in interviews that her family knew Ramirez through "a friend of a friend."

Any abuse he suffered in the past 18 months might have been prevented if authorities had tracked him down after he ran away. But Luis Villa, a division manager for Sacramento County Child Protective Services, said the volume of cases and lack of resources make it difficult for CPS workers to search for runaway foster children.

"There is very little effort put into it because there is very little information out there," said Bob Wilson, executive director of Sacramento Child Advocate Inc. The nonprofit group advocates for abused and neglected foster children.

"Usually, social workers make their best effort but become overwhelmed with what they have to deal with in regard to other cases. And law enforcement doesn't actively pursue them unless they get a hit on a traffic stop or arrest," he said.

Wilson said that when a foster child disappears, he or she typically doesn't have loved ones posting signs, alerting the media or organizing searches like the families of other children would.

"They don't have a voice or safety net out there for them," Wilson said. "Many end up on streets in child prostitution and exploited in other fashions."

"At the same time the need (for social services) is increasing, the resources are decreasing," Jenny said of the current economic climate. "If you're going to bail out the banks and automakers, you should bail out the children."

Sacramento Child Advocates has set up a bank account for Kyle R. The group accepts only cash donations to be used for his care. Sacramento Child Advocates Inc. is the advocate and voice for abused children in the foster care system.

To donate by e-mail, visit www.sacchildadv.org, click on the Tracy Youth fund on the left side of the page. Checks may be sent to SCA FBO Tracy Youth Fund, 8745 Folsom Blvd. Suite 150, Sacramento, CA 95826.

Donations are also being accepted at the In-Shape City Sports Club, where the boy first went for help. The club is at 101 S. Tracy Blvd., Tracy, CA 95376.

Jeremiah's Promise

2008-12-21T11:16:00.000-08:00

Youth 'aged out' of foster care get a helping hand at Sunnyvale transitional home
Kraatz, Cody. Sunnyvale Sun, Dec. 3, 2008.

The instability of Marina Galan's youth began with her shuttling between her mother and father's home. It was replaced when she entered foster care at age 3 by the repeated shocks and insecurity of shuttling between foster homes.

A foster father and uncle abused her. She lived with her aunt in Modesto. These were only the earliest of many more moves.

Galan, now 18, has lived for two months in an otherwise unremarkable house on a quiet southern Sunnyvale cul-de-sac, a group home operated by the faith-based nonprofit Jeremiah's Promise.

The home can accommodate six women ages 18 to 21, each of whom "aged out," or were emancipated from the foster care system at age 18, and the government stopped paying to support them.

Jeremiah's selects them for their resiliency, their readiness for guidance and their sincere desire to better their future, and they stay for a year or two until they're ready to move out on their own.

Between 130 and 150 young people in Santa Clara County and nearly 4,500 in the state age out each year. They are far more likely to be poor, homeless, jobless, incarcerated and out of school than their peers, studies show.

Jeremiah's Promise is one of several local organizations that try to smooth the rough edges of the jarring aging-out process with transitional housing, a life skills program and a supportive environment.

Shifting sands
As with many other foster children, the sands of Galan's life continued to shift as she moved from her aunt's home to group homes in Los Gatos, Fremont, Watsonville and Aptos in the span of about seven years. She learned along the way to stand up for herself, because fights were common.

"I've been really used to this environment since I was 3-years old," says Galan. "When I walk into a house, I try to walk in with confidence. When I meet someone new I meet them with confidence, because I don't want them to underestimate me."

Her brother tracked down her father, a truck driver who remarried and lives with his wife and their children in San Jose, when she was 17 and living in Aptos. The stress shook her up.

"I'm starting to build a relationship with my dad. Since I just met him, it takes time. Nothing happens overnight," she says in an interview at the Jeremiah's Promise house after a November dinner with local adults interested in mentoring the young women.

Galan recalls a "team decision-making" meeting held with key case workers and guardians when she was 17, just after her father had come back into her life. They asked her whether she would rather move in with her mother or her father at that point. Her mother told her at the time that there would be no repercussions either way.

"I said I would like to live with my dad. After I said, it she just basically left. She didn't want anything to do with me," says Galan, who doesn't know where her mother is now. "I started acting out and running away because my mom left me."

She spent a couple of hours in Santa Cruz County Juvenile Hall on charges of trespassing after her Aptos group home kicked her out because of her behavior. The Bill Wilson Center's Quetzal House in Santa Clara was her next home, but she continued to run away and was eventually kicked out.

"I was on my own for a month, hanging out with gangs and drug dealers. I realized,`I'm almost 18. What am I going to do? I'm going to be homeless if I keep up this pace,'" she says.

She went to a children's shelter, and eventually a social worker found her a bed at Rebekah Children's Services in Gilroy, where she lived for her last four months in foster care.

"I have nowhere to go," she recalls thinking. She couldn't live with her father because of "complications" with his family, she says. Her mother was gone.

"I was freaking out. I was like,`Dad, I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go,' " she says. "And he said,`Just pray.' "

Weeks before she had to leave Rebekah, she found Jeremiah's Promise. She recalls thinking, "Oh my gosh. This is the place. I want to be here."

The fact that the nonprofit is Christian-focused convinced her that it was the answer to her prayers. Its name is a Biblical reference to Jeremiah 29:11, in which God tells a group of exiles that he has "plans to give you hope and a future."

Familial environment
The small staff and volunteers try to "build a familial environment," says Enza Canicatti, the residence manager or "mother hen," as she puts it.

Kim Golter, CEO and founder of the nonprofit, was a court-appointed child advocate in 2000 when she learned about the challenges faced by aged-out youth.

"You can't just stick them in an apartment and say, 'OK, you've got housing. We've taken care of you,'" says Golter, who moved the program from an older Palo Alto house into the newly purchased Sunnyvale house in January. The young people who age out may be 18 chronologically, but emotionally they are much younger.

"They crave the involvement of each person in their community. That's what causes the transformation," Golter says.

Canicatti faces an uphill battle sometimes in trying to turn the housemates into a household. They watch movies and will spend time together during the holidays.

Sandra Philpott, who oversees a similar house for young men as director of transitional housing at San Jose-based Unity Care Group, says that it requires a balance of nurturing and stepping back that is even more exacting than raising typical teenagers.

Every Thursday night, Canicatti invites someone to the house to give a life skills workshop. Often it tackles topics such as budgeting, resume-building or interviewing — things that a parent might otherwise teach.

Lately, she has been inviting people in the community to tell their life stories, which show that "despite where you come from, you can now make a road for yourself [and] use your pain as a personal passion for life," she says.

Tonight, it's Mimi Moseley, a gregarious blonde director of women's ministries at Valley Church in Cupertino. In a ring of chairs on the living room's hardwood floor, she describes the pain of growing up with alcoholic parents.

She used drugs, struggled with anorexia and was devastated by her father's death from alcoholism and her mother's abrupt gunshot suicide. But after opening herself up to a loving religious community and a good husband, she turned around.

"We have to be in community. We can't do this ourselves," Moseley says before offering the young women an ear anytime they need to talk.

After a silence, resident Leslie Zamora, 19, says, "I think everyone's pain is ... not the same but equal."

"The stuff that people go through, that's what makes you who you are today," adds Galan. Rather than regretting or trying to forget those experiences, she integrates them in very personal poems and into her understanding of the paths life offers.

Ground rules
Like the firm but supportive parents that these young women lack, Jeremiah's Promise has earnest expectations. The curfew is 11 p.m. on weekdays and 1 a.m. on weekends. Chores are divvied up.

They get their privacy, which is extremely important after years of having very little control or personal space. Since two new residents moved in last week, bringing the total to five, most have to share rooms.

"Basically, if you want to stay here, you have to have a job," says Galan, who recently started working in the deli at the nearby Safeway store on Hollenbeck Avenue. "They were really pushing for me to have a job, which is good."

Thirty percent of the residents' earnings are collected as "rent" and deposited into individual savings accounts. By the time they move out, it's enough for a deposit on an apartment or to pay for other expenses. Zamora recently landed a job at Ross after two weeks at the house.

She is cooking chicken flautas in hot oil on the stove, a recipe that she learned from her family. She has an uncle in Redwood City, where she lived in transitional housing until she was kicked out for breaking curfew, and a grandmother in San Mateo.

Her comfort in the kitchen — a sort of home-building catalyst — belies her anxiety before moving into the house.

"You don't know anybody. You've got to get used to them and they've got to get used to your ways," she says, adding, "It's exciting, too because you could end up meeting someone or making a good friend."

Earlier, she and Galan were playfully snapping close-ups together on one of their cell phones in the study, a room with a large conference table, laptops, a combo printer and books about healthy relationships and job hunting.

To learn more about Jeremiah's Promise, visit www.jeremiahspromise.org

REALITY
I'm sad filled with agony my heart is numb cuz of all the sorrow that fills it.

I sit in a room full of rage I try to find the part of me that"s pleased.
But with all the hurt I have there is no room for the happiness that I need.
I just wonder how I can feel so unloved with everybody beside me!
Why am I so afraid to find the love for me!
Why am I so insecure in my personality!
I don't want to feel the hate inside of me!
I don"t want to be rejected anymore so please HELP me find the joy that I once carried in me!!!!
"” Marina Galan

Federal help with kinship care costs might help Cali increase foster care until age 21

2008-12-21T11:15:00.000-08:00

Foster care system changes are in the works
Melandez, Lyanne. abc7news.com, Dec. 10, 2008.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- California's foster care system is overstressed and under resourced. Today a blue ribbon commission in San Francisco made some recommendations to begin improving the system. At least two major changes are in the works.

When a foster child turns 18, he or she is on their own -- it's called aging out. Between 4,000 to 5,000 children are forced to leave the system each year. With nowhere to turn, some end up homeless or living with friends or relatives.

Joscelynn Carbonell was in foster care.

"Unlike with other kids you could go back to somebody, you have a support system, you have somebody to pick you up when you fall down, they don't have that, they are on one their own, they are America's forgotten children," said Carbonell.

A federal bill would extend foster care to children past the age of 18 up to 21, but first the California legislature must approve it.

Assemblyman Jim Beall of San Jose led a forum in San Francisco to focus on the state's foster care needs and ways to fund them.

If the foster care age is extended to 21, the state and counties would have to pay half of the cost, then the federal government would pick up the remainder. It's a tough sell given our hard economic times.

Frank Mecca is the executive director of the County Welfare Director's Association.

"In the case of foster care they are very well documented, they are scientifically proven so we know that by not investing we'll incur more costs in the long run," said Mecca.

"This is a policy that is in place in a number of large states and it's been proven to reduce adult incarceration and improve post secondary education outcomes," said Amy Lemley from the John Burton Foundation.

There is a way to pay for this additional expense. Today, California pays 100 percent of the cost of taking care of a child by a relative, and that's about to change.

"By opting into the federal program 50 percent of those costs would be paid for by the federal government, saving California $50 to $60 million a year," said Lemley.

The bill, AB12, still must go before a number of committees before it hits the floor of the Assembly.

Troubled by failure to protect children

2008-12-21T11:12:00.000-08:00

The shame of California's foster care system
Neslon, Jennifer. Sacramento Bee, Dec. 14, 2008.

The recent story about the boy who was held for a year against his will in Tracy and physically abused should make our state leaders reflect on the success of our child welfare system and how seriously the courts deal with child abuse.

The facts around this case are horrifying. … (And) just last September, the Bay Area was rattled by the death of a 15-year-old foster child in her aunt's care. …

The maddening fact is that our state leaders would rather worry about global warming and spaying dogs and cats than protecting our children. These children were in the "system." Authorities knew that the boy was being abused. The state's solution? Send him to foster care (although the foster care system had already harmed him – it's no wonder he ran away from that home). We didn't even put his abuser in jail. (And the 15-year-old from the Bay Area) didn't even get the chance to be removed from her abuser's care. … Let's not forget that we, the taxpayers, pay these guardians – family members or not – to "care" for the children we place with them.

Every adult in this state should feel shame about these cases. …

Our state leaders need to find a way to shake up our foster care system and increase the protections for children of unfit parents. We should look at the possibility of creating a system of orphanages where children can be better supervised and protected. The Schwarzenegger administration and legislators should take a fresh look at the academic evidence of the success of orphanages and think about ways to support their growth. Honestly, if our leaders spent as much time trying to help fix the foster care system as they do talking about what kind of light bulbs we're supposed to be using, maybe we'd see some improvements in the lives of California's foster children.

Interview with Chair of FCAA Board of Directors

2008-11-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

Man's journey through foster care makes him agent of change
Mayer, Steven. Bakersfield California, Nov 15, 2008.

It was Christmastime 1963 when, at the age of 4, Bill Stanton became a foster child for the first time.

Bill Stanton of Kernville grew up in foster care and now the 48 year-old uses his own experiences and the experiences of others to work toward a better foster care system nationwide.

“I could paint you a picture of that day,” he says, his eyes gleaming with the memory of a father’s sin.

Bill’s family had just finished trimming a meager Christmas tree in their third-floor Brooklyn apartment, when the excited 4-year-old tried to climb the tree, sending it crashing to the floor.

“Dad became really enraged,” he remembers. “He picked up the tree and threw it out the window. Then he threw me out the window.”

Bill landed on a pile of trash and survived the fall. But the incident signaled the end of his biological family and the beginning of 14 years of foster care.

“I was bounced through five different foster homes before I was placed with the Stantons,” he says. “I was adopted by them at age 19.

“That still happens today,” Stanton, now 48, says from the comfort of his family home in the hills above Kernville.

“We still move kids from place to place,” he says. “I don’t think the system — the courts — have a grasp of the damage that does.”

Stanton’s natural empathy for children and teenagers who are thrown into foster care has fueled a passion for reform. He has become an advocate for adults who experienced foster care as children and the children who experience it still.

A frequent keynote speaker and national spokesman for what is called the foster care alumni community, Stanton has served four years as board chairman of Foster Care Alumni of America, a nonprofit community of peers who advocate for improvements to federal legislation that impacts foster kids.

This month, Stanton was named the organization’s first “Vision Award” recipient for his work.

Will Hornsby, a child welfare specialist at the Children’s Bureau, a section of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, helps conduct reviews of state foster care systems across the country.

Stanton’s background in the court system, Hornsby says, combined with his personal experience as a youth in the system and as a foster parent and adoptive parent gives him a multi-faceted perspective on the issues surrounding foster care.

“Bill brings a level of deep understanding, empathy and passion to this work,” Hornsby says.

Nearly two years ago, Stanton, his wife, Debbie, and their daughters Bethany, 16, and Abbigail, 14, welcomed a 2-week-old foster baby into their home.

Trevor John, “TJ” for short, was a crystal meth baby.

“I don’t know what a 2-week-old dreams about, but TJ woke up with night terrors,” Bill remembers. “It was just the saddest thing to see ... he’s a wonderful little guy.”

Not long ago, Bill and Debbie Stanton adopted TJ. Together they have taken one child out of the foster system and given him a home and a family.

But for Debbie, it’s not accurate to suggest the newest member of their family hit some kind of adoptive jackpot.

TJ is family, she says. It’s that simple. He brings as much love and goodness to the mix as he gets.

There are more than a half-million children in the foster care system nationwide, with roughly 2,700 children in the system in Kern County.

About 12 million American adults have experienced foster care, and Bill Stanton would love to see many of them turn their attention back to the system as advocates for change and mentors for foster youth.

“My mission is to reach out to those people in their 30s, 40s and 50s,” he says. “They can give policymakers insight.

“They understand what it means to put your life in a plastic bag as you’re moved to the next home,” he says. “Their experiences give them instant credibility.”

Foster Care Alumni of America
* A non-profit association founded in 2004
* More than 2,000 members from 50 states
* Mission: Connect the community of adults who have experienced foster care, and harness their accumulated experience and expertise to transform America’s foster care system.

Foster care youth need a seat at the table to create positive change

2008-10-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

My View: Foster care system can be changed for the better
Chantel Johnson, Chantel. Sacramento Bee, Oct. 19, 2008.

Few people here in Sacramento have as close a connection to the policies they propose as I do. When I work on legislation with foster youths and advocates, it's personal.

Between the ages of 7 and 17, I lived in 10 different foster-care homes. I was the youngest of five children, and my journey through the system began when my mother became addicted to drugs. My father was in Ohio and unable to care for us, so we relied on relatives and foster families throughout California.

The chaos of home life soon translated into trouble at school. I was kicked out of junior high three times for acting out – getting into a fight, giving counselors a hard time and skipping classes. In high school, I joked that I showed up for two periods: breakfast and lunch.

Toward the end of high school, I moved to a group home. There I met housemates who had experienced much worse things in the homes they were shuffled in and out of – and in the foster-care system in general.

Many of their personal struggles matched or foreshadowed disturbing statistics that are all too common for foster youths: Fewer than half graduate from high school. Among those who do, less than 2 percent earn a college degree. And within two years of turning 18, half of all foster youth will find themselves homeless, in prison or on welfare.

That's why I'm now dedicated to working with and on behalf of the 77,000 foster children in California to fix the system. I say "with" because the young people themselves must have a seat at the table if we, as a state, are to truly understand – and improve – their situations.

Today, I work for California Youth Connection, a nonprofit that took the unprecedented step 20 years ago of involving foster youths in every step of its legislative work. That includes drafting recommendations, educating lawmakers at hearings and in district offices, and working to build a statewide grassroots movement to keep foster care on the front burner.

It's working. In 2006-07, our recommendations contributed to the enactment of an unprecedented 14 new laws and an additional $82 million for foster care in the state budget – the largest increase in more than a decade.

Others have noticed the results. CYC's leaders – Executive Director Janet Knipe, Associate Director Tiffany Johnson and Board Chair Tonia High- tower – recently were awarded the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award for successfully tackling some of California's critical challenges with practical solutions.

And the work continues. At our annual legislative summit last month in San Diego, 115 foster youths from 28 chapters around the state developed our latest round of policy recommendations for legislators.

These ideas that come from personal experience are worth pursuing:

• Collaboration between county programs and the state university system to develop a college preparation program for foster youths in grades nine to 12.

• Providing a school district liaison to offer college information to foster youths at the start of high school.

• Representation of foster youths on county advisory boards that deal with transitional housing and other basic needs for the first years of adulthood.

• Creation of a network of career and educational specialists who focus on assisting current and former foster youths with career and educational endeavors.

• Extending Medi-Cal services from age 21 to 24 for foster youths.

These are all steps in the right direction. Failing to enact them is a missed opportunity, and scaling back funding for existing foster-care services is a dangerous step backward.

We know that this is a year of deficits and painful cuts in services, but cutting services to children should never be an option. If you think that the state coffers are hurting, think about how such a downturn affects people at the very bottom.

I've been there, and I'm working with bright, courageous foster youths every day to remind elected officials that progress comes from changing, not shortchanging, the system.

Transitional housing in Tuolumne County for youth emancipating from foster care

2008-09-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

Transitional home will help those leaving care
Hansen, B. J. MML News Reporter, Sept. 20, 2008.

Sonora, Ca -- A transitional home for young adults that are exiting the foster care system should be constructed by next Spring in Tuolumne County.

Child Welfare Services Program Manager Linda Downey says this type of home is needed, due to some unfortunate statistics.

“In Tuolumne County, approximately 17% of our youths who emancipate from foster care are homeless within 12 months,” says Downey. “Approximately 10% commit law violations as adults, 12% become parents within 24 months of leaving the foster care system, and approximately 21% leave the system without a high school diploma.”

Because of the sensitive nature of the topic, officials are declining to release the address of the new home. It will have five beds and be around 5000 square ft. in size. Funding for the project came from a $1 million California Housing and Community Development Grant.

Downey adds that Tuolumne County has around 80-90 youths in the foster care system at any given time. Individuals between the ages of 18-24 will be eligible for the housing program, and they can remain for 24 months. They will also be taught ways to budget money and receive assistance in searching for jobs.

Foster Care Baby Shower

2008-09-23T13:13:00.001-07:00

Advocates gather to hold a baby shower for foster children
Dolittle, Emilie. Los Gatos Weekly-Times, Sept. 17, 2008.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, 30 people sat drinking tea and chatting in Kathy Williams' back yard in Saratoga. While the tea and sandwiches were delicious and the flower arrangements were delightful, the conversations were hardly lighthearted.

One woman talked about a foster child whose mother was addicted to methamphetamines. Another women talked about "toxic babies," and how they are set up for a life of hardship.

Karen Aring of Saratoga described a mother who was habitually pregnant. Her eight children all joined the Santa Clara County dependency system.

"She should have her tubes tied," one woman chided, which changed the conversation to the accessibility of birth control in the system.

While they shared their personal struggles in advocating for foster children, they also related their triumphs, and how they had improved the lives of the children they worked with. The women volunteer for Silicon Valley Child Advocates, an agency that matches trained volunteers with children in the Santa Clara County Dependency system to ensure that the children's needs are met.

Each advocate plans activities to do with the child once or twice a week. The advocates also research every aspect of a child's case, meeting caregivers, social workers, health care providers, attorneys and teachers. Then the advocates file reports for the Family Wellness Court of Santa Clara to help determine the placement of the foster children.

On that warm afternoon, they joined with the Family Wellness Court of Santa Clara and First 5 Santa Clara for a "Foster Care Baby Shower" at Williams' home. Together the organizations contributed a roomful of baby supplies to the families of the Family Wellness Court. The court serves pregnant women and mothers whose substance abuse puts their children at risk of out-of-home placement.

First 5 Santa Clara, which provides services for young children and their families, donated six large containers of clothes, baby food and developmentally appropriate toys. Family Wellness Court Judge Erica Yew thanked everyone for their contributions.

The host, Kathy Williams, has been an advocate since 1997 and is the board chairwoman of Child Advocates. She has worked with 12 children so far. She advocated for a traumatized 18-month-old who was taken from his home because his parents were abusing drugs. The child was very fearful unwilling to move on his blanket. He was afraid of loud noises and large movements and he wouldn't explore his surroundings like most children his age.

The foster care woman who was taking care of him didn't have time to play with him on top of looking after all of her other foster children. So Williams would play with the child and take him to quiet places where he felt safe. When he got older, she took him outside the home, exposing him to such everyday things as going to the park or eating a meal at a restaurant.

When the court was going to move the child to another foster care home, Williams told them that moving the child would set him back and that having him remain in the same foster care home was better for him. The court allowed the child to remain in his original foster care home.

Because advocates work so closely with the children, their reports to the Family Wellness Court have an impact on where the child is placed. The court implements three out of four of their recommendations.

Yew can relate to the advocate's perspective because she was an advocate before she became a judge. She advocated for three children, whom she still keeps in touch with even though they've grown up, and two of them have became lawyers.

Yew talked about the children in the cases she deals with. "Many of the children are born with developmental problems," she said. "Almost all of the parents have a history of incarceration, homelessness, lack of education, trauma, loss, abandonment. Most of the parents didn't have parenting themselves. These families are very needy. They need people to just talk to them, educate them."

Child advocates not only assist the children, they develop relationships with the parents and support the families in the process of reunification.

Margie Becker of Los Gatos has been a child advocate for several years and has found much satisfaction from working with the mother and child.

She is currently advocating for two children. The children are shy, having lived in an unsafe environment. The 2-year-old is afraid to go to the park. "Sometimes the park is where their parents made drug deals and so the park is not fun," Becker said.

The children's mother was addicted to methamphetamines. The mother had lost her teeth from using drugs and was struggling to find a job, so Becker saw to it that the mother got new teeth.

"The most gratifying thing was working with the mother," Becker said. "She has cleaned herself up. She has a sense of herself as a pretty woman." Becker hopes that someday the mother will be able to be with her children again.

Currently, the children live with their grandparents, who speak only Spanish. When Becker started working with the children, the 4-year-old spoke only Spanish. Now the child can speak both Spanish and English, thanks to Becker's help.

On Sept. 8, Becker will read a report to the court on the children's development. She'll tell the court whether the children need glasses, a therapist, a special school and more. Her report will help the court decide the placement of the children in the dependency system. "I want both of them to be safe and secure and know that good people will take care of them," Becker said.

Other advocates haven't been as lucky working with parents in the dependency system. When advocate Linda Peeveyhouse walked into a dependent mother's house, the child was in a playpen with a cat that had defecated on the sides. The mother, who had been seriously abused and was using drugs, couldn't think of a better way to take care of the baby and cat.

"Sometimes parents can love their children, but they just can't parent them," Aring said. "The parents get overwhelmed." Some of the mothers have become addicted to drugs or have been violently abused. With post-traumatic stress, they have trouble reasoning and executing decisions.

Coming from traumatized parents, the children are often fearful. Not only have the children been abused and neglected, they are moved to different foster homes an average of four times before they find a permanent home. This inconsistency disrupts their social development and well-being.

Yew advocated for a child who was moved to seven different foster homes. When the child grew up, she told Yew that she was suicidal for part of her childhood and that Yew was the one that brought her out of her depression. The woman thanked Yew for being the only consistent person in her life.

Advocates help at-risk children become healthy, stable adults. Yew has even seen some of them become advocates for other children in the dependency system.

This year Child Advocates will provide volunteers for 26 percent of the children in the Santa Clara County dependency system, but there are still 300 children without an advocate.

"What it really comes down to is spending one-on-one time with a child," Williams said. "It improves their quality of life."

Williams saw the positive affect she had as an advocate when she went to see a foster child sing a song with her classmates at school. The class filed out onto the blacktop to perform for the parents. One by one the children spotted their parents and waved with enthusiasm. Williams' foster child knew that her parent couldn't make it. However, when she saw Williams waiting for her, her face lit up. Finally she had someone who would be there for her.

Abusive aunt should not have been given custody

2008-09-23T13:12:00.001-07:00

Officials say no abuse reported prior to Antioch foster child's alleged murder
CBS 5, Sept. 8, 2008.

ANTIOCH (BCN) -- Fifteen-year-old Jazzmin Davis was allegedly tortured and killed by her foster mother in Antioch, but nobody had ever reported any abuse to child protective services, executive director of San Francisco's Human Services department Trent Rhorer said today.

Jazzmin had been placed in foster care with her aunt, 37-year-old Shemeeka Davis shortly after she was born, Rhorer said.

Although Davis lived in Antioch, San Francisco oversaw the foster care placement and paid Davis for caring for Jazzmin, Rhorer said.

Antioch police reported that Jazzmin had a twin brother, who was also placed in Davis' care and also allegedly showed physical signs of abuse, but Rhorer said state law only permitted him to release information about deceased children. Davis' 7-year-old biological daughter had also allegedly been abused, according to police.

The two surviving children have been placed in protective custody, police said.

Throughout Jazzmin's 15 years in Davis' care, neither San Francisco nor Contra Costa children's services received any reports of suspected abuse, Rhorer said.

Jazzmin's social worker, who visited her every six months, also never reported suspecting any abuse. The social worker last visited Jazzmin in March, Rhorer said.

All of the child's medical and dental records were up to date, Rhorer said.

Jazzmin was found dead inside Davis' home at 3750 Killdeer Drive Tuesday afternoon.

Antioch police Lt. Leonard Orman said an autopsy showed that she had been burned with hot irons and whipped with belts and electrical cords over a long period of time.

The coroner's office, however, has not determined an official cause of death and is awaiting results of a toxicology test before the final report can be released, a deputy coroner said today.

Orman said a doctor told authorities that Jazzmin's brother also suffered similar injuries, but survived them.

Police today were still looking for the twins' biological father, 40-year-old Jason Lawon Davis, because he reportedly had recent supervised visits with the children, Orman said.

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has issued a no-bail warrant for his arrest, alleging that he violated his parole on a previous drug conviction, police said.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney's office charged Davis Friday with murder, two counts of torture and two counts of felony child abuse, according to Deputy District Attorney Satish Jallepalli.

She was arraigned on the charges Friday but did not enter a plea. She is scheduled to return to court Sept. 26 for a further arraignment.

Once the coroner's report is complete, the San Francisco Human Services quality assurance division will review the case to assess whether all federal, state and local policies and procedures were followed. The report will then be presented to Rhorer and potentially to Mayor Gavin
Newsom.

"I think the unanswered question right now is the length of the abuse," Rhorer said, and whether Jazzmin could have hidden her injuries with clothing.

Contra Costa County's Children and Family Services department was required to submit a child fatality report to the California Department of Social Services, but could not comment further on Jazzmin's death.

Juvenile court, child welfare system - or deportation?

2008-08-28T08:47:00.001-07:00

Court rules S.F. teen illegal needs services
Van Derbeken, Jaxon. San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 26, 2008.

A San Francisco court set aside a drug-trafficking case Monday against a 14-year-old Honduran immigrant - a ruling that juvenile justice officials fear will undermine Mayor Gavin Newsom's new policy requiring that such offenders be held for possible deportation.

Juvenile Court Commissioner Abby Abinanti concluded that the youth, identified only as Francisco G. because of his age, should be treated within the social welfare system, not as a criminal offender. If federal authorities don't intervene, the ruling would almost certainly allow him to remain in this country.

Abinanti issued her ruling after a social services official and a city attorney's representative on an advisory panel reviewed the youth's history and concluded that he should be considered a victim and thus be entitled to receive social welfare services.

Prosecutors and a third member of the panel, a Juvenile Probation Department representative, objected, citing the youth's immigration status. In the end, Abinanti ordered that the youth be turned over immediately to social workers for possible placement in a group home, according to authorities who spoke on condition of anonymity because juvenile proceedings are closed to the public.

Abinanti, through a court spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Feds see ulterior motives
Federal officials assert that placing young felons in group homes amounts to a violation of U.S. law prohibiting the aiding and abetting of illegal immigrants. They suspect that declaring drug dealers to be innocent victims is an end run around the requirement that such immigrants be handed over for possible deportation.

Monday's ruling fueled such criticism.

"I am concerned that there are people who are still attempting to find strategems to avoid compliance with federal law," said Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney for Northern California, who faulted San Francisco's past practice of shielding juvenile offenders from deportation.

Advocates for youths in the juvenile courts maintain that many of the immigrant teenagers accused of drug dealing, rather than being hardened criminals, are victims of abuse, abandonment or human trafficking. They say the youths should be allowed to make a case for asylum rather than being turned over for deportation hearings.

The issue is playing out in court after articles in The Chronicle revealed that the city, which has touted itself as a sanctuary for immigrants, was paying for flights and group-home placements for illegal immigrant youths caught dealing drugs rather than turning them over for deportation.

Being deported could result in the youths being legally prevented from ever returning to the United States.

After the stories appeared, Newsom announced that he had switched course and ordered juvenile justice officials to cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. A spokesman would not talk about the case heard Monday but emphasized the mayor's policy change.

"City officials have been directed by the mayor to refer all undocumented felons to immigration, regardless of age," spokesman Nathan Ballard said. He said any contrary effort would be "inconsistent with city policy."
Boy could still be deported

Juvenile probation authorities referred Francisco G. to federal officials for possible deportation after he was arrested last month, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have placed a hold on the boy.

However, federal agents typically consider youths who are victims of abuse or neglect to be a lower priority for deportation than those found to have committed felonies such as drug dealing.

Francisco G.'s status is unclear in the wake of Abinanti's ruling Monday. It is possible that federal authorities will exercise their immigration hold on him and take custody of the boy before he is turned over to social service officials in the city.

Attorneys for Francisco G. petitioned Abinanti to set aside his criminal case for six months to allow him to be put in foster care while he seeks asylum in the United States. They say he is abandoned, has no way of contacting his parents in Honduras and wants to "better himself and his situation through the foster care system."

Francisco G.'s case was one of several since Newsom's policy reversal in which the public defender's office has petitioned courts to set aside criminal charges and allow immigrant offenders to be put in unlocked foster care homes while on informal probation.

Drug offenders are typically not entitled to such treatment. Under state law, a judge can set aside drug cases only after finding that special circumstances exist to merit such action "in the interests of justice."
Dealing crack in Tenderloin

The Honduran youth was arrested July 17 in the Tenderloin on suspicion of dealing crack cocaine, a felony. Officers saw him spit out a rock of crack and then hand it to a dealer, who sold to undercover officers, police reports say.

The assistant chief of the Juvenile Probation Department, Allen Nance, told Newsom in a recent memo that the public defender's efforts on behalf of Francisco G. showed how some immigrant youth advocates were trying "to circumvent the intentions of the mayor as it relates to undocumented minors involved in illegal drug sales."

"If this minor returns to the community, I am very concerned that he will run from a nonsecure environment," such as a group home, Nance wrote. "Further, our office is not in a position to effectively provide supervision services to an undocumented person without the risk of violating federal law."

Public Defender Jeff Adachi declined to comment. Deputy Public Defender Lisa Katz argued that Francisco G. has no criminal history and came to the United States to avoid beatings at the hands of gang members in Honduras.

In urging that the drug-dealing case be set aside, Katz said the boy was "well-suited for informal probation."

She argued that allowing him to be released "would not place the public in danger" as he is "remorseful for his actions and has a desire to better himself and his situation through the foster care system. His ambitions are strong indications that the public will not suffer further transgressions of the law."
Mother left for Spain

The boy was abandoned in Honduras by his mother, who moved to Spain, and was repeatedly beaten and harassed by gang members who stole the money she sent back to him, Katz said.

Because he is abandoned, Katz said, "like any child within our jurisdiction without a parent or guardian, he deserves the opportunity to go into foster care."

Youths who are declared victims of abandonment in juvenile criminal proceedings are sent into the social welfare system and are removed from juvenile hall.

Russoniello said immigration authorities evaluate such cases to determine whether children are abandoned.

"When someone convinces ICE that the youth is truly dependent, they would be a low-priority for (deportation)," Russoniello said. "But that is going to be the exception, considering the police are catching these guys trafficking in drugs."

Unmet health needs of young people in and from foster care

2008-08-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

Witnesses tell of challenges in state’s foster care system
De Gruy, Leiloni. Los Angeles Wave Papers, Aug. 8, 2008.

Foster children and social workers tell panel, convened by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, that system requires immediate attention.

According to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, the number of children in the county’s foster care system in 2007 fell below 25,000, compared to a peak of 52,000 in 1997.

Despite these hopeful numbers, social workers, foster parents, parents, foster children and community organizations attended a special state Assembly hearing at the California Science Center on Aug. 8 to speak with policy makers about their successes, pitfalls and what they need to fulfill their duties. The meeting was convened by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, and San Jose legislator Jim Beall Jr.

According to several social workers who testified, many foster children do not possess adequate knowledge on how to gain full access to health care, mental health services, job training and support, alternative education, transportation and other necessities.

“We have learned that long time foster care is not the solution,” said Trish Ploehn, director of Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. “Children aging out of our foster care system at the age of 18 are often unprepared with the challenges of adulthood and are too often alone, unemployed, homeless or in jail.”

On average, less than 45 percent of foster children stay in one placement for more than a year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Those children have either returned to their families, moved to another foster family or group home, been placed under supervised independent living, or become runaways.

Eighteen-year-old Chiquita Jordan, who entered the system at age 10, told the Assembly Select Committee on Foster Care of being “separated from my younger brother … It was really impossible to maintain a relationship with my little brother. He lives [in] San Pedro while I live in Compton. I didn’t know if we would ever contact [each other] again, which was painful because my little brother was the closest to me.”

She added: “When I was 14 my world started changing. My mom was trying to get our family back together but at the same time placement began to be shaky. In a period of two years, from 14 to 16, I went AWOL and was homeless on two separate occasions. I lived in three different foster homes and three different group homes. My grades slipped and I went to two different middle schools and four different high schools because I felt like nobody cared about me … I began cutting myself to numb the pain … I was told by social workers that when I get emancipated I would still get help. I needed health benefits, I wasn’t able to get those. When I was emancipated we moved to San Diego and we were homeless out there and when we came back we were still homeless and I was calling my social worker, who was not returning my call and I left several messages.”

The goal, social workers say, is to teach troubled parents how to rear their children and provide a stable environment. Parenting and family courses already being provided by such organizations as Kinship in Action and Shields for Families assess both parent and child successes and failures, then help find immediate solutions or implement step-by-step plans to get them on track.

According to Norma Mtume of Shields for Families, this course of action is most feasible, as opposed to taking children out of their homes and using more than $4.3 billion in taxpayers’ money each year for the cost of judges, social workers and foster parents.

“The cost of assessment is much less than $500 per assessment,” said Mtume, “so the return value on what we’re doing … is quite worth it.”

Said Shaunda Williams, a new parent who received such an assessment: “I had a baby about 11 months ago, I tested positive for marijuana. A social worker came to my home when I came home from the hospital, the social worker said that there were some concerns with both of my children and I needed to have an assessment to see if I should participate in the drug program. A staff person from Shields for Families came to our home and we were both [her and her partner] assessed. Shields help me enroll in a program and are now working with my family. While I attend treatment everyday, I have a seven-year-old who is picked up after school by Shields staff. He also receives counseling and help with his homework … If it weren’t for Shields, I don’t know where we would be.”

Funding and legislative support, said many of the panel’s witnesses, is essential to providing social workers with needed tools and services so that families can become stable units.

According to Wendy Luke, social worker/supervisor at the Compton office of the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services, overworked employees remain a steady obstacle improvements in the system. With several caseloads each — including those just entering foster care, those coming out of the system and those already in it — social workers find it increasingly difficult to provide the personalized services their clients often require.

Meshay Broadnax, an 18-year-old trying to transition out of foster care, said “I have been in foster care system since I was 9 years old … I have been fortunate enough to only have two placements. Although I’ve had stable placement, my social workers have been anything but stable. I am assuming that I have had about 50 social workers who all acted like they didn’t care, after 21 I stopped counting … I am unable to establish a relationship because they are in and out of my life. Social workers are unresponsive because they don’t know me. Because they have changed so often I never know how I am going to get in contact with them, primary workers that are suppose to be the advocate of my needs.”

In 2006, Broadnax became a victim of gang violence. She was shot in the ankle, which led to surgery and a rod in her leg. She needed therapy but “the new [social worker] did not understand my needs and I was constantly complaining.”

She expressed to the panel that her past experiences with social workers leads her to believe that her transition out of foster care will be difficult due to lack of support from the foster care system.

Luke suggested that “We need funding for case workers to be able to lower their caseload, to be able to ask the question, ‘What is it that you need?’ And also to be able to come back in and do their job. We also need funds for the community agencies to be able to buy the services for the families.”

A Home Within connects foster youth with volunteer therapists

2008-08-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Jefferson Award: Presented to Toni Heineman
Moody, Shelah. San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 24, 2008.

When Toni Heineman, a clinical professor in the pediatrics and psychiatry department at UCSF, realized that foster children in the Bay Area were not getting the mental health services they needed, she took action.

In 1994, Heineman founded a nonprofit called A Home Within, which connects foster youth with volunteer therapists in communities across the country.

"All of these children have been traumatized in some way," Heineman said. "Mostly, they come into the foster care system because they've been neglected, but they've been removed from their families - and that in and of itself is a trauma. Often, they've been removed from their families repeatedly as they go from one foster home to another. Everybody tries to make it stable, but it's really hard. It's often very difficult for them to trust people, because they have not had much experience with people actually being there day after day."

During her years of study, Heineman noticed that foster children had limited access to counseling and psychotherapy because they didn't have consistent parental care and their families didn't have much money.

"A lot of us see foster kids when we're in training as interns or residents," she said. "It's an interest that grew over time - it wasn't a sudden 'aha' moment."

After receiving a doctorate in mental health, Heineman became a licensed clinical psychologist and went into private practice in San Francisco. She chose to focus on the needs of foster children and later continued her efforts by founding A Home Within, of which she is executive director.

More than 300 therapists in chapters across the country volunteer to work with foster youths in cities including San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami and Washington. Each chapter is maintained by a clinical director who organizes the efforts of volunteer therapists and consultants.

"The concept is very simple," Heineman said. "We ask senior clinicians in the community to offer their time pro bono to lead consultation groups. For the therapists who (work with us), each of them agree to take just one child weekly for (free) psychotherapy and to work with the kid in the same way they would if the child's parents were able to pay. In other words, they work until the work is done, not because of policy changes or funding cuts or all of the other things that go along with being part of a public system.

"We're really saying that the private sector is available to help; we are part of the system, too, and we should be helping out the public system that is charged with the care of foster kids. This is one small contribution that we can make."

Heineman, who has two adult children, said she feels privileged that her young clients are willing to share their stories with her. Her motivation is to help foster children lead happy, healthy lives.
An unusual aspect of A Home Within is that its therapists and counselors continue to work with foster children after they are emancipated at age 18.

"What we are finding is that these young adults who are emancipating from the system, who for years as teenagers said that they did not want any therapy, are coming back, calling and asking to have therapy," Heineman said.

She said that her long-term goal is to make A Home Within's services available to all foster children.

"Every single child needs one stable, caring adult in their lives in order to thrive," Heineman said, "whether it's a therapist, who can help the child form better, healthier relationships with other people, or a biological parent, a caregiver or an adoptive parent."

For more information about A Home Within, go to www.ahomewithin.org

Each week, The Chronicle features a Bay Area resident who has won a Jefferson Award for making a difference in his or her community. The awards are administered by the American Institute for Public Service, a national foundation that honors community service. Bay Area residents profiled in The Chronicle are also featured on CBS5-TV and KCBS-AM, which are Jefferson Award media partners, along with The Chronicle.

If you can't be a foster parent, why not be a mentor?

2008-08-28T08:42:00.001-07:00

Wanted: Earth Angels to mentor, befriend, and encourage children in foster care
DeRegnier, Diana. American Chronicle, Aug. 28. 2008.

So often we hear about abject poverty of children in other countries. Less often, we learn about the circumstances 800,000 American children face which results in their being taken into foster care.

The intent of this article is not to compare the misfortunes of one with the other but to serve as a reminder that severe deprivation exists close to home which can be best remedied with a generous dose of compassion, attention and guidance.

If you are unprepared for taking a foster child into your home, there is still much you can do. Money is always needed, yet more important are the needs that bear no cost but time and integrity. What these children hunger for most lies in the heart and soul of adults and peers.

As a former foster child I remain alert to how society deals with children who have become wards of the court through no fault of their own. The best presentation I have ever seen was the 2006 ABC Primetime feature "Calling All Angels" with Diane Sawyer. For once, the foster care system was presented from the perspective of children who had been bounced from one home or facility to another, always longing for the parental love most children take for granted.

On that Thursday night in June, Primetime was preempted for more than 10 minutes for the enthralling end of the National Spelling Bee which was guaranteed to draw millions of viewers. While the audience and contestants bemoaned yet another delay for commercials and a re-staging of a supposedly spontaneous moment with the finalists, home viewers may have wondered how ABC could cut into the feature program on children in foster care that had been promoted for days.

As if preplanned, one spelling bee contestant had been tripped up by the word "weltschmerz" which Spelling Bee officials defined as a comparison of idealism to the real world. The Encarta online Dictionary calls it "sadness felt at the imperfect state of the world, especially at the behavior of human beings." They would have done well to cut to Primetime for examples.

Moments after Katherine Close won the competition, she was asked how important it is to have her parents' support. Katherine answered, "So important. You can't do anything without moral support." Katherine Close may not have known the power of her statement in light of the program that was to follow. In that moment of synchronicity Katherine became an advocate for "Calling All Angels," which had been billed as an appeal to the nation for each of us to step up in support of dispossessed children.

Diane Sawyer finally began the program with video clips of foster children struggling to count in their head how many foster homes and placements they have been in. Yet, if you didn't hear the words, you wouldn't know that they are any different than any other children caught in a quiet, pensive moment. They are clean, well-mannered and composed. They calmly tell us that they have been taken from their parents due to neglect and abuse, yet their wish for when they grow up is again and again to be a fireman, nurse, crime fighter or super-hero – "someone who can help people." And we realize the courage and generosity of the young survivors.

When Ruben's three younger brothers were adopted he was devastated. "It hurts a lot to be rejected," he says. Perhaps foster parents believe he is too old to need them. Ruben has never been able to call a place his. It was always "somebody's house, not my house." But Ruben refuses to give up. Even at 18 Ruben clings to hope that someone will open their doors and their hearts to make him part of a family.

Ruben and his brothers were removed from their mother because of neglect. Yet 10 years later he remains devoted to her memory. He says he wants to fulfill her wish for him to be happy and to do good things. "If you give up you're a loser, and I'm no loser," Ruben declares.

Fifteen year old James, who lived in 11 homes before he was adopted, imparts wisdom easily missed by those from better circumstances: "When you bounce from place to place, you lose a piece of you every time you move." Later in the program, they cut to another clip of James and his voice quivers as he tells us, "You should be extra kind to these children, they've been through a lot." Has he forgotten that he's one of them?

For the first time I've ever seen, national television has gone straight to the children to learn about the hell-holes they have come from. We hear their testimony rather than parents bemoaning their lot. In the children's eyes and visible hearts we see wounds and scars inflicted in unimaginable conditions. Those near the age when social services will no longer be available to them show fear. On the lips of each is "what's going to happen to me then?" Yet they profess tenacity, more hope than hopelessness, and determination to rise above their circumstances.

Diane Sawyer moves cautiously into facts behind the children's rescues. Latest statistics cite 800,000 children passing through the system each year; 500,000 are taken into foster care; 118,000 are available for adoption. In an already inadequate and burgeoning system, methamphetamine use has spawned an epidemic of abusive and negligent parents. Civic leaders call upon Faith communities to help with the rising crisis.

Before meeting children who are among the most severely traumatized, Sawyer introduces us to Sky Tanghe, a devoted social worker at Maryhurst, a unique facility in Louisville, Kentucky. Maryhurst offers nine programs for 600 of the state's most vulnerable and troubled young girls. Sky considers herself fortunate to have a caseload of 19 rather than the 30 – 60 cases workers in some areas of the country are expected to manage.

Emily Smith, another counselor at Maryhurst, was once a resident. "This isn't a job for me. This is a love for me," she says.

Judy Lambeth, CEO and president, tells us the children at Maryhurst are those who nobody else can handle. "They hate themselves so much they can't handle success." Maryhurst offers the last chance to develop tools for re-entry into society.

Asked what is the most important thing the children need. Lambeth replies, "I would want for all our girls, our kids, to have one adult in their life that they can count on for the rest of their lives."
Eleven year old Summer is, at once, typical and unique. When Summer was taken from her drug-addicted mother a doctor had to surgically remove cockroaches from her ears. Since the age of six, Summer had been molested by men who paid her mother to have sex with them.

Summer was adopted by the Sally and Wayne Meyers. The Meyers regret having to relinquish Summer but they must protect the three younger children.

We are told that those who have been sexually abused often act out as a form of power, affection and manipulation. Something they don't say in the program is that sometimes sexual abuse is the most affectionate touching the child has received. Sometimes, that is the only time they hear anyone say "I love you." It may become the only way they know how to ask for attention, comfort and reassurance that they are valued.

Summer works hard for perfect grades. Try that after attending numerous schools and with memories of violence, sex and drugs running through your mind.

Summer is sure her adopted mom wants her back. The mother does not. She asks Summer, "Is it safe to bring you back home?"

Summer answers "No." Then quickly changes the subject to something pretty, "Look over there," she says and points to blooming Daffodils.

Summer's favorite song is "Jesus Take the Wheel" by Carrie Underwood: "Oh, I'm letting go. So give me one more chance. Save me from this road I'm on."

Diane tells Summer she has beautiful eyelashes. "You do too," Summer says.

Diane tells Summer hers are false and invites her to take them off. Summer gently lifts one and pulls back with a groan. "Ooh!" they both laugh.

At bedtime Summer drags a pillow and blanket to the floor where she prefers to sleep. Diane tells us, "For tonight, no one can come in and hurt her."

Still, there is a spark in this damaged little girl that will not be extinguished. When Diane asked who she would be if she could be anyone in the world, Summer says, "I want to be myself -- not anybody else. Just me. … Because I wanna learn my real self."

Another child followed in "Calling All Angels" is 14 year old Whitney who cuts herself. Though her mother is a drug addict Whitney thinks she caused her mother's problems. Whitney's mother also grew up in foster care.

In the last four years Whitney has lived in five foster homes. Yet she takes full responsibility for her behavior. "It was my decision to skip school. It was my decision to do drugs. It was my decision to stay out all night."

Judy Lambeth says that girls like Whitney can benefit from the highly structured, intensive team approach to treatment and the belief that "if somebody cares for you when you're at your worst – and that's true for all of us -- then we know we're loved."

Lambeth goes on to say, "When you know their history in the context of meeting them and seeing them, then you see the hope."

Many may remember in the news in 2003, four New Jersey brothers who had been adopted by a couple who then starved and beat them. Authorities finally stepped in when the oldest was caught rummaging through garbage cans for something to eat. At 19 he weighed only 45 pounds. His brother Keith was 14 and weighed 40 pounds; the 10 year old, 28 pounds; and the 9 year old, 23 pounds.

Now adopted by Fulvia Mitchell, Keith has changed even his name. He is now Tre Shawn Mitchell in honor of a new brother and cousin. Tre has gained 90 pounds and has grown 13 inches.

When the boys first came to live with Fulvia they would ask permission for every normal behavior. They asked if they could go to the bathroom or brush their teeth or watch television. Tre ate constantly until his new mother took him to the kitchen, "I showed him that the cupboards are full. The refrigerator is full. I am not going to deprive him, or mistreat him, that he is safe," his guardian said.

Over the next few days "Calling all Angels" was followed by other ABC News programs with "A Call for Action" on World News Tonight; Night Line; Good Morning America; and 20/20.

One segment addressed "aging out" regarding children near the age when they will no longer qualify for foster care programs, mentoring programs like Adoptment and the Torch Program, a resource in Pittsburg that focuses on an alternatives to foster care and the trend to internet adoption.

We were introduced to Heart Photography, a national network of professional photographers who have replaced the children's traditional file mug shots with museum quality photographs that also appear in exhibits across the country.

The ABC News Web site provided video clips from the programs; full-length articles by researchers for the shows; links to 20 child welfare organizations nation-wide; and message boards to communicate with other viewers about what was seen and felt. Ruben, whose brothers were adopted, generates the most discussion and numerous offers to adopt him despite his age.

There were few postings regarding the Spelling Bee.

In the background of a video clip of a little girl named Amanda, who was being photographed for an exhibit, another girl stood sideways near the wall, clearly in the camera's line. She stood silent, shrouded in sadness, then slowly moved out of view.

Representing the Torch Program is Doug Anderson, a retired vice-president of a major Wall Street investment firm. He was also once a child in foster care. Anderson is now a mentor: "These children need something other than the system," he tells us.

Among the success stories, we find a father, Howard, who cleaned up his drug addiction, got a job and took parenting classes. Howard tells us the benefits of his changes are that his children say I love you, and he adds, "I heard them say good morning."

Any gesture, big or small, beneficial or detrimental, in a foster child's life will impact them for life. Everything has meaning, amplified by their circumstances. Please find a way that feeds your soul to also feed theirs.

By coincidence, one segment of The Oprah Show today is about children in foster care. Her audience has collected 34,000 pairs of pajamas for foster children. And I guarantee, those pajamas will be treasured as much for the act of generosity and caring as for the comfort and warmth they will bring.

Kinship caregivers need financial and emotional support

2008-08-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

Filling a family need
Raising grandchildren is a little easier with the Kinship program
Wilson, Eileen. Press-Tribune, Sept. 19, 2008.

For many Placer County residents, life follows a predictable path. Everyone grows up, some get married and raise children. The real fun for many people begins when grandchildren arrive on the scene.

But for a surprisingly large number of Placer County families, the life they’ve planned isn’t necessarily the life they will lead.

According to figures from the 2000 census, 1,600 children in Placer County alone were being raised by a grandparent.

Enter the new Kinship Support Services Program, a support and coaching service for grandparents and others raising children not their own.

The Kinship Program, offered at both Roseville and Auburn Family Resource Centers, is overseen by the Child Abuse Prevention Council of Placer County. The program is a collaboration of efforts, funded by Placer Health and Human Services and the state of California, to help families who are raising kin – someone else’s children.

Folks raising grandkids is not a new phenomenon. Kin-kids, as the program calls them, are becoming increasingly common, and are more recognized than in the past.

There are many reasons parents relinquish children, including illness or death, military deployment, and substance abuse, to name a few.

Special issues go along with raising kin-kids. A grandparent, absent from the educational system for years, may have trouble navigating today’s increasingly complex school requirements.

“Imagine being 50, 60, 70, or even 80 years old and trying to understand ‘new math,’ or why a teen wants to get his lip pierced,” said Colleen Johnson, Kinship case manager and outreach coordinator.

Johnson said grandparents or other caregivers oftentimes have guardianship issues. They may not have legal custody of children, and therefore have difficulty enrolling them in school, consenting to medical treatment, providing medical insurance or absorbing the cost of kids who suddenly are placed in their care.

“It’s not uncommon for these families to have grandkids dropped off on a weekend with no clothing, photos, anything from their past,” Johnson said.

Grandparents, of course, aren’t the only relatives taking children in. Aunts, uncles, family friends and adult siblings frequently take on a parental role as well.

“One of the things I’ve learned in this program is that everybody’s family situation is so different,” said Kathleen Shenk, deputy director of the Child Abuse Prevention Council.

“Caregivers stretch over the entire demographic spectrum. It’s an issue affecting all economic levels.”

Kinship is a comprehensive program offering numerous services such as counseling, support groups, caregiving, case management and systems navigation, legal assistance for guardianship, adoption, foster care and more.

In addition, with the help of regular volunteers, the program offers a weekly six-hour summer enrichment class where kids participate in arts and crafts, computer and science projects, park visits and activities.

“They come home with a bundle under their arm – you can see they’re just tickled to death,” Johnson said of the art projects kids create.

It’s a combination of academic support, enrichment and overall play, Shenk agreed. The center also plans to offer after-school tutoring in the fall.

In addition to valuable playtime for the kids, six hours gives caregivers a much-needed respite. Adults can use the time to work with their case manager, attend a support group, run errands, or simply have an afternoon to themselves.

“Just the support group is such an important component,” Johnson said. “Not only do grandparents have a support network where they can share experiences, but the kids have a network of other kids, so they know they’re not the only ones being raised by non-parents. It’s such a relief to be in a group where you can talk freely about your situation.”

In addition to supporting kin-caregivers and kids, the program supports the children’s biological parents as much as possible.

“This program believes in the family as a whole,” Johnson said. “The adult children can come in and get support as well. We want to keep the family bond as tight as possible.”

In addition to the Kinship Program, Roseville and Auburn Family Resource Centers offer a Home First program for new and expecting parents.

Home First provides education on prenatal care, breast feeding, shaken baby syndrome, child development and more, and includes in-home visits from professional staff.

Johnson feels the best part of the agency is they offer so many prevention services, which is key.

“They (kin-caregivers) should be reminded that they’re heroes, they keep their families together,” she said.

The center relies on regular volunteers to keep the Kinship Program running smoothly. Contact Heather Tooker (530) 887-3536 for volunteer opportunities. For more information about any of Child Abuse Prevention Council’s programs, or to make a donation, visit www.childresources.org

New Blue Ribbon Foster Care Report

2008-08-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/jc/tflists/documents/blueribexecsum.pdf

College application bootcamps provide educational counseling and a portfolio

2008-08-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

College Summit encourages low-income high school seniors with average grades
Rivera, Carla. Los Angeles Times, Aug. 17, 2008.

"I'm a natural born-hustler," begins the essay written by Inglewood High School senior Marquise Foster. "The only lesson I ever learned from my family is the 'art of hustling.' It's an art that has been perfected in my South Central neighborhood for generations. . . . The word 'hustle' is often portrayed negatively, as something associated with crime or wrongdoing. In my community, a hustle is a means of survival."

Marquise, 17, carefully crafted a powerful story of tragedy and accomplishment, of his drug dealer father shot dead by police, of his hard-pressed mother placing him in foster care, of recommitting to his faith.

He hopes that his introspection will catch the eye of college admissions directors, that they'll see potential in a young man with average grades but plenty of self-confidence.

Marquise is among 250 seniors from local high schools who spent part of their summer at college application boot camps where students received one-on-one counseling and left with a portfolio that included a draft of the all-important personal essay.

The sessions were sponsored by College Summit, a nonprofit organization that partners with schools to increase college enrollment among low-income students with middling grades but strong leadership qualities.

Founded in 1993, College Summit operates in 170 high schools in 13 states, including six schools in Southern California, in the Los Angeles and Inglewood districts.

Its goal is to create a culture in which college is expected of all students, not only those with high grade point averages and test scores.

Krystal Greene is the College Summit advisor at Inglewood High School. She helps students work on their college applications and plan long- and short-term goals.

"Many come in the door saying, 'I'm going to this two-year school because my cousin went there,' and they haven't done any research," said Greene, who also teaches AP English literature. "They need to know that even if you have [a grade point average in the] twos, you can still go to a college; you can go to a Cal State. I see more students who are excited and expecting to go to college now."

A report by the Washington-based Education Trust said that the highest-achieving low-income students go to college at about the same rate as the lowest-achieving students from wealthy families. College Summit schools are seeing improvements, though, having raised the college-going rate of low-income students by 15% in the last two years, compared to a 4% rise among low-income students nationally.

Morningside and Inglewood high schools, where the program is in place, had an increase of 7% and 10%, respectively, in enrollment at UCs, state colleges and state community colleges between 2004 and 2006, according to data collected by California education agencies, College Summit said.

Next year, Inglewood and Arleta high schools will become the first College Summit partners in Southern California to begin measuring college enrollment for all students. Sylmar, Crenshaw and James Monroe high schools are the program's other local partners.

"There is a lot of untapped talent out there," said College Summit founder J.B. Schramm. "For some students, the lightbulb comes on in the fifth grade, and for some it's in the 10th grade. Everybody has their unique path. We need to have a system in schools to help these students."

Schools are selected based on the support of districts and principals and on need, including graduation rates, college enrollment rates, access to Advanced Placement classes and numbers of classroom computers and college counselors. At least 40% of the students should qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.

College Summit provides a yearlong college planning class during the senior year, trains students to be role models for their peers and equips teachers and counselors with college resources. The program begins in the summer with four days of workshops that focus on writing essays.

"College Summit allows students to do the kind of introspection we look for during the selection process," said Matt Ward, dean of undergraduate enrollment at California Lutheran University, which held a recent College Summit workshop for 50 Sylmar and Inglewood students. "Obviously, we want to make sure students can do the work so they thrive here, but we also want to know what attributes they bring to the table to make our campus a better place."

During the writing session, coaches helped students mine their personal histories, personality traits, likes and dislikes and painful emotions to create compelling narratives.

"We're empowering them to feel like they're writers," said coach Celso Delgado Jr., a volunteer who works as a mental health occupational therapist. "Some of them walked out today and said they had never written that way before or told anyone these things."

In Marquise Foster's essay, he wrote of hustling his first job at age 13 as a sign holder for Cingular Wireless -- telling a "white lie" that he was 16 to get the job. Five months later, when the company caught on, he went to work at a Creole restaurant as a busboy, leaving three years later as assistant lead cook.

Eventually, he succumbed to the gang scene: "That thug lifestyle my father perfected had slowly but surely worked its way into my bloodstream and changed the child my mother raised into a menace to society."

After entering the foster care system, Marquise made school and God a priority.

"I'm taking my newfound knowledge about life and the personal growth I've had, and running with it," he wrote. "I'm confident that at the end of my route I'll find success waiting. Once found, my success will become my life's true hustle."

Craig Best, 16, also an Inglewood senior, wrote about how a library book he happened upon -- "The Girl in a Swing," by Richard Adams -- led to a personal epiphany.

"I would stop and reread a line," he wrote. "Reread it, inhale it and begin to dream. I dreamt of a world entirely different from my own, calm, simple and undoubtedly serene. . . . I found that if I could be exposed to something as powerful as that, by doing something as little as picking up a book, there had to be an infinite number of sensations out there, waiting for me to uncover them."

Best said that before the writing session, he didn't feel he had anything interesting to put into a personal essay. He was encouraged to write not about what he thought a college wanted to hear, but about what he thought was important.

He didn't try to make it sound good, he said. But it came out that way.

"I now see the world as an unsolved jigsaw puzzle, with an infinite array of pieces suspended above me," he wrote. "All I have to do is reach up and grab them. They are waiting for me, they are waiting for all of us."

15-minute hearings to decide living situations of vulnerable foster children

2008-08-28T08:20:00.000-07:00

Foster children underserved by courts, report finds
A California commission recommends smaller caseloads for social workers, lawyers and judges serving the 80,000 kids in the system statewide
Therolf, Garrett. Los Angeles Times, Aug. 16, 2008.

California's 80,000 foster children -- nearly 27,000 in Los Angeles County -- are underserved by deeply stressed courts and government agencies, and the hearings that decide their living situations often last no more than 15 minutes, according to a report released Friday.

The report is the result of two years of work by a blue-ribbon commission established by California Chief Justice Ronald George and makes dozens of recommendations to the judicial system, the Legislature and the counties that operate the foster care system.

Key among the recommendations was a call to replace with judges the referees and commissioners who oversee dependency cases.

"This was not to put down referees or commissioners who have labored in those courts for a long time, but by using judges, it would indicate that the court considers this work to be at the top in terms of seriousness and importance," Carlos Moreno, commission chairman and a state Supreme Court associate justice, said in an interview.

The report also recommended smaller caseloads for all authorities involved, including social workers, attorneys and judges.

The entire juvenile court system has fewer than 150 full- and part-time judges and commissioners working on foster care, with caseloads averaging 1,000 each. Lawyers for these courts average 273 cases apiece -- in some counties 500 to 600 -- and often do not meet the children and parents they are representing until moments before hearings.

Jasmine Smith, a 20-year-old Inglewood resident in foster care, said in an interview, "I'm not usually able to say anything when we go to court. I usually speak with my lawyer for maybe five minutes just before the hearing. Nothing is taken care of because no one is prepared. It's always, 'Let's make another appointment.' "

Although Smith remains in foster care, many children are released from the system at 18. The commission recommended that the age for foster care assistance be extended in all cases to 21.

"I don't think any parent would allow a child to go into the world without any support at 18 years of age, and we shouldn't either," Moreno said. "There is a high moral and financial cost because so many of our foster children become homeless or incarcerated."

At a meeting of the California Judicial Council on Friday, the report's recommendations were unanimously endorsed, and Moreno predicted swift reforms within the court system.

The commission's other recommendations focused on preventing the need to take children from their parents; placing a new priority on dependency cases within the court system; improving coordination between the courts, attorneys and social service agencies; and providing more resources and money to the juvenile courts.

Moreno acknowledged that his commission's recommendations would be a hard sell in some cases this year as the state contends with a $15.2-billion budget deficit, but he said he remains hopeful.

"We emphasized recommendations that require no money at all -- it doesn't take more money for people to talk to each other more, for example -- but when it comes to the recommendations that do require additional funds we think we will find receptive ears," Moreno said. "Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and the governor have made foster kids a priority."

Massive reforms to California juvenile dependency courts

2008-08-28T08:18:00.002-07:00

Judges vow to fix state's foster-care court
Judges approve reforms - can state pay for them?
de Sá, Karen. San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 16, 2008.

The California courts approved massive reforms on Friday to the state's troubled juvenile dependency courts that would ease the overwhelmed system and ensure fairness for those who are "literally and legally the children of the state."

Finding unconscionable the overloaded dockets that leave only minutes for hearings that determine critical issues for 75,000 California children in foster care, the state Judicial Council approved measures that would include more judges to hear dependency cases and more lawyers to represent impoverished family members.

"Children are our future, and I can't imagine any more effort that's as integral to society and our judicial system," said Chief Justice Ronald George, who led the council in calling for change.

The vote of the Judicial Council - the governing body for the state courts - adopts the recommendations of a statewide commission that George appointed in 2006 to study the problems of the dependency courts, which operate largely in secret and are often treated as the less-prestigious stepchild of the court system.

The measures approved by the council would address many of the critical problems identified in the February Mercury News series "Broken Families, Broken Courts," which revealed an overburdened system that too often poorly serves both the children it is designed to protect, and the parents accused of abuse or neglect. The series documented a system in which overloaded attorneys routinely meet with clients minutes before their hearings, if at all, and often fail to properly investigate or present their cases.

The next question will be funding changes to the system - the state Legislature is already at an impasse over how to solve its $15.2 billion deficit. As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed one bill last month that sailed through the Legislature in response to the newspaper articles - a measure designed to make sure that children are aware of their hearings and given the chance to attend - he expressed concern over the costs at a time when the state is strapped for money.

But the chief justice Friday said a "golden opportunity" exists to enact the 79 specific measures - many of which do not involve significant costs. Court officials intend to push implementation of the widespread measures both at the state and county levels in the coming months.

Among the 42 members of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care that drafted the recommendations is newly named Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, who has focused her career on improving the state's foster care system.

Smaller caseloads
The Judicial Council's newly approved list of reforms calls for attorney caseloads of no more than 188 clients, although in some counties, lawyers for children and parents attempt to juggle as many as 600 cases. The council called for all dependency cases to be heard by judges, although in many counties referees and commissioners serve as substitutes for judges. In great swaths of the state, judicial officers are assigned upward of 1,300 families at any given time - hundreds more than the 250 recommended by national experts. The Judicial Council will now seek to lower judicial caseloads, but in return will ask for minimum three-year assignments.

William Vickery, administrative director of the statewide court system, said California became too reliant on lower-level judicial officers in the critical, but low-status dependency courts. For judges, he said, "it's never been on the radar screen. It's something that's been in the back room or the cellar."

In calling for more judges and more reasonable caseloads, blue ribbon commission members told the Judicial Council that it is the only "ethically defensible" position to take, given that "dependency cases represent the most intrusive form of governmental intervention."

Friday's Judicial Council vote embraced the commission's list of proposed reforms, in some cases with strengthened language.

Attorneys' competence
The council is seeking a system to ensure attorney competency and effectiveness, and the appointment of attorneys for all children when their cases are appealed to the higher courts.

The Judicial Council also is seeking action to address the longstanding problem that hearings to remove children from their homes disproportionately involve families of color. The council approved steps to reduce the number of African-American and American Indian children in the system, while increasing the diversity and cultural competence of the courts' workforce.

To highlight the need, Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno pointed to San Francisco, where African-American children are 9 percent of the city's population, and 70 percent of those in foster care, he said.

Central to the reform efforts ahead is a plan to prevent the removal of children from their homes whenever possible, and to call on federal authorities to grant more money for child abuse prevention and reunification services.

But California dependency system reformers believe the courts can do a better job whittling down the number of cases in which children must be removed from homes - which, they say, will lower the costs of caring for children in foster care. Those savings should be reinvested in supports for troubled families before they enter the court system, the commission reported, resulting in a long-term savings "by reducing the number of former foster children who become homeless, dependent on welfare, and incarcerated as adults."

ACE Scholar Services

2008-08-28T08:18:00.001-07:00

University fosters care for foster students
New program guarantees admission to qualifying foster care graduates
Rodriguez, Nelsy. North County Times, Aug. 14, 2008.

TEMECULA ---- Having moved among nine foster homes since she was 11, it was only natural that Kerri Pierce's first concern upon entering college would be housing.

"As soon as they leave the foster system, (foster children) don't have anywhere to go," said Pierce, a 19-year-old former foster child who came from a family of six children and has remained together with her twin sister, Corri Pierce.

Now the young women attend Cal State San Bernardino and, during the school year, live in a small two-bedroom house on the campus, which Kerri Pierce says is a lot more convenient.

"We found it very quiet. There were no kids running around," she said.

Pierce, who is entering her junior year at the California State University, could have benefited from a program signed into action this week between the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services and Cal State San Marcos.

The program, dubbed ACE Scholar Services, will form close ties with students in the county foster care system to help them apply for college, guarantee their admission, support them emotionally and assist them financially throughout their years of higher education to increase their chances of graduating.

"(Education) has been the one thing in life that no one could take away from me," Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone said during the Tuesday press conference held for the signing of the agreement between the county and the school. "Foster children are basically off on their own, unfortunately. This opens the gates toward higher education for our underprivileged youth."

More than 4,000 youth are enrolled in the county's foster care system. Each year, about 550 "age out" of the system at 18, county officials said. At that point, the teens suddenly find themselves on their own.

Jim Mickelson, who will run the ACE program for Cal State San Marcos, said the school typically receives about 10,000 applications a year and admits about 1,400 new students.

Through the program, any person enrolled in county foster care who completes college prerequisite courses will automatically be accepted as one of the 1,400 to join the San Marcos student body.

"Many of them don't think it's possible," Mickelson said. "But college is possible."

Foster care students also will be guided through the application process and receive help securing federal and university grants, which can help offset the expense of attending school.

Pierce, who attends Cal State San Bernardino, said she welcomes the day when more people in her situation are helped to achieve all they can.

After her mother left home, Pierce and her five natural siblings remained with their father, she said. When he couldn't care for them, the siblings were split up and sent through different homes. An older sister stayed with a grandmother, a younger sister moved in with an aunt. Several younger siblings were taken to Oregon, and Pierce and her twin remained in the foster system until landing with their most recent caregivers in 2006.

Though the chaos of moving through four different high schools might have dampened some students' dedication to academic success, Pierce and her sister stuck together to work on improving their grades.

And though they had missed out on the years of discussion that many families engage in before a graduate ships off to college, by the time the Pierce sisters reached their last foster home, the two were already mentally college-bound. Pierce said that was largely because she entered an independent living program that helped her search for grants and fill out college applications, which will be one of the services offered by ACE.

But students in her position could use much more help, she said.

"If they're the only people trying to keep their dreams alive, no one's going to help them out with it," Pierce said.

Overstressed dependency courts need reform

2008-08-28T08:12:00.000-07:00

Taking action for our foster children
Moreno, Carlos. San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 15, 2008.

Our state has been understandably preoccupied with the heat of wildfires and budget disputes this summer, but there's another crisis on the horizon - one that we can manage if we commit to taking decisive and bold action. This crisis concerns the well-being of children in foster care.

More specifically, it concerns the state of our juvenile dependency courts. Every one of the nearly 80,000 children in foster care in California comes before our dependency courts multiple times. Yet a two-year investigation by the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care found an overstressed and under-resourced court system, in which our most vulnerable children and families do not routinely get the attention and services we know they deserve.

This statewide commission, appointed by the chief justice in 2006, found that a number of factors contribute to this crisis. There are fewer than 150 full- and part-time judicial officers across the whole state, and full-time judicial officers have an average caseload of 1,000. It is no surprise that, although our juvenile court judges and commissioners are committed to making fair and impartial decisions about children and families, the participants in juvenile dependency court are not always afforded a meaningful opportunity to participate in their cases. Hearings are only 10 to 15 minutes on average, hardly enough time to get a full picture of a child's hopes or needs, to make critical decisions on services and follow-up. Hearing delays and continuances are routine.

Court attorneys who represent children and families in court have caseloads averaging 273; in a few counties, this rises to more than 600. Some children and parents do not even meet their attorneys until the day of their hearings, when they hear their names called in a crowded waiting room or hallway.

The Blue Ribbon Commission is issuing a series of recommendations today in an urgent call for reform of our juvenile dependency courts. Our recommendations fall into four categories:

Prevention and permanency, to help keep families together whenever it is safe and possible to do so. This includes returning children to their homes as soon as all court-mandated services have been met or finding placement in another permanent home when removal is necessary. It also means increasing efforts to find relatives and family members and addressing the thorny problem of the disproportionate numbers of African American and Native American children in foster care.

Court reforms, the heart and soul of our recommendations. Quite simply, we intend to change the way we do business in dependency court. The commission urges reasonable caseloads for judges, court attorneys and social workers. We want to ensure that children and parents have a meaningful voice in court. Judges make life-changing decisions about children's lives - where they will live and with whom. How can they rule in the best interest of each child if they are not able to hear the full story of each family?

Better collaboration between the courts and our partners. Many families who come before our bench are involved with more than one governmental agency at a time, yet these bureaucracies rarely communicate with one another. We must eliminate the barriers to sharing data and information that too often mean families receive different, even conflicting, direction and case plans. Lack of coordination between the courts and our partners means children sometimes remain in care longer than necessary.

Funding. The commission recognizes the fiscal realities in our state, and not all of our recommendations require new funding. But we believe no child or family should be denied critical services because of funding restraints. We call on the courts and our partner agencies to prioritize children in foster care in allocating services and resources. We urge reform of regulations that prevent agencies from pooling and coordinating funds for important services. And we call on the federal government to allow us to use federal foster care funds - currently restricted for use only after a child is removed from his or her family - for prevention services to support families in their homes.

In the end, we know that if our recommendations are successfully implemented, the state will save money. Fewer children will be placed in foster care or costly group homes, and the reforms will pay for themselves. But we have an obligation to act quickly. After all, time moves slowly in the eyes of a child. Removal from a parent is almost always a traumatic event, and even a month in a stranger's home can seem an eternity.

We believe the Blue Ribbon Commission recommendations are feasible and fiscally responsible. They can make a difference where it counts most - in the lives of children and their families.

Carlos R. Moreno, a state Supreme Court associate justice, is chair of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care. He is also a foster parent.

Kudos to these California colleges

2008-08-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

Riverside County, Cal State San Marcos, sign agreement to help foster kids at college
Glick, Julia. Press-Enterprise, Aug. 12, 2008.

Public colleges in the region are creating new programs to recruit and nurture former foster children, often left with little or no financial or family support once they reach 18 years old.

Cal State San Marcos signed an agreement Tuesday with Riverside County, guaranteeing admission to all qualified young people raised in the county's foster-care system.

"It truly is going to affect many, many people and change lives that may have had a rough beginning," County Supervisor Jeff Stone said before the memorandum of understanding was signed at the university's off-campus center in Temecula.

This is the first such agreement Riverside County has made with a college, but the county will pursue similar opportunities for foster children, said Susan Loew, Department of Public Social Services director.

Riverside County has more than 4,000 children in its foster-care system. About 550 of them are emancipated each year, usually at age 18.

Once foster children age out of the system, only about 10 percent attend higher education, and about 2 percent go on to graduate, Loew said.

Several colleges in the region, including Cal State San Marcos, have started programs that offer scholarships, mentoring, career counseling and other support to help former foster children once they have enrolled.

Cal State San Bernardino began its program in 2003. UC Riverside is currently raising money to establish similar services for its students.

Cal State's one-year-old program, known as ACE Scholar Services, will dovetail nicely with the new agreement, helping to support the Riverside County students after they are admitted, said university president Karen Haynes.

This year, the school received about 12,000 applications for about 1,500 spots, she said. The rapidly growing university has to turn away or wait-list some applicants even if they meet admission requirements, Haynes said.

But the school promises that former Riverside County foster children who meet Cal State requirements -- such as a high school diploma or GED, and qualifying test scores and grades -- will have a place at the university, she said.

"We are taking one barrier away. They do their part, meet requirements and we'll do ours," said the university's ACE Scholar director Jim Mickelson.

Karri Pierce, 19, a former foster child who lives in Riverside, was present when county and university officials signed the agreement Tuesday.

Pierce, who is a junior at Cal State San Bernardino, said the agreement was encouraging.

She lived with nine families and attended 17 schools during her 11 years in foster care, she said. She said she had to struggle to keep up academically through so many transitions. Also, some adults discouraged her from even considering higher education, she said.

She said she hopes the agreement and other efforts will make it easier for her younger siblings, still in the foster-care system, to follow in her footsteps.

"I am looking forward to a day when every single university offers foster children this kind of opportunity," she said.

Poor economy leads to shortage of foster homes

2008-08-12T18:01:00.002-07:00

As prices rise, Inland foster care families trim costs, refuse new children
Zimmerman, Janet. Press-Enterprise, Aug. 12, 2008.

Soaring gas and food prices have foster parents scrambling to make ends meet, and child welfare advocates warn that the faltering economy could exacerbate a shortage of homes for placing abused and neglected children.

Some families have moved into smaller homes or the stay-at-home parent has had to get a paying job, so they take fewer or no foster children, social workers said. The problem would be aggravated by a proposed 10 percent funding cut to balance the state budget, they said.

"The way the economy's been going, we have lost homes because the rate they've been receiving has not kept up with the cost of living," said Emmanuel Humphries, chief executive officer at Alpha Treatment Center's Foster Family Agency in Riverside. "It hurts them, it hurts the system, it hurts children they could have benefited."

Alpha, a private agency serving Southern California, lost three foster families in the past year because the breadwinner had to take a lesser-paying job and the families moved to smaller homes, he said.

Kathy and Robert Culviner lost their five-bedroom Menifee home and had to move to a three-bedroom rental in Aguanga this spring. The couple, who have three children of their own, stopped taking foster children. They were certified by Alpha to care for three children at a time.

Kathy Culviner said she had already cut her hours on her postal carrier route to have more time at home when her husband's business, refurbishing and installing office cubicles, declined and they couldn't make their house payment.

Christine Portales, left, and her husband, Jaime Portales, say they have started clipping grocery coupons, making more soups and stews and cooking from scratch to cut back on expenses. Some children arrived at their home with just the clothes on their backs.

"We would have kids in the home if the reimbursement were higher and it was not so much out of pocket," said Kathy Culviner, a product of the foster care system who has taken in about 50 children since she became licensed 11 years ago.

Depending on the ages of the child, the state pays $624 to $790 per month for those in private foster family agencies, which typically provide intensive treatment to children who might otherwise be placed in a group home. Licensed foster homes, for children with the fewest needs for support and services, receive $446 to $627 monthly.

The money is to cover room and board, extracurricular activities, toys, personal items and any other living expenses.

Some foster parents said they are barely hanging on.

Christine Portales, who cares for four children at her Colton home, borrowed $80 from a neighbor last month so she could get gas. She sometimes drives 130 miles a day, ferrying the children to their medical and therapy appointments, court-ordered visitation with their families and gymnastics lessons.

Foster father Jaime Portales says he is considering going to school to learn a new trade because of layoff fears.

Portales said she's also seen her grocery bill jump from $175 a week to $275.

"Because fuel prices have gone up, the utilities have gone up, the food has gone up, everything has gone up, except what you get for the kids," Portales said. "I figure I'm paying out of my pocket to take care of these kids."

The children are ages 10, 7, 6 weeks and 4 weeks. Three of them came to live with Portales within one week in June, and it takes a couple of months to receive the first state payment.

The three youngest children came with just the clothes on their back. The emergency clothing allowance Portales requested hasn't arrived, she said.

So Portales and her husband, Jaime, have cut back on expenses.

Christine Portales drives as much as 130 miles a day to take the children to medical and therapy appointments, and to family visitation.

She has started using grocery coupons, making more soups and stews and cooking from scratch. Jaime, afraid of getting laid off from his job as a cement contractor, is considering going to school to learn a new trade.

The Portaleses skipped a family trip to Disneyland because they couldn't afford it.

County social services officials said it's hard to determine just how much impact the economy has had on foster care and that any effects may not be reflected in statistics for a year or two.

In California, about 80,000 children are in the foster care system.

Fewer Homes Available
The number of licensed foster homes in California has declined over the past decade by about 3,000 homes and more than 18,000 potential placements, according to a report last year by the County Welfare Directors Association of California.

Sayori Baldwin, deputy director of Riverside County's Department of Public Social Services, said many factors contribute to the drop, including a recent emphasis on reuniting families and having children cared for by relatives, and getting them into adoptive homes more quickly.

In Riverside County, the number of children and the number of homes in use declined in all placement areas -- county foster care, private foster family agencies, group homes and with relatives -- in the first quarter of 2007 versus the same period in 2008, according to a quarterly report by the Children's Service Division.

In San Bernardino County, new foster family licenses dropped from the usual 25 or 30 to 19, said Norm Dollar, deputy director for foster family recruiting.

"There is a downturn. I think it's fair to speculate that people are making difficult economic decisions," Dollar said.

The cost of raising a child in California is more than $700 per month, said Regina Deihl, of Legal Advocates for Permanent Parenting in San Mateo. The group filed a lawsuit against the state over the foster-care reimbursement rate. The case is set for trial in federal district court in November.

Foster care providers got a 5 percent boost in funding in January, the first increase since 2001.

If more families are lost from the county systems, more children will be placed in more expensive or less appropriate settings, such as more costly private foster homes or group homes designed for children whose behavior is so out of control that foster parents can't handle them, Deihl said.

At the very least, it means fewer extras for children who already have done without, she said.

Operating a foster care system on the cheap hurts children and costs more later

2008-08-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

Child support: Youth-welfare advocates want more pay for foster parents
Rolland, David. San Diego CityBEAT.

Bob Fellmeth punctuates each word by rapping on the table with a clinched fist, as if hoping the sound or the vibration will jar loose some common sense.

“Eighty percent of non-kin adoptions are really coming from family foster care,” he pounds. “That’s why you want to put every kid in family foster care that you possibly can.”

Fellmeth, executive director of the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego, talks with passion, speed and authority on the subject of foster care. His Children’s Advocacy Institute, an offshoot of the center, has sued the directors of the state Department of Social Services and its Children and Family Services Division, alleging that the state’s meager reimbursements to foster parents violate the federal Child Welfare Act.

But to Fellmeth’s way of thinking, the low payments are simply the cause of a larger problem. By operating a foster-care system on the cheap, the state is pushing foster families out of the business of caring for abused or neglected children. His goal is to draw more families into the fold, which, he says, would better the chances of placing kids closer to their parents, siblings, schools and friends, decrease the number of children in group homes and increase the chances that more troubled kids will be adopted into healthy family environments.

Mary Butters is one of those foster parents who can’t keep afford to keep it up. The Oceanside grandmother has cared for 35 foster children during the past nine years, but she plans to get out within the next month. It’s just too expensive, she says. Butters currently has three children in her care—a 2-year-old, an 8-month-old and a 22-month-old who suffers from, among other maladies, spina bifida, a developmental birth defect that results in a malformed spinal cord—and she receives $446 from the state (through the county) per month for each of them. She reckons that she spends about $600 out of her own pocket each month to raise the children. The state pays for healthcare.

She’d continue if the payments were increased. “I like it. I really enjoy doing it. I really love the kids and everything, but I just can’t afford it anymore,” she says. “I can’t afford to support other people’s kids.”

Butters used to run a day-care business, and while she doesn’t find that as personally fulfilling as being a foster parent, she’s going to return to that line of work. Running day care, she has nights and weekends free and can make $160 a week per child. But, Butters says, “it’s not what I enjoy. I’d rather do foster care. When you do foster care, the kids are almost like your own. Day care’s not as enjoyable.”

As soon as she completes her sentence, the sound of a suddenly crying child can be heard in the background. She chuckles as she explains that her 3-year-old grandson, the man of the house, has just admonished one of the other kids not to tug on the curtains, prompting the sudden wail.

The concern about the low reimbursement rates is just part of a larger effort to reform the state’s foster system, which oversees care for roughly 80,000 children who’ve been, at least temporarily, removed from their homes and, for whatever reason, can’t be placed in the care of relatives.

A Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care later this month will present final recommendations for reform to the California Judicial Council, the policymaking body for the state’s court system. On Friday, Aug. 8, state Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Assembly member Jim Beall Jr. will hold a hearing in Los Angeles on “Fixing Foster Care: Challenges and Solutions.” Bass, long passionate about foster-care issues, did not respond to CityBeat’s request for an interview.

For Fellmeth and Christina Riehl, a staff attorney with the Children’s Advocacy Institute who’s also researching issues related to the deaths of abused and neglected children, the solution starts with money. Every time a foster parent like Mary Butters leaves the system, they say, it increases the possibility that a child will have to be placed in a group home, which child-welfare advocates say greatly lowers chances for success in adulthood.

A 2007 Children’s Advocacy Institute report called “They Deserve a Family” cites a study done by researchers at the University of Colorado at Denver that found that adults who spent time in group homes as adolescents are less accomplished educationally and vocationally than their counterparts who were placed in foster homes and report lower levels of happiness and self-esteem. Advocates attribute that to group homes’ inherent lack of family-style attachment.

It follows, then, that kids placed in group homes have a greater chance of living in poverty, ending up on the government dole and landing in prison, Riehl says, noting the state’s long-term socioeconomic interest in making sure there are enough foster families to go around.

But she and Fellmeth say there can be a quicker return on investing in higher monthly payments to foster parents.

Raising the payments by 40 percent, Fellmeth and Riehl say, would cost an additional $24 million per year, and since the federal government pays for half, that’s just a $12-million increase, which they argue is a drop in the bucket considering the state’s budget is $100 billion.

They calculate that the state would get that $12 million back if it were able to move 600 kids from group homes to foster homes—assuming there are that many in group homes who don’t require the sort of intensive social work for which such facilities were designed. Whereas the monthly cost of family foster homes is measured in the hundreds of dollars, the monthly cost of group-home placement is measured in the thousands. A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Social Services told CityBeat that the average monthly payment per kid in a group home is $5,490.

The state just isn’t being smart, Fellmeth says. “It’s like a math quiz that they’re flunking. It’s not even an algebra quiz. It’s third-grade level.”

CAI’s lawsuit, then, is a means to a much-coveted end. The suit says that federal law requires states that collect federal foster-care funds to cover the cost of food, clothing, shelter, daily supervision, school supplies, personal incidentals, liability insurance and travel for visitation with birth parents.

“California applied for and willingly accepts this federal funding, but does not cover the costs incurred by foster parents as required by federal law,” the suit alleges. “Even as costs to feed, cloth, house, and transport foster children have risen every year, California’s foster care payment rates have not kept pace.”

After a 5-percent increase that took effect on Jan. 1, the state now pays foster families between $446 and $627 per month, depending on the child’s age. State law requires the reimbursement rates to rise according to increases in the California Necessities Index (CNI)—but that’s “subject to the availability of funds,” state law says. The lawsuit charges that even though the CNI rose 24.9 percent between 2001 and 2007, the state did not adjust the foster-care rates during that time. Between 1989 and 2001, the rates were increased twice—a 12-percent bump in 1990 and a 6-percent hike in 1996.

The lawsuit goes on to note that the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that, nationwide, a family earning between $43,400 and $73,100 per year, spends an average of $962.64 per month raising a single child. A study by the University of Maryland School of Social Work recommends raising California’s rates to $685 for a 2-year-old, $785 for a 9-year-old and $861 for a 16-year-old.

“We have good evidence,” Fellmeth says. “We’ve established that the state has no idea what the costs are. They don’t care.”

A spokesperson from the state Attorney General’s office referred CityBeat to the Department of Social Services for comment and, just before press time, e-mailed a copy of the state’s legal response, which essentially denies the plaintiffs’ substantive charges. A spokesperson for DSS said his office’s policy is to withhold comment on matters involving litigation.

As concerned as Fellmeth is about kids while they’re in foster care, he’s equally mindful of the before and after.

“Nobody ever talks about prevention,” he says. “Nobody ever talks about parenting education. Nobody ever talks about unwed births,” which correlate strongly to the demand for foster care, he says, particularly in the African-American community. “Then you’ve got methamphetamine, which hits hard and is even a bigger cause of poverty,” he adds. “It destroys maternal / paternal instinct. Probably 60 to 70 percent of the cases we see in our clinic are methamphetamine-connected. It’s enormous.”

After foster care, when kids “age out” of the system, they’re pretty much cast adrift, and too many become homeless. CAI proposes that the state set up a “transition guardian” program. Under it, the state would give each foster kid roughly $50,000 to live on for five years while receiving vocational training or higher education. The money would be distributed monthly through a court-approved guardian, and each recipient would be required to check in with a judge, preferably one who’s been overseeing a youth’s care since the first custody hearing, every six months.

“If you believe in family values, these are your children. Literally. Legally, these are your children. This is not welfare to someone else’s kids,” Fellmeth says. “You’ve been paying for them already. You’ve raised them. These are your courts. This is your state. Now, are you going to follow through? Are you going to be a good, decent parent and follow through like other parents do? Or are you going to be a bad parent? That’s the proposition.”

When money is tight, kids should come first

2008-08-12T17:57:00.005-07:00

Our View: Foster care needs crucial
Cuts are going to be made, but we must demand that foster children are first in the process.
Merced Sun-Star, Aug. 6, 2008.

"If I have just one can of beans in the pantry, my kids are going to eat."

Ed Howard, a children's advocate who works with the University of San Diego School of Law, puts California's budget priorities in a simple way that reflects the thinking of all responsible parents. When money's tight at home, the kids come first.

And so it should be when we set priorities for spending our money in the lean, mean years -- like this one. Bluntly, adults are big people who can take care of themselves. Even children with parents have someone who will sacrifice for them.

But the neediest of the needy are the state's 77,000 foster children, who have no one but us to look out for their well-being. They don't have a union; they cannot vote; there are no prime-time commercials on TV pressuring legislators not to cut their funding.

When children are so mistreated that they must be removed from their homes and placed in foster care, it is us, the residents of California, who become their parents.

Morally, we cannot ignore their cries when they are being neglected, assaulted, exploited or abused by their parents. We must investigate their cases, help their parents to step up. If their folks will not or cannot do so, we must find loving foster care and then assume responsibility for food, clothing, shelter, health care and education.

Just in Merced County, there are 635 foster children who have been placed with families.

It is well documented that foster children often bear the scars of early maltreatment for a lifetime. They are more likely to suffer poor health; to experience relationship problems; to engage in alcohol and drug abuse, become pregnant as teens; to become juvenile delinquents, adult criminals and have abusive or violent behavior.

If we don't want to act out of compassion, look at pure numbers: We pay for those problems later. In the United States, Prevent Child Abuse America puts total annual costs of child abuse and neglect at more than $103.7 billion.

We are fortunate that awareness in the Legislature is rising; Assembly Speaker Karen Bass has been a tireless educator and advocate for foster children.

We're all tired of the steady parade of people yelling at the Legislature: Don't cut me! Not me! Not us! Through all the deal making, we must demand that the Legislature put foster children first.

La Cuna recruits Latino foster parents

2008-08-04T15:27:00.001-07:00

Latino children in foster care need Latino foster parents
Sáinz, Pablo Jaime. La Prensa San Diego, Aug. 1, 2008.

When he was chief of the San Diego Police Department, David Bejarano used to notice that many of the Latino criminals he helped put behind bars had one thing in common: They had been part of the foster care system.

That’s one of the reasons why today he’s president of the board of directors of La Cuna, Inc., a non-profit, independent foster family agency that helps place Latino children in stable homes with loving, caring Latino families.

“The statistics are against our Latino children in foster care,” said Bejarano, who, after retiring a few years ago, now owns a private security company. “If there are no Latino foster parents to take care of those children in those critical early years, those children will end up as criminals.”

In the following weeks La Cuna will have information sessions in English and in Spanish for people interested in becoming foster parents for Latino babies. The dates and places are the following,

· Saturday, August 9, 10:00 a.m. in English and 11:00 a.m. in Spanish.
Encinitas Community Library; 540 Cornish Drive, Encinitas, CA 92024

· Wednesday, August 13, 5:30 p.m. in English and 6:30 p.m. in Spanish.
Otay Mesa Public Library; 3003 Coronado Ave., San Diego, CA 92154

· Saturday, August 16, 10 a.m. in English and 11 a.m. in Spanish.
Weingart Library in City Heights; 3795 Fairmount Ave., San Diego , CA 9210

In almost three years and a half since it received its licensure, La Cuna has been able to secure a stable, safe place for some 66 Latino children that are part of the County of San Diego’s foster care system.

Those 66 children are equal to 66 human beings that will grow up to become good members of our society, said Rachel Humphreys, La Cuna executive director.

Humphreys founded La Cuna in 2003, and together with a group of concerned individuals, began working on the licensing requirement to become a foster family agency.

La Cuna, which means “the cradle,” in Spanish, was established to address the shortage of quality foster homes serving Latino babies and toddlers.

Its mission is “to develop programs that allow foster infants to grow up healthy and happy, and to evaluate the results and create best practices that will improve the lives of Hispanic foster infants throughout California.”

Humphreys said that Latino children face critical conditions in San Diego County’s foster care system.

“Right now we’re in desperate need for Latino foster parents for Latino babies. Latino babies are the silent crisis in foster care,” she said. “The biggest need for foster care is coming out of homes with Latino, monolingual families. We see a lot of domestic violence, poverty, abuse, home-lessness.”

La Cuna is not an adoption agency. Each child placed with a La Cuna family has a reunification plan with his or her biological parents. Unless it puts the child at risk, agency staff strongly support that plan. The social workers coach each foster parent on ways to support the potential reunification process.

La Cuna is always recruiting Latinos for foster parents to provide safe, stable, and loving homes to Latino foster infants and toddlers. The requirements are not as tough as many people think, Humphreys said.

“We need to find quality families, of one, couples, grandparents, they don’t have to be wealthy, they just need a lot of ganas to take care of a child. We need parents that are committed.”

La Cuna has developed a foster parent training program to address the cultural and linguistic needs of Latino babies.

Humphreys said that La Cuna’s success rate, which stands for placing children in stable homes, is at 96 percent.

“One person can make a big difference in the lives of these Latino children,” Bejarano said.

Humphreys has a message for those Latino families that have been exploring the idea of fostering Latino children:

“At the end of day, there’s no better compliment than the gift of a little child saying to you, ‘Thank you. I love you.’ Here in the county we have hundreds of Latino children who are healthy and precious and who are willing to put their trust in you. Remember, they’re waiting for you.”

For more information on La Cuna and its programs, call (619) 521-9900 or visit www.lacuna.org
La Cuna is located at 3180 University Ave., Suite 260, in San Diego.

UCR Guardian Scholars should exist in EVERY state, not just a few

2008-08-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

UCR to Aid Former Foster Youth
Aug. 21 fund-raiser will help launch the Guardian Scholars program this fall
Miller, Bettye. Aug. 1, 2008.

RIVERSIDE - Youth who have aged out of the foster-care system face numerous obstacles to earning a college degree, not the least of which are the lack of a family support system and the need for year-round housing.

UC Riverside is hoping to ease the transition for qualifying students with the launch this fall of UCR Guardian Scholars, a nationwide program that provides scholarships, life coaching, mentors, housing and personalized attention to emancipated youth.

"These kids have no safety net, and they have disproportionate needs," said Tuppett Yates, assistant professor of psychology who is leading the UC Riverside effort.

UCR Guardian Scholars will host a fund-raiser on Thursday, Aug. 21, from 6 to 9 p.m. on campus at The Barn. Drinks and food will be available for purchase, and the cover band Crash Dance will perform. Admission is free, although donations are appreciated, Yates said.

The program needs to raise at least $20,000 the first year to cover the cost of summer housing, scholarships, books, food and emergencies, said Jan Opdyke, executive director of scholarships and alumni reunions. An anonymous donor has committed to a challenge gift of $10,000 to launch the program, she said.

"This is a most generous gift in support of these students," Opdyke said. "Every dollar given to Guardian Scholars will be matched by this donor, dollar for dollar."

Among the 3,800 freshmen entering UCR this fall are 55 students who have identified themselves as having a history of foster care, Yates said. Not all are eligible for UCR Guardian Scholars, which specifically targets youth who are emancipating from the system and have little social, emotional or material support.

About 70 percent of foster youth say they want a college education, but only 10 percent enroll, and only 1 percent earn a degree, Yates said. Nationally, about 70 percent of students who participate in the Guardian Scholars program graduate in four years.

Most foster youth in the Inland area don't know that attending UCR is an option, Yates said. "It should be," she said. "A lot of these kids are ready, they’re talented and they’re strong."

The psychology professor, who studies risk and resilience among high-risk youth, said UCR Guardian Scholars will serve a total of about 40 students, starting with about four students this fall.

"These are kids with fragmented histories who don't need a fragmented education," Yates said. "UCR Guardian Scholars will offer them a comprehensive and cohesive educational experience to help them reach their potential."

In California, about two-thirds of youth leaving foster care do so without a place to live. Studies show that foster youth with multiple placements are five to 10 times more likely to become involved with the juvenile justice system than youth in the general population, Yates said. One-fourth of former foster youth will be incarcerated within the first two years after aging out of the system, she said.

Guardian Scholars started in 1998 at California State University, Fullerton and operates at more than 20 universities in California, Washington, Indiana, Colorado and Massachusetts.

More than 40 faculty and staff are involved in developing the UCR program, with key leadership positions held by Yates; Audrey Pusey, assistant director for residence life; Katina Napper, director of academic personnel; Louise Jones, Cal Grant coordinator; and Cynthia Moon, a graduate student in psychology who is a head resident in a campus residence hall.

For more information contact Yates at (951) 827-4991 or tuppett.yates@ucr.edu. To make a contribution, make checks payable to UC Foundation, GS Foster Youth Fund, and send them to Jan Opdyke at 1150 University Ave., 110A Highlander Hall, Riverside, CA 92521, or contact her at jopdyke@ucr.edu, (951) 827-5676.

Foster care reunification and reentry

2008-08-04T15:24:00.000-07:00

Changing Foster Care
Tamsen, Trevor. News10.net

Sacramento, CA - Thursday morning Speaker Bass and Assemblymember Beall are holding a special hearings on the best way to fix California's foster care system.

There are 74,000 children who live away from their families and communities because of abuse or neglect at home.

Fifty percent of the children who enter foster care are under five years old.

Eighty-three percent of foster youth will be held back by the 3rd grade.

While nearly 50 percent will reunify with their families, too many will return to foster care because of the lack of an available, long-term stable funding stream to provide supportive services.

California is failing the federal performance measure related to repeat visits to foster care.

Far too many children are trapped in the system and remain in foster care until they "age out" at 18.

With no place to go, one in four of the youths who age out is incarcerated within two years of leaving foster care, one in five becomes homeless at some time after age 18, only 46% complete high school, a mere 3 % earn a college degree, and just 51% of aged out foster care youths have a job at age 21.

This mornings hearings will feature testimonies from foster youth; community organizations, social workers and advocates on challenges and solutions to strengthening California's Foster Care System.

California Youth Connection definitely deserves this award

2008-08-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

Ex-foster kids use experience to help system
Fisher, Patty. Mercury News, July 30, 2008.

Lobbyists and "special interests" have a pretty bad reputation these days. Politicians do their best to distance themselves from them, at least in public.

But not all lobbyists are out to get tax breaks for bigwigs. And some special-interest groups really are special.

That's why I was delighted to learn that the California Youth Connection, an organization that has been banging on doors in Sacramento for 20 years, demanding reform for the foster care system, is receiving a prestigious award today from the James Irvine Foundation. The 2008 Leadership Award recognizes Californians who have successfully tackled some of the state's most critical challenges, from poverty to health care to the environment.

Experience and reform
What's particularly special about CYC is that it's run for and by young people who grew up in foster care. They know what it's like to move from foster home to foster home, never staying in one school long enough to earn credits. Because of the state's outdated bureaucracy, they had to get court permission to go to slumber parties or get a driver's license. At age 18, they were tossed into the world without money or a place to live.

By telling their personal stories to lawmakers, reporters and community groups, former foster kids persuaded the state to reform the system so the next generation of kids taken from abusive parents would have it a bit easier.

CYC has helped pass 14 major pieces of legislation providing foster youth with resources for college, job training, affordable housing and health care.

Today CYC (www.calyouthconn.org) has about 500 active members across the state. It has been so successful that it's about to go national. A new organization, called the National Foster Youth Action Network, will replicate its training and advocacy efforts in other states.

Tiffany Johnson was a teenager in Santa Clara County foster care 16 years ago when she joined CYC.

"I had three younger sisters growing up in the system," she said. "My sole reason for getting involved was to improve things for them."

Largely through the efforts of CYC, California now requires social workers to make sure siblings in foster care visit one another and can stay in touch if they are adopted by separate families. That was important to Johnson.

Eventually she moved from volunteer to employee. When I met her eight years ago, she was the 24-year-old communications director. She was always so friendly and helpful, so obviously passionate about her cause.

Moving up
Three years ago she was named associate director of the organization, which is based in San Francisco. She will share the Leadership Award with executive director Janet Knipe and board president Tonya Hightower. It comes with a $125,000 grant, which the organization can put to good use.

"It was pretty exciting to be acknowledged for the work we do because it's hard work," Johnson said.

Indeed. Knocking on doors in Sacramento, endlessly fundraising, organizing CYC chapters throughout the state, training young people in public policy and advocacy. Always pushing, pushing for reform.

I asked her how her younger sisters were doing. Has her work at CYC really made a difference in their lives?

"Oh yes!" she said. She remembers when she turned 18 and had to go to a county office and fill out a packet full of forms to get health insurance through MediCal.

"It was supposed to be a seamless transition but, of course, it wasn't."

CYC lobbied the state to cut the red tape. So when Johnson's little sister turned 18, she got a letter in the mail saying she was covered. Simple as that.

"I thought: Wow. It worked. Imagine that."

Bill entitles foster youth to speak at court hearings

2008-08-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

Foster child hearings rules change
Kids can address court; county already allows children to do so
Wilson, Kathleen. Ventura County Star, July 26, 2008.

Foster children will have the right to speak at court hearings determining their fate under a bill signed this week by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Current law entitles children to appear at the proceedings, but the new legislation requires that they be allowed to address the court and take part. If foster youths 10 or older haven't been properly notified, the judge must "continue," or postpone, the hearing.

Officials said Friday the law would not make any difference in Ventura County, because it's already the practice in the county's juvenile dependency court.

Judge Tari Cody has made children's participation "an absolute priority," said Jane Reimann, program manager in the county Human Services Agency. "She is very sensitive to kids having a voice."

If a child is absent from a hearing where decisions are being made about the child's welfare, Cody requires social workers to report the reason, Reimann said.

"If the child is not appearing, she wants to know why," Reimann said. "If the reason doesn't meet her satisfaction, she will continue the hearing."

Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, sponsored the bill in reaction to a series of articles this year in the San Jose Mercury News.

The series found judges were issuing "life-altering rulings without ever seeing the children whose futures were being decided."

The law Jones proposed, AB3051, passed unanimously. Schwarzenegger signed it Monday.

In Ventura County, judges continue hearings for children even if they're under 10, Reimann said.

Some foster kids want nothing to do with the court hearings, but those who do bring a point of view the experts can't, child welfare officials said.

By getting involved, they also can begin to connect to a court system that seems foreign, Assistant County Counsel Oliver Hess said.

"The only way to connect them is to bring them into it," said Hess, who represents the county Human Services Agency in abuse and neglect cases.

Raquel Montes, president of a Ventura County group advocating for foster children, called the legislation "a huge step."

Montes, who was in foster care herself for 10 years, said youths in the system often feel powerless. "Almost all along in foster care, they have no voice," said Montes, 23, of Ventura.

The law takes effect Jan. 1.

Emancipation leading only to desolation

2008-08-04T15:14:00.000-07:00

Editorial: Fostering opportunity
San Francisco Chronicle, July 29, 2008.

Social workers and the courts use the word "emancipation" to describe what happens to the 24,000 foster youths who turn 18 in the United States every year.

But for far too many, the transition to life on their own feels less like emancipation and more like desolation. Their "outcomes" - to coin another phrase from the social-welfare bureaucracy - are a national tragedy. "Emancipated" foster youth are disproportionately represented in homeless shelter and in prisons. A former foster youth is far more likely to end up on public assistance than to earn a college degree.

California legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have demonstrated their concern for the foster youth and a recognition of the deficiencies in the system by enacting a series of reforms to enhance the level of resources and accountability in this state. Some of those bills were aimed at helping foster youth in the transition to independent living - and various nonprofit groups do a heroic job of helping young people who "age out" of the system.

However, one of the continuing barriers for these children - our children, our collective responsibility - is that federal support ends at age 18.

The Fostering Connections to Success Act, co-sponsored by Rep. Jerry Weller, R-Ill., and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., would extend federal foster-care payments to age 21 for youths who are pursuing a degree or starting a career. Research has shown that the benefits of remaining in foster care past 18 include a tripling of the likelihood of an emancipated youth going to college.

This House-passed measure (HR6307), which is scheduled to face its first major Senate test in the Finance Committee this week, also for the first time allows federal support for blood relatives who assume legal guardianship of foster children. It also paves the way for federal funds to be used for the training of workers from private agencies and nonprofit groups that are providing foster-care services to a state.

A society has both a moral responsibility and a pragmatic motivation to ensure that its most vulnerable children have a real opportunity to make the transition to a healthy, productive adulthood. The federal government can do its part through the passage of HR6307.

Close to 30,000 foster care youth in LA

2008-08-04T15:08:00.001-07:00

Finally, a foster care fix
Legislation before Congress could end years of inattention to reform
Krinsky, Miriam. Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2008.

The child-welfare system is "broken." This harsh indictment has been a constant drumbeat in L.A.-area headlines for years. In the last few months, the tragedy of a 5-year-old subjected to horrifying mistreatment grabbed the public's attention. The pendulum started to swing, and demands mounted to address the crisis.

But there are underlying challenges facing struggling families and overwhelmed child-welfare professionals that headlines and an ever-swinging pendulum don't and can't address. Consider just one part of the system: foster care. Los Angeles is home to nearly 30,000 foster youth. We collectively commit to watch over these children when we bring them into foster care, yet too many struggle mightily with the most basic of needs.

California's foster-care paradox
Foster youth drift from placement to placement, lack basic health care, fail to graduate from high school and have no stable adult anchor. When they "age out" of foster care, most at the ill-prepared age of 18, they often find themselves homeless, unemployed and on the threshold of our justice system.

Although passionate social workers, judges and advocates are dedicated to improving the plight of these vulnerable young people, they battle against inadequate support and inordinately high caseloads -- California dependency judges carry an average of 1,000 cases, and the state's child-welfare workers have caseloads twice the national standard.

All of us pay the resulting price -- in the loss of human potential and the inherent costs associated with generations of youth unprepared for adulthood.

So why aren't we doing more than simply reacting to the tragedy of the moment?

In California, there are positive signs of action. The California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care, launched in 2006, will submit its final recommendations for reform next month, including changes in how juvenile courts do business: implementing attorney and judicial caseload standards, ensuring a meaningful voice in court for all participants and implementing court performance measures. The new state Child Welfare Council, with leaders from all three branches of government, is crafting an agenda to tackle lack of coordination, inadequate information sharing and disjointed leadership among the government agencies accountable for children in care. And our new state legislative leaders -- Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Senate President Pro Tem-elect Darrell Steinberg -- are long-standing champions of foster care reform.

Yet only limited progress is possible absent federal engagement. Federal money is the largest source of foster care funding, and federal laws control a large number of foster care practices. But for the last decade, federal foster care reform has been nearly nonexistent, with bipartisan bickering blocking visionary reform.

Finally, that's beginning to change.

Last month, the House of Representatives unanimously passed the Fostering Connections to Success Act (H.R. 6307) -- the most important child-welfare legislation considered by Congress in a long time.

This legislation addresses some of the most crucial concerns facing foster youth, and, significantly, it would promote proven reforms. It allows states for the first time to use federal money to support foster children until age 21. A handful of states have experimented with that policy, so we know that extending care to the 24,000 youths who otherwise would "age out" each year would enable a much higher percentage of foster kids to become productive members of our communities. Similarly, the proposed law would, for the first time, provide federal financial support for relatives assuming legal guardianship of foster children they have been raising, thereby promoting an established, cost-effective alternative to foster care.

This landmark legislation also would mandate other key improvements in the care of foster children, including creating new federal requirements for educational stability, improving oversight of healthcare of foster children, mandating efforts to place siblings together and increasing federal foster care and adoption aid for tribal governments.

In the coming week, the Senate will consider this legislative package. Hopefully, it will keep alive the chance for real change in the lives of our most at-risk children.

Let's not wait for the next tragedy or scandal. The time to act -- rather than defensively react -- is now. Our most vulnerable children deserve to be more than another dismal headline.

Miriam Aroni Krinsky is a member of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care and serves as a lecturer at the UCLA School of Public Affairs.

Assembly Bill 3051 - Hooray for SF Chronicle!

2008-08-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

Op-Ed: Governor signs foster care bills
San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 2008.

What we said: "Assembly Bill 3051 is the type of sensible, compassionate bill we wish we'd see coming out of Sacramento more often: It would ensure that foster children over the age of 10 can participate in the dependency court hearings that affect every aspect of their lives. So why is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hesitating to sign it?"
- Editorial, July 17, 2008

What happened: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB3051, despite concerns from his Department of Finance that the implementation could cost $500,000. In a statement, he said he's still concerned that there may be some potential costs to the legislation that the process failed to flag - and, if so, would have to be absorbed by counties "utilizing current resources."

Even in tight fiscal times, however, a foster child deserves the right to attend court hearings that determine his or her destiny.

What's next: AB3051 is one of several significant foster care bills that the governor has signed during this session.

Others include:
- AB1331, which allows disabled foster youths to apply for SSI benefits in the months before they turn 18
- AB2483, which requires minor parents who are placing their children into foster care to consult with counsel so that they know what their parental rights are
- AB2310, which requires county welfare departments to give foster children who are aging out of the system any known family photographs and information about their Indian heritage.

All of these bills carry little or no cost to the state but help foster children inch toward a better experience in the system. Going forward in these times of budget deficits, legislators will have to keep being creative and compassionate.

What you can do: E-mail Schwarzenegger at governor@governor.ca.gov

What dreams do we have for OUR (foster) children?

2008-08-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

Open Forum: On Government's Social Responsibilities
Parental obligation: Congress must step up to help foster youth
Burton, John and Miriam Aroni Krinsky. San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 2008.

What dreams do we have for our children? What future do we seek to chart for them? What supports do we endeavor to give them as they transition into adulthood?

When we address these straightforward questions for our own children, all of the complexities of reforming the nation's beleaguered foster care system disappear. The answers are self-evident. We want our children to have a good education, a stable, loving environment, and the opportunity to grow into healthy young adults.

Our nation's foster children deserve no less.

While millions of Americans obsess about gas prices, baseball rankings, or the latest celebrity scandal, our most vulnerable children have taken a back seat. Fortunately, there is still time for Congress to take action on pending legislation and make a real difference in the lives of America's foster youth - by extending foster care support to age 21.

Every year, more than 24,000 young Americans "age out" from the foster care system when they turn 18 and are no longer eligible for assistance. Without the anchor of a family, foster youth do not fare well as young adults, disproportionately joining the ranks of the homeless, incarcerated and unemployed.

Supporting foster youth until age 21 isn't just compassionate, it makes sense. A recent study compared outcomes for youth who remained in foster care past age 18 with those who left on their 18th birthday. The results were conclusive; youth who are allowed to remain in foster care beyond age 18 were:

-- Two times more likely to be working toward completion of a high school diploma.

-- Three times more likely to be in college.

-- More likely to be insured and have better mental health.

-- Far less likely to be victims or perpetrators of crime and violence.

Extending foster care support until age 21 also prevents crime and reduces the costs of law enforcement, including the expense of incarceration. A 2007 study from the University of Chicago concluded that former foster youth are 10 times more likely to be arrested than youth of the same age, race and sex. According to the California Budget Project, the associated costs of these prosecutions are considerable, with the per capita cost of adult incarceration in California in 2006 reaching $43,287 annually.

Given the ongoing crisis in the California prison system, supporting foster youth until 21 is both a smart and humane way to stem the flow of youth into the adult criminal system.

The pending federal legislative package would also increase federal support for family members who take in abused or neglected relatives, improve oversight of foster youth health and education, and enhance connections among siblings. Each of these approaches has a measurable positive impact on the lives of foster youth and the people who take care of them. And these reforms are cost neutral - paid for through anti-fraud and other good government provisions that have bipartisan support.

The question now is whether the needs of our nation's most vulnerable children can capture the attention of Congress.

Representatives Jim McDermott, D-Wash., and Jerry Weller, R-Ill., have introduced the Fostering Connections to Success Act, which passed unanimously out of the House on June 24 and will enact each of the important changes outlined above. Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has also introduced major child welfare legislation in the Senate, the Improved Adoption Incentives and Relative Guardianship Support Act of 2008.

The Senate Finance Committee will consider these bills before the end of July. The Senate should move these reforms forward and promote a new federal landscape that supports foster youth as they transition to adulthood.

Without action by Congress, these reforms simply will not happen. For every 50 cents California's states and counties contribute to the foster care system, the federal government pays the other half.

We cannot have two standards: one for our own children and another for the 500,000 children and youth in foster care. All Americans, Republican and Democrat, agree that children are our most precious resource and deserve our protection, assistance and guidance. We urge the Senate to deliver on that vision and pass pending legislation that would extend support for youth in foster care to age 21.

John Burton, former president pro tem of the state Senate, now chairs the John Burton Foundation for Children Without Homes. Miriam Aroni Krinsky is a member of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Foster Care.