Browse: Home / Foster Care Updates / State Foster Care Policy Updates

    State Foster Care Policy Updates

    HEY loves California College Pathways!

    By Dana Mandolesi on March 15, 2010

    HEY supports our partner, California College Pathways!

    Full Story »

    Posted in | Tagged , | Leave a response

    Judge Rules in Favor of California Alliance: State Must Increase Payments to Group Homes

    By admin on February 28, 2010

    [from the Foster Youth Alliance, FYA Bulletin 2/24/10]

    The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the far-reaching decision handed down by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel on Monday in the case brought by The California Alliance of Child & Family Services. The judge ruled that the state must increase by 32% the rates it pays group homes caring for foster youth. The Courthouse News Service also covered the ruling, quoting Carroll Schroeder, Executive Director of the California Alliance: “Judge Patel’s ruling means that kids who need the level of care provided by group homes will finally receive the funding for care they need and deserve.”

    Full Story »

    Posted in | Tagged , , , , | Leave a response

    New Resource: Online Clearinghouse for State Child Welfare Policies

    By Dana Mandolesi on February 28, 2010

    New Online Clearinghouse for State Child Welfare Policies

    Child Trends, with support from Casey Family Programs, launches the State Child Welfare Policy Database to provide information on child welfare laws, procedures, and agency guidance for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Database can help elected officials, administrators, advocates, practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders keep up to date with the policies that protect our nation’s most vulnerable children.

    The site can be navigated by state or by topic. You can learn about your state’s expenditures on child welfare services, policies for relatives and “kin” caring for children involved in the child welfare system, benefits and services provided to foster youth after age 18, and much more. In addition to the traditional web version, the site is designed to be compatible with your mobile device, allowing for easily accessible information on the go.

    For more information about child welfare resources available at Child Trends, please visit: www.childtrends.org/childwelfare. Through program evaluations, data analysis, policy surveys, literature reviews, and research syntheses, we seek to inform policy makers and frontline practice.

    Full Story »

    Posted in , | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a response

    SB 543 Facts: Mental Health Services for At-Risk Youth

    By admin on February 23, 2010

    BACKGROUND
    In 2004, the voters of California passed Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), which provides increased funding, personnel and other resources to support county mental health programs and monitor progress toward statewide goals for children, transition age youth, adults, older adults and families. This Act imposes a 1% income tax on personal income in excess of $1 million.

    Community stakeholder groups consisting of consumers, families, and service organizations have met to identify barriers to consumer populations not only for MHSA programs, but also for all mental health services. SB 543 addresses the identified barrier of parental consent for at-risk youth seeking mental health services. SB 543 also increases accessibility to mental health programs, particularly prevention and early intervention programs, which have better results, reduce future costs and are less expensive to administer.
    SB 543 SUMMARY

    SB 543 helps ensure that youth do not have to wait until their mental health situations become dire and their safety is compromised by suicide, substance abuse or violence to receive services. The legislation would allow youth ages 12 to 17 to consent to mental health treatment or counseling when the attending professional believes the youth is mature enough to participate intelligently in the services or when the youth would present a danger of serious physical or mental harm to self or others without the services. Additionally, SB 543 still requires the involvement of the minor’s parent or guardian if or when the attending professional determines parental involvement is appropriate.

    Click on article title for the full story.

    Full Story »

    Posted in | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a response

    Former Foster Youth Are in Danger of Losing California Housing Support Services

    By Dana Mandolesi on February 10, 2010

    The article below quotes some of HEY’s advocacy partners in their fight to keep transitional housing funds for former foster youth. HEY is closely involved with many Guardian and Renaissance Scholars programs, and strongly urges our supporters to contact your representatives to show our support for this program. According to Amy Lemley of the John Burton Foundation, for every $1.00 spent on housing services for former foster youth, there is over a $2.00 savings on costs for future services.

    -Dana Mandolesi
    HEY Project Manager

    [from the article Foster youth housing needs federal bailout, Posted on 27 January 2010 by Angela Penny, The Guardsman, By Angela Penny, The Guardsman]

    Former City College Guardian Scholar Tyrone Botelho, who is now a junior at U.C. Berkeley, speaks at a Guardian Scholar event.

    Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed 2010-2011 budget includes a list of services that will be eliminated unless the state receives a $6.9 billion bailout from the federal government. According to the governor’s Web site, this includes $36 million for funding the Transitional Housing Placement Plus Program, a state program for emancipated foster youth that provides them with transitional housing after they turn 18.
    Loss of this funding would have a direct negative impact on the lives of City College’s 150 to 175 Guardian Scholar students.

    The City College Guardian Scholars program is a student retention service launched in January 2008. The program was developed in response to the Chaffee Educational Training Voucher initiative, a national program that provides grants to college students who have former foster youth status. A need was recognized for a program that coordinated all of the different services available to these students so that they can focus on their education.

    “The Guardian Scholars program coordinates a specific set of survival services so that the students can focus on school,” said Michael McPartlin, special services manager at City College. These services include housing, scholarships, food, transportation, jobs, books, advocacy, counseling and mentoring.

    In its first semester the program had 22 participants, and now it has 150 to 175 students each semester.
    Tyrone Botelho was one of the first Guardian Scholars at City College and one of four who are now enrolled at UC Berkeley. “I didn’t even think of applying to Cal. I never thought they would want me. But with the support of Michael McPartlin and the Guardian Scholars Program, here I am, at my dream school. I never could have done it alone,” Botelho said.

    Click the article title to see the full text at Full Story »

    Posted in , | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a response

    AB 12 Passes in the Assembly 72 to 0

    AB 12 Passes in the Assembly 72 to 0

    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.

    Full Story »

    Posted in , | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Response

    Senator Cedillo Comments on Governor Schwarzenegger’s Proposed 2010-2011 Budget

    By admin on January 21, 2010

    SACRAMENTO (OBSNews.com) – Sen. Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) issued the following statement on Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget for 2010-11. The Governor’s proposal included no state revenue options and drew heavily on cuts to health and human services (43% of solutions), the federal government (35% of solutions) and revenue shifts, fees or local revenue deferrals (23% of solutions).

    A stipulation in the Governor’s budget would eliminate entirely the CalWORKs, IHSS, and Healthy Families programs as well as transitional housing placement for foster youth, and funding for enrollment growth at the UC and CSU systems if the federal government does not pay $6.9 billion to the state.

    “Yesterday the Governor spoke of team work and the spirit of collaboration. Today he unveiled a budget which holds the most vulnerable in our state hostage for federal monies.

    Full Story »

    Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a response

    Reuters: “Schwarzenegger budget ax would fall heavily on poor”

    By admin on January 21, 2010

    [from Reuters.com By Steve Gorman 1/12/10]

    LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The latest budget plan from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would force 200,000 children off low-cost medical insurance, end in-home care for 350,000 infirm and elderly citizens and slash income assistance to hundreds of thousands more.
    And that’s the best-case scenario under Schwarzenegger’s prescription for filling the state’s $19.9 billion deficit.

    HEY comment: HEY specifically advocates for transitional age current and former foster youth, and is working with partners against these and other cuts. The depth of how many foster care and transitional age youth services is not fully expressed in this article. There are multiple cuts to foster care services, group homes, country funded social workers, and to former foster youth housing programs. However, this article helps to express the breadth of the affect of these budget cuts by showing the many populations hurt by these cuts.

    [from Reuters.com By Steve Gorman 1/12/10]

    LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The latest budget plan from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would force 200,000 children off low-cost medical insurance, end in-home care for 350,000 infirm and elderly citizens and slash income assistance to hundreds of thousands more.
    And that’s the best-case scenario under Schwarzenegger’s prescription for filling the state’s $19.9 billion deficit.

    Refusing to consider broad tax hikes, he is relying mostly on $8.5 billion in reduced expenditures including drastic cuts to health and social spending that has long made California one of the leading U.S. states in providing help to the needy.

    Full Story »

    Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a response

    New York Times Article: Financial Difficulties Strain California’s Foster Care System

    By Dana Mandolesi on January 19, 2010

    [from The New York Times, January 15th, 2010, By GERRY SHIH]

    In the summer of 2008, a 13-year-old boy from San Francisco emerged from a government van and scanned his new surroundings. Five handsome houses, a small school and an old gymnasium stood on 11 rural acres in the Central Valley that bordered an almond orchard.

    Beyond the last house was a soothing panorama of unbounded farmland, interrupted only by old Highway 99 and the big rigs that rumbled across the horizon.

    For more than two decades, this has been the setting that greeted more than 2,400 wards of the state as they arrive at the Excell Center ranch, a group home for foster boys with histories of violence or mental disabilities. It is situated just outside Turlock, 40 miles southeast of Stockton.

    That the Excell Center, which now houses 52 youths from ages 10 to 18, has survived the die-off of foster homes is partly a matter of real-estate economics: it costs less to house people in the heart of the Central Valley than it does in urban areas, and it costs less to pay workers to take care of them.

    The other underlying economic reality, recently confirmed by a panel of federal judges, is that for 18 years, the state’s reimbursement for foster care has fallen woefully short of its minimum goals. The combination of the two means foster care in the Bay Area has been hit harder than anywhere else in the state.

    In a tale all too familiar in cash-strapped California, the foster care system has been coming apart from inadequate state financing for at least 20 years, officials at the county level say. In the past two months, a succession of key court decisions in favor of care providers lifted hopes that the judicial rulings might finally turn things around, but the lawsuits have simultaneously shed light on a system that has been cut to the bone.

    Visit heysf.org to read the full article

    Full Story »

    Posted in | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a response

    UCB-CWS/CMS UPDATES — 12/22/2009

    By admin on December 22, 2009

    [from the University of California - Berkeley]

    We have updated the analyses on our dynamic web site with data from the Quarter 2, 2009 extract from CWS/CMS. Please visit our website to examine updated analyses. Please note: Our Q209 CWS outcomes spreadsheets will be added soon. http://cssr.berkeley.edu/ucb_childwelfare/

    New this quarter:
    - 5F: New dynamic report
    - Recurrence of Allegations after Exit: New dynamic report
    - Rates Maps: New dynamic maps on county level
    - C3.1: Children not exiting to permanency subdivided into those exiting and those still in care
    - Placement Stability (Entry Cohort): Stability at 3 and 6 months after entry added
    - C1.3, Allegations, Point-in-Time: New multi-report feature

    Full Story »

    Posted in , | Leave a response

    Page 1 of 812345...Last »

    Honoring Emancipated Youth
    at United Way of the Bay Area

    221 Main Street, Suite 300
    San Francisco, CA 94105
    Office: 415-808-4284

    Connect With Us

    HEY Tweets