HEY’s biweekly e-newsletter contains links to articles, reports, and information of interest to the foster care community.Click on the title of the article to read the full text at www.heysf.org

In This Issue

• Community Opportunities
• Upcoming Events
• HEY Trends to Watch
• Resources
• News

Support the SF Foster Youth Community!

Donate online!

Remember to indicate HEY in the memo line.

This newsletter is solely for informational purposes; the legislative information and articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Honoring Emancipated Youth or United Way of the Bay Area.

If you would like to submit an announcement for a future HEY e-Newsletter, please email jslaughter@uwba.org

By Justin Slaughter, AmeriCorp VISTA Intern

A likely consequence of the San Francisco and California’s ever-growing pile of debt ($483 million and $19 billion respectively) to consider is the dampening effect that these insurmountable deficits could have on not just the services non-profits offer the Bay Area, but also on the capacity that our over-worked non-profits need to critically and candidly measure their work’s outcomes and community impact in a time of increasing need and decreasing budgets.

Because non-profits provide many social safety nets funded by City Hall, including substance abuse and mental health services that are being axed by the Mayor this year, it is extremely important that community-based programs have the capacity to self-improve, to find where clients may be falling through the cracks, and to prove the value of government and non-profit investment in the community.

Many people assume that we can do more good deeds if we just sustain and expand current services. But the fact is harsh: San Francisco vastly outspends other Californian cities as far as health and human services, yet we cannot seem to fundamentally solve many of our common social ills. There does not seem to be a lack of safety nets in San Francisco, but a lack of coordination and oversight between the multiple social institutions and networks vulnerable citizens must navigate–often on their own.

Of course the well-being of a sixteen-year old living without education, a family, or a home cannot be reduced to an institutional statistic, nor should his case worker stress about her data reports more than her substantive practice. However, it is highly unlikely that there will be more or even sustained funding in the near future for the social services we now enjoy. Inter-agency coordination and evidence-based practice must replace duplication and inefficiency. To adapt to the new reality, non-profits should set aside resources to determine what is really working for the Bay Area community and how to do more of it with less.

[From: www.youthlaw.org, July 12, 2010 ]

The report outlines the common components of education advocacy systems and provides an overview of 11 different such systems across California. It also offers concrete recommendations for working to improve the educational and life outcomes of these children.

Download the report.

[From National Center for Lesbian Rights, July 16, 2010]

The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) has released a online resource guide Best Practices Guidelines: Serving LGBTQ Youth in Out-of-Home Care. This easy-to-use resource contains the first-ever set of comprehensive professional guidelines for how child welfare and juvenile justice professionals can best serve LGBT youth in state care. To read the full report, click here.

[From The Bakersfield Californian, Friday, Jun 25 2010]

Some deserving programs are hanging on, albeit barely. One, which was being debated in the state Senate’s appropriations committee last week, provides funding for programs to help aged-out foster youth transition into the real world as independent, self-sustaining, tax-paying adults.

Yes, a social program. That’ll be a tough sell when the head-knocking of in-earnest budget negotiations really begins. It’ll be a tough sell even though it’s hard to find anyone who believes programs like the Transitional Housing Program for emancipated foster youth, or THP-Plus, is a waste of money.

It’s not. Weigh the cost against the value of putting an at-risk population on the tax rolls, and it’s a no-brainer.

“If we don’t do anything with these foster kids, we might as well just build more prisons,” said Randy Martin of Covenant Community Services, a Bakersfield-based foster care placement and management agency — one of 12 in Kern County that rely, in part, on government funding sources. “There’s this huge population of young people out there, and we’re their only safety net.”

Yet, THP-Plus was actually on the chopping block for a while, the first time since an early version of the program was created in 1998 that it has been so threatened. The January version of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget had eliminated funding altogether, a cut that would have hit 1,400 former foster youth living in the state’s transitional housing programs. Schwarzenegger pulled back that threat, but the program, now in 17 California counties including Kern, continues to hang in the balance.

[From Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2010]

This is Schwarzenegger’s last budget, and his last chance to push for a spending cap and a rainy-day fund. It’s the right time and the right goal. The Legislature should agree, and send budget reform to voters one more time.

So what was the state to do with all that extra money? Democratic Assemblywoman Karen Bass of Los Angeles had a smart plan to spend $82 million of it on a long-needed overhaul of the foster care system that would keep more children with their relatives instead of sending them to group homes or into foster care.

Schwarzenegger and Republicans in the Legislature wanted a larger “rainy day” fund as a hedge against bad times, and a spending cap so the state would not embark on programs it couldn’t afford in future years. Democrats argued that money properly spent now would save the state millions in the future and was a necessary investment. Then-Speaker Fabian Nuñez, also a Los Angeles Democrat, also from a district affected by the broken foster care system, went to bat for Bass’ plan and included it in the budget that Schwarzenegger signed.