By Claudia Mendez on March 9, 2010
My name is Claudia Mendez and I am one of HEY’s EYAB the reason for my message today is to share in my point of view how March 4th Day of Action and Strike in Defense of Public Education – California turned out. As you may have seen on the news students, parents, faculty and supporters of public education came together on March 4th to speak up against the cuts that have been done to public education in California.
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Posted in Featured Content, Trends To Watch, Upcoming Events
By Dana Mandolesi on March 4, 2010
During the fourth and final meeting of San Francisco’s Human Services System Improvement Plan Core Team Meeting, we spoke in depth about youth in probation. The Juvenile Probation Department (JPD) presented statistics and numbers of youth who were referred to the probation department and those resulting in a petition being filed in 2008. In 2008, the latest year they presented, there were 3446 youth referred to JPD but only 1607 actually had petitions filed against them. Once a youth’s petition is sustained – they are booked – meaning they are placed in probation with their families, in out of home (foster care) placements, or sent to a facility. The majority of youth do not get placed in juvenile hall, Log Cabin Ranch or more serious facilities.
The purpose of today’s discussion was to present initiatives currently underway and planned for the future that would encourage the least restrictive placements for youth on probation. Over the course of the last three years, JPD had several peer and expert evaluations and realized that least restrictive placements are the most rehabilitative for the youth and their families. Lower level placements also save money for San Francisco County, making this option beneficial for all parties.
However, in order to keep communities safe, while also encouraging accountability in youth – and showing them that indeed consequences exist – intentional decision making processes must be implemented. Therefore JPD is currently working with Child Welfare Services (CWS) to utilize and learn from programs that work. Because youth on probation and youth in foster care are paid for by the same government funding, they should always have access to the same services. Unfortunately, because of a fractured system, and various other psychological divisions between the youth, the departments, and the rationale that placed them in care, they may not receive equal services. Both JPD and CWS acknowledge that this disparity needs to be equalized and have multiple initiatives to support and rehabilitate youth and their families.
This meeting concluded the System Improvement Plan’s Core Team Meeting Series. Once the final recommendation is released, HEY will develop a simple summary to include as a HEY Trend in our newsletter and website.
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Posted in Featured Content, Local Foster Care Policy Updates, Trends To Watch | Tagged deliquency, jpd, log cabin ranch, placements, probation, san francisco, sip, system improvement plan, youth
By Dana Mandolesi on February 22, 2010
Celebrate Public health with ILSP community roundtable kickoff. Wednesday, March 17, 2010, Horace Mann Middle school, 3351 23rd Street, San Francisco, CA 94110, Time: 4 pm-7 pm
Includes: BBQ DINNER, Free condoms and goodies, free HIV testing, discussions and other resources.
Click here for the full flyer
For more information contact Timika at 415 934 4203 or tjackson@jcyc.org
106.1 KMEL, ~Y.U.T.H.E ~Bay View Mental Health ~Iris Center ~New generation health center ~
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Posted in Featured Content, Upcoming Events | Tagged foster youth, health, health fair
By admin on February 18, 2010
The AHWG hosts the 7th Annual Teen/Young Adult Provider Gathering on Friday, April 16, 2010 from 9:30-11:30am. The 2010 focus is adolescent sexuality. Click on the article title for the flyer with full details.
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Posted in Featured Content, Upcoming Events | Tagged adolescent, health, san francisco, sexual health, sexuality, young adult
By Claudia Mendez on February 9, 2010
On January 13, 2010 the HEY team facilitated a training for Jewish Vocational Services, called Best Practices for Employers Working with Foster Youth. The goal for this training was to help the participants to see that despite facing complex barriers, foster youth are able to achieve and succeed in the workplace when matched with supervisors who set realistic expectations and provide supports that allow for a learning curve.
In order to accomplish our goal some of the different topics we talked about were: the general overview of the foster care system in SF County, common challenges faced by foster youth and strategies for successfully working with foster youth in the workplace.
Personally I was touched by seeing how many different service providers wanted to learn about foster youth and the challenges they face so, that they can try to give them more support. I was extremely happy to be able to assist Leslie Brown, HEY’s Program Coordinator, with this training because I did not only be able to share my experience as a former foster youth with the participants, but also was able to grow in a professional level. Noticing how Leslie created and facilitated her training gave me ideas of how I can become a better facilitator myself.
The outcome turned out pretty good. The participants were happy with what they learned and were interested in attending more HEY training soon.
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Posted in EYAB Projects, Featured Content, Trends To Watch
By Claudia Mendez on February 9, 2010
What I love about being part of HEY’s family is that we do not only work together, but also support one another. The holidays are times when I become really lonely because many of my loved ones leave to go visit their family, but this year I felt that did have a group of friends to look to when times got hard. The EYAB team and friends decided to go ice-skating and have fun. Personally I had never been ice-skating or anything similar to it, so I kept on falling. Being able to accomplish a long time goal with great friends was one of the best experiences of my life. Thanks to experiences like these this winter break I did not feel alone, instead I realized that I am surrounded by wonderful people. I know that after my internship is over with Honoring Emancipated Youth that I still will be able to count on the great friends I have made at HEY.
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Posted in EYAB Projects, Featured Content, Trends To Watch | Tagged eyab, fun, HEY
By Dana Mandolesi on February 4, 2010
[from Dana Mandolesi, HEY Project Manager]
As part of the requirements to receive federal funding for foster care and supportive services for families, Child Welfare Services (CWS) must complete a tri-annual System Improvement Plan (SIP). The SIP consists of a multi-tiered review and analysis of current practices and a commitment to implementing new evidence based practices and phasing out older initiatives that do not have proven successes in serving foster youth and their families.
As part of HEY’s work to help connect and convene systems, I attend the Core Team Meetings for the SIP. The Core Team is made mostly of people that work for CWS, but community partners, contracted agencies and other concerned community members are invited to attend. At today’s meeting, the Team focused on one specific issue that San Francisco needs to improve: timeliness to adoption and concurrent planning.
When trying to improve ‘Timeliness to Adoption’, CWS means they are trying to reduce how long a youth is in foster care before they are adopted. This is a difficult statistic, because San Francisco, like most places, primarily is interested in reunifying youth with their own parents – letting them go home. However, for some youth, reunification is not an option, and adoption is the second best choice. The problem arises when CWS focuses all their energy of reunifying a youth with their parents – but that reunification doesn’t work out. The youth is left in some type of foster care for all that time, and then the process has to start over to find a suitable adoptive family.
As a response to this problem, CWS wants to improve ‘concurrent planning’. Concurrent planning means planning for two case scenarios at the same time: possible reunification and possible adoption. This way if the youth cannot reunify with their parents, they can immediately transfer their focus to the already developed adoptive plan – and the youth can leave foster care much quicker.
During the Team meeting today, CWS talked about developing milestones to implementing many initiatives to support concurrent planning and successful reunifications. First, every program and initiative needs to have good and better data reporting, so the results are recorded appropriately. Second, San Francisco does have some programs that have shown to reduce time in foster care, and those need to be systematized and supported throughout all cases and workers in CWS. Third, initiatives and practices that have evidence to support their usefulness or success rates should be discontinued and replaced with practices that have been proven to improve outcomes for adoption and reunification.
Today, the Core Team talked about multiple existing initiatives that work to improve timeliness to adoption, and new evidence practices they are considering implementing. Among some current promising and successful strategies were:
- A program to recruit and train potential foster and adoptive families through the San Francisco Unified School District
- The development of materials and brochures about services for families pre- and post-adoption
- Training foster parents to be mentors for biological parents
- Reducing reassignment of Child Welfare Workers
Among some new programs that have proven success records in other places were:
The Core Team meets again in 2 weeks, and the topic will be ‘Reentries into Foster Care’. Stay tuned for an update.
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Posted in Featured Content, Local Foster Care Policy Updates, Trends To Watch | Tagged adoption, child welfare services, cws, data, evidence based practices, foster care, foster youth, reunification, san francisco, sip, system improvement plan
By admin on February 1, 2010
[note from Amy Lemley, of the John Burton Foundation for Children Without Homes 1/28/09]
AB 12 passed in the Assembly yesterday with a final vote of 72 to 0! The bill had strong bipartisan support, with both Democrats and Republicans speaking on the floor about how AB 12 will better support youth in their transition from foster care.
Of considerable help was yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, which ran an editorial urging the Legislature to pass AB 12. This is the second editorial by the paper in support of extending foster care to age 21. It states, “With a $20-billion budget gap, California needs every penny it can get from the federal government, and now that the child welfare money actually can be spent on helping youth rather than supporting outmoded programs, the state must grab it. Too often, rules limit the usefulness of federal money. Not this time. AB 12 allows the state to multiply the power of its dollars many times over. Lawmakers should not miss the rare chance to simultaneously save money and help Californians in need.”
To read the full editorial in the LA Times, follow this LINK.
Thank you to everyone who has worked to get AB 12 this far. After our request for letters last week, I received confirmation from over 100 people that they had written to their member of Assembly, urging them to vote for AB 12. Your voices were clearly heard.
From here, AB 12 moves with bipartisan support into the State Senate, where it will next be heard in the Senate Human Services Committee and if passed, onto the Senate Appropriations Committee. If our efforts are successful, it will then move onto Governor Schwarzenegger for his signature.
Thank you again for your deep commitment to children and youth in California’s foster care system.
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Posted in Featured Content, State Foster Care Policy Updates | Tagged AB 12, assembly, budget, california, federal money, foster care
