Cracking the Code: How One California County Pushed Past FERPA Restrictions

By: Orville Thomas

“It makes all the difference if they want to share. It’s easier if they’re not inclined to share. They say FERPA and it ends the conversation.”- Dr. Bernard James of Pepperdine University describing school districts and their interaction with FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

Passed by Congress in 1974, FERPA went about attempting to protect the educational records of students, depending almost exclusively on parental consent for those records to be released. Almost as long as FERPA has been in effect, child welfare agencies have been advocating for amendments to the law allowing for foster parents or court appointed guardians to also have power of consent. California’s legislature took up this task in 2003 when they passed AB-490, expressly recognizing the role that child welfare agencies have in serving as “parents” for foster youth.

Even with AB-490  in effect, California schools have had a hard time coming up with a blanket policy for educational privacy when it comes to foster youth. Some counties allowed for educational records to be shared, citing California’s progressive law. Other counties continued to block access to child welfare agencies pointing to FERPA, a national law that did not give them explicit permission to allow for information sharing.

The gray area in educational information sharing is what today’s Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth announcement is trying to get rid of. Under their proposed legislation, the Access to Papers Leads to Uninterrupted Scholars Act (A+ Act), child welfare service agencies will be added to the list of exceptions already included in FERPA. This legislation, if passed, would ease the flow of educational information from schools to agencies, helping ensure educational stability and success for foster youth according to members of the caucus.

With possible legislation making it’s way through Congress allowing for the sharing of educational information, The Chronicle of Social Change contacted the county Dr. Bernard James cited as having “cracked the code” on FERPA regulations and information sharing.

While other school districts have used FERPA as a wall to hide behind, San Diego County has stepped out of its legislative shadows and is sharing educational records in a lawful and productive process. Their turn towards open educational information sharing started over a decade ago when county officials realized they needed a better system to help foster youth maintain their education even after being separated from their families.

San Diego County’s status as a leader in educational information sharing has come after a decade’s worth of work. “You can’t force this…” said Jenifer Mendel, a Child Welfare and Attendance Coordinator in San Diego County. She continued, saying, “to really work as close as San Diego County is, the stars had to align in the right way and the right people had to come forward saying ‘we can do this’ and really have a bigger vision than just saying that these kids are collateral damage.” Mendel and other county officials said that their system relies on complete cooperation between all parties involved in the education of foster youth. Mendel gives an example the relationship attorney’s for foster youth have with others in the system to show how San Diego County’s cooperation differs compared to others in California, “our child attorneys in this county are just open and wanting to work with us and wanting to work on a level playing field to do what’s best for the kids.”

While having all agencies on board would be the starting point for those counties trying to copy what San Diego has done, San Diego’s success is a result of much more than people wanting to work together. Here are some points The Chronicle of Social Change found about San Diego County when it come to educational information sharing.

Data Sharing:

San Diego, along with a handful of other counties, is using an online database allowing educational information to get into the hands of stakeholders involved with foster youth. It’s system, FY-SIS, short for Foster Youth Student Information System shares educational information with several agencies and organizations including child welfare services, schools and school districts, and probation offices or juvenile court.  FY-SIS allows those with approval and Internet access to look at records for the 5,000 or so youth who are placed under the supervision of the county.

Where San Diego County separates itself is in the level of buy-in that they see among those involved in the database according to those involved. With 31-years of working in the system, Mendel says she’s heard of differences in cooperation throughout California, “it’s probably the only county where there is an inter-agency agreement in place where they have all forty-two school districts, probation, law enforcement, etc. all working together and agreeing that it’s in the best interest of the children.” The comprehensive agreement among agencies has made it possible for the system to share information ranging from immunization records, unofficial transcripts, school history, assessment scores to medical information. According to school officials, it’s been essential for those involved in keeping the needs of foster youth met.

Mendel says the database gives districts an extra tool for helping foster youth, saying, “these kids are having a hard time as it is, when we can break down the barriers and silos that allow these children to be freely through the system then it takes some of the burden off of their shoulders, the stress off of their shoulders.”

East County, where they take things one-step further:

Mendel says while San Diego excels as a whole, East San Diego County is where the information-sharing model is really pushing it’s way forward. She touted the GOALS system East County is using as a model of innovation. Standing for Global Oversight for Analysis and Linking System, GOALS uses all agencies in a research role for future policy implementation. According to Mendel, it’s, “seeing if we can step in and see what’s going on with these kids and where we let the ball fall earlier in their lives.”

Every month GOALS grabs records from a particular sub-group of students (i.e. homeless, gangs, lower income, etc.) and analyzes their current situation by moving back through their documented histories and seeing what has happened in their lives and where things changed. “Are we seeing patterns? What happened earlier in their lives? Are parents incarcerated? Drug abuse? When did these kids start coming on the radar that we missed?” is how she described the process with which they study students.

Mendel says the GOALS program wouldn’t work without the help of all the other agencies in the county, “CPS brings in their piece and we see how many times they have been contacted. Probation says how many times they’ve been called for the father.” Taking that information, GOALS then allows for educators and agencies to make recommendations on possible policy implementation while also looking at when are where the implementation would be most effective for youth.

Those involved with the GOALS program say effective policy implementation and collective cooperation throughout the region can be seen directly in their graduation rates compared to the rest of the nation. GOALS says their high school graduation rate for foster youth is at 83% compared to low 50’s for the rest of the nation. “It’s amazing that these kids are so resilient, that these kids make it through and graduate high school is incredible” says Mendel, pointing out that with the right programs and people in place, San Diego should continue to be a leader in their sharing educational information effort.

Now California counties will eagerly anticipate the fate of the A+ Act as it goes through congress. If it passes then schools can clear out all the previous hurdles that have stopped the sharing of information between agencies and educators. While the A+ Act will give schools the green light to go ahead and share, San Diego will give them the blueprint for a better system in which foster youth graduate more, drop out less, and are served to the best of a county’s ability.

Proposed FERPA Changes “Focus” on Foster Youth

By Tasion Kwamilele

Records for foster youth are often lost as they are moved around. A game-changing database called Foster Focus is helping social workers and school administrators assist the needs of foster youth by keeping all of their records – from residential history to school documentation – in one place.

Foster Focus was established by the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) to maintain residential, health and school records of foster kids. It was only implemented in two counties when it first started in 2000 but since then, 23 local educational agencies have contracted with SCOE to use the database including the San Francisco Unified School District.

Tom McGeorge, planning analyst for San Francisco’s Human Services Agency, is working with SCOE to finalize the implementation of Foster Focus in the School District this upcoming school year.  In the past, updating foster kids records relied data from the social workers monthly visits but the new database will now update records on a nightly basis. 

“Only seeing a child once a month is a long time so this will be used as a case management tool,” McGeorge said. 

By monitoring grades, course schedules and school attendance, “this database will allow us to know much more than we’ve known about our foster youth,” he added.

A new bill was introduced this week and, if passed, would amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as FERPA. FERPA gives parents legal control over a child’s school records until the age of 18, hindering school officials and social workers from receiving school records.

Sacramento’s Office of Education had to work around FERPA to allow for its robust data sharing, according to Trish Kennedy, SCOE‘s director of Foster Youth Services.

“Not only do we have a Memorandum of Understanding with our agencies, our database is extremely secure,” Kennedy said. “We can also track who logs into the system, where they go and what they look at. In all the years that we’ve had Foster focus, we’ve never had a breach.”

This week, Representatives Karen Bass (D-CA, Tom Marino (R-PA), Michelle Bachman (R-MN) and Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced the Access to Papers Leads to Uninterrupted Scholars Act (A+ Act). The A+ Act will assist child welfare agencies in “monitoring enrollment, attendance, and school stability of children in their care.”

Jesse Hahnel, director of the Foster-Ed Initiative at the National Center for Youth Law, is a supporter of the Foster Focus system and is working with the Santa Cruz Office of Education to have the program implemented there. To avoid confusion, Hahnel says the county will obtain parental consent for every child in care or will have an order from the presiding juvenile court judge.  This will allow for information sharing with respect to education – a time consuming process that would be averted if the A+ Act were to become law.

Unlike SF Unified School District, the Santa Cruz Office of Education is having a hard time linking school records into the Foster Focus database.

“Sacramento County has created a system that imports data from child welfare agencies into the [Foster Focus] database but the school information is in a different system,” Hahnel said.  “So getting that information into the database is pretty difficult.”

He doesn’t expect the system to be fully implemented until the end of the 2012-2013 school year.

“You can pull a ton of data on a group of individuals but if the information is not collected, disseminated and reported back in a scientific manner, it becomes irrelevant,” said Mike Jones founder of Courageous Connections.

Jones started Courageous Connections, a non-profit that has partnered with Elk Grove Unified School District and provides normalizing activities for foster children in the public school system. While he thinks the Foster Focus database is a “step in the right direction”, he feels it is necessary to track the effects it has in counties implementing the system.

“I am working on a report right now and using the Foster Focus database. I think it’s a great idea, “ Jones said. “But the problem of maintaining a database this size is getting all of the players to input the information that needs to be known on a timely basis.”

Advocates rallied in Washington D.C. on May 31 to support the new A+ Act. The bill will now make its way up the House of Congress, beginning with its review in an assigned committee hearing. 

Federal Law Introduced to Ease Transfer of Foster Youth Education Records

NOTE: This story was updated on June 7

by John Kelly

Four members of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth submitted a bill today that would ease the movement of a foster youth’s education records by removing his biological parent’s right to prevent the use of those records, and facilitate easier use of such records by child welfare researchers.

The Access to Papers Leads to Uninterrupted Scholars Act (A+ Act) is designed to amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in an effort to speed up the transfer of education records for children who need to change schools after being removed from their homes, and give social workers the real-time educational data they need to make decisions in the best interest of the children they serve.

The act is co-authored by Reps. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), Tom Marino (R-Penn.), Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.).

FERPA, as presently constituted, “prevents child welfare agencies from assessing student records,” said Bass at an afternoon press conference announcing the bill. Leaving foster youths prone to have to repeat courses or be placed in the wrong grade or special education program, she said.

Many schools will not enroll a student until his records have arrived, particularly information related to immunizations received by the child. As currently written, FERPA, which was passed in 1974, requires child welfare agencies to either obtain parental consent for a transfer, or receive a court order from a judge.

“It shouldn’t be so complicated,” said Christina Miranda, a former foster youth from Pennsylvania. “In a sense, you’re a ward of the court, and so child welfare agencies are the parent.”

Miranda attended three elementary schools, three middle schools and three high schools, she said, and there were times “I was sitting for months, waiting to get into school.”

Bass’ bill would create an exemption to FERPA rules for child welfare agencies when such agency or organization has responsibility for the student’s placement and care, provided that the education records, or the personally identifiable information contained therein, of the student will not be disclosed by such agency or organization except for the purpose and to the extent necessary to address the student’s educational needs.”

The bill would also eliminate the requirement that schools notify parents of a record release that occurred subject to a judicial order: “When a parent is a party to a child welfare court proceeding, and the order is issued in the context of that proceeding, additional notice to the parent by the educational agency or institution is not required.”

Some state child welfare agencies, including Florida, already share education records without a court order or the consent of a biological parent, according to the American Bar Association. Florida’s arrangement embodies Miranda’s notion of system-as-parent.

“Those states have enacted laws…that define ‘parent’ to include a child welfare agency representative so that the agency can consent to the release of school records,” according to an ABA bulletin about child welfare compliance with FERPA.

FERPA defines the term “parent” as “a natural parent, a guardian, or an individual acting as a parent in the absence of a parent or guardian.”

There is no language in FERPA prohibiting child welfare officials from qualifying as a parent,” said a memorandum from Kele Stewart Williams, director of the University of Miami Children & Youth Law Clinic.  “This omission is significant because another major piece of federal education legislation, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), expressly provides that ‘the state’ does not qualify as a ‘parent.’”

Other states have left the application of FERPA to counties. California has a statewide exemption for probation officers, but counties dictate the ability of caseworkers to access education records, said Jackie Wong, a state coordinator for the state’s Foster Youth Services program.

“I’ve always wondered why only one side of the court would be given the exemption,” Wong said in an interview with The Chronicle.

Wong also expressed wariness at Florida’s stance that a system can be defined as the de facto parent of a child in care.

“I get the simplicity of defining [the state] as a parent, but at end of the day, it’s not that simple,” she said. On the other hand, she continued, “line staff do need access to education records to do their jobs.”

The A+ Act would not force states to define child welfare agencies as the parent of youths in state custody. The bill only amends FERPA to force school districts to turn over records to the agencies without the permission of any defined parent if that parent is party to a child welfare proceeding.

The exemption covers all child welfare proceedings, not just ones in which a child is removed from the home, said Mary Cagle, statewide director of children’s legal services for the Florida Department of Children and Families. Cagle was instrumental in development of the A+ Act.

“It’s across the board,” Cagle said at the press conference. “If child welfare is in the child’s life, we should allow for sharing information.”

The act would also guarantee education records access to researchers interested in “federal and state education-related mandates governing child welfare agencies.” Bass specifically mentions enrollment practices, attendance and school stability as three issues of interest.

The Department of Education opened the door last year for increased use of education records by researchers. The new rules, issued in December 2011, allow states to establish an authorized FERPA representative to approve plans for use in an “audit or evaluation of federally- supported education programs, or in connection with the enforcement of the federal legal requirements which relate to such programs.”

As with any research permitted under FERPA, any child welfare researchers using education records would not be permitted to use any personal identification of students or their parents, and must destroy all identifying information once it was no longer needed for the research.

Additional Chronicle coverage of FERPA and A+ Act:
Daniel Heimpel: How the A+ Act came to be
Tasion Kwamilele: In some California counties, child welfare and education systems have already agreed to work around FERPA.
Orville Thomas: San Diego County is the gold standard for education record-sharing in California.
Stephanie Ludwig and Anna Jacobi: FERPA regs plague some research projects, easy to work with on others.

-John Kelly is the editor-in-chief of The Chronicle of Social Change

Lawmakers Aim to Help Foster Youth Earn an A+

3/31/2012: Representatives Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) – both members of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth – during Florida stop of the National Listening Tour.

The recently formed Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth introduces legislation critical to unleashing the educational potential of students in foster care. 

By. Daniel Heimpel 

 As the country braces itself for election season’s pitched partisanship, a group of federal lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have found common ground on critical legislation that promises to streamline information exchange between education and foster care. 

The Access to Papers Leads to Uninterrupted Scholars Act (A+ Act), introduced today by U.S. Reps. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Tom Marino (R-Pa.) and Jim McDermott (D –Wash.), would eliminate longstanding tension between the protection of personal student records and federal mandates on public foster care agencies. The aim: to help ensure educational stability and success for foster youth.

For experts, advocates and administrators, the new legislation is an opportunity to change the way foster care and education work together towards the shared goal of improving educational outcomes for foster youth. Further, the A+ Act would allow for inter-agency data sharing, which experts agree would increase the chance of successful interventions to improve the dismaying educational outcomes students in foster care face.

A comprehensive fact sheet on educational outcomes for foster youth, compiled by the National Workgroup on Foster Care and Education, provides a clear picture of just how poorly these students perform compared to their peers. About half of students in foster care completed high school by age 18, compared with 70 percent of the general population, according to a review of multiple studies.  And research shows college completion rates for foster youth range anywhere from one to nine percent, far lower than the census estimate of 28 percent of people in the general population who hard earned at least a four-year degree by age 25.

“When are we going to quit talking about stats and start implementing the solutions that put our [foster] kids on par with their peers,” says Mary Cagle, the Director of Children’s Legal Services for Florida’s Department of Children and Families.

It was only two months ago that Cagle had an opportunity to make the case for doing just that. During a roundtable discussion organized by members of the recently launched Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth in Miami-Dade County on March, 31^st, she argued for amending the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to allow child welfare administrations easier access to educational records.

“I know we are here to talk about all of the positive things we are doing in the foster care system and share best practices,” Cagle said while seated alongside leaders from Florida’s child-serving agencies and Congressional Caucus Members Karen Bass, Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.). “But I really asked to be put on the agenda because you have the federal laws and there is a conflict really between FERPA and the Social Security Act.”

FERPA requires parental consent before any release of educational records and has strict protocols on when that information can be shared. On the flip side, you have Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, which dictates the responsibilities of foster care.

In 2008, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act stiffened mandates on child welfare administrations to ensure, whenever possible, foster youth are not bumped from school to school as they bounce from home to home, and that — if a move is in the best interest of the child — his or her records are transferred in a timely manner.

As foster care agencies across the country tried to live up to the law’s mandates, they kept bumping up against FERPA, which compels schools and school districts to jump through time-consuming hoops before releasing data critical to social workers.

“Education is one of the biggest indicators for the happiness of our kids, so we really want the federal government to take a look at the tension in this law,” Cagle said during the Florida meeting.

Gesturing toward the binders sitting in front of each of the assembled Members of Congress, she added, “you will see there is a draft of legislation and it is so simple, so easy and so clear, all it does is put the child welfare agency into FERPA as one of the exceptions they already have.”

Rep. Hastings then interjected, saying, “Let’s file it when we go back,” igniting a round of applause in the crowded room.

“That would be…” Cagle started. “You all will have changed the world for us, let me tell you.”

Beyond the delays to the practical information that can inform casework and improve children’s lives, the robust data sharing that fuels deep, policy-changing research is also often slowed down, said Teri Kook, Child Welfare Director or the California-based Stuart Foundation, which has funded numerous projects and research focusing on the intersection of foster care and education. The Foundation is currently supporting a huge data match between California’s Department of Social Services and the Department of Education, which will reveal yet-unknown nuances in how students in foster care are faring. 

Kook said that FERPA has delayed the process by 18 months. “If FERPA were changed we would have the data in our hands and would be using it to improve the situation on the ground for students and their families,” she said.  

Cheryl Smithgall, a research fellow at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, has conducted some of the most widely disseminated and detailed research on the education of foster children and other at-risk youth. Under FERPA, records can be released to researchers studying ways to improve instruction, administration of student aid or predictive tests. The A+ Act would expand the research exception to, “child welfare agencies for the purposes of assessing policies and practices intended to improve educational outcomes for students in foster care.”

Until now, researchers have had to “work around” FERPA by either tailoring their requests to the educational exceptions laid out in the law, or by having social workers manually input data they collect into separate data sets.

“The change in this language in FERPA is essential in being able to develop the right interventions,” Smithgall said.

In the two months since the Florida event, the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth has been hard at work drafting the A+ Act that – if passed – will resolve the tension between FERPA and the Social Security Act highlighted in Cagle’s plea. 

Rep. Bass said that the Caucus moved so quickly on this legislation because Cagle’s remarks provided a “specific solution.”

“This was an issue waiting to be resolved,” Bass said. “The thought had already been put in, all we did was take advantage of the thinking and the work that was in place.  I think congressional members are always interested in removing barriers, especially with something like this that does not cost.”

Building off a body of published work largely produced by individual member organizations under the umbrella of the National Working Group on Foster Care and Education, the Act proposes three key changes to FERPA.

- Currently, child welfare agencies have to produce a court order to access a foster child’s educational records. The act would eliminate this hurdle by giving the agencies the same access as parents.

- Additionally, the act would allow child welfare agencies to conduct studies related to the implementation of federal mandates concerning the educational stability and success of students in foster care.

 - Finally, A + would eliminate the need to give parents duplicative notice when records are released. Currently, child welfare workers need to provide a court order to have educational records released by schools. As biological parents are parties to the case, such a notification becomes duplicative. More importantly it creates an additional barrier to accessing records, further slowing down the process and thus affecting children.

“I’m proud to join my colleagues from both sides of the aisle on this common sense legislation to promote educational stability among foster youth,” said A + co-sponsor, Rep. Bachmann in a statement provided to The Chronicle. “Long before I was a member of Congress, I was advocating for educational stability for foster children. Over the years, my husband and I cared for 23 foster kids, and we witnessed serious weaknesses in the educational system as it applied to them.”

Co-Sponsor, Rep. Marino has deep personal experience with foster care, having recently taken a foster youth into his home.

“To put it succinctly, this law un-complicates an already complicated system,” Marino said. “This is the tip of the iceberg,” he said of the Caucus’ work. “We have to let the public know how the foster care system is working and how it is not working, and that fixing it is not all that complicated.” 

Foster Youths Financial Climb Through College Getting Even Steeper

by Rosa Ramirez

San Francisco—The last time Lerone Matthis was released from the Division of Juvenile Justice on April 2008, the juvenile justice system for troubled youth, he feared he had reached bottom.

“I was discouraged by the prospects for a meaningful future,” Matthis recalled.

He didn’t have a place to rest his head, bathe or change his clothes. He wore the same jeans and white shirt “that was dingy around the neck” because it hadn’t been washed for a month. Since he didn’t have a place to store his clothes, he bought socks from a neighborhood liquor store. He relied on relatives and friends for food and shelter. Other times, the former foster youth simply went hungry.

When he learned of the Extended Opportunity Programs and Services Second Chance Program, an educational support system for the formerly incarcerated, he enrolled at City College of San Francisco. Still, Matthis, a 29-year-old single father of two young children, said he didn’t believe he would finish school. While he was in jail, he obtained his GED. Being at City College was simply a place to spend the time while he figured how he would earn money next.

“Four years ago, I did not know what it meant to dream, to believe in a future or to have faith in myself,” Matthis said. “As a single father, I struggled to support my two beautiful, growing children.”

Matthis told that story to faculty, administrators and hundreds of recent graduates at City College on Saturday, where Matthis graduated with honors. Matthis will transfer with a 3.4 grade point average to the University of California-Davis, where he will get his undergraduate degree in managerial economics. He plans to get a master’s degree in tax accounting and become a Certified Public Accountant.

The Richmond resident credits his academic success to the Guardian Scholars Program, a nationally recognized program that provides college financial assistance and academic guidance to former foster youth, with helping him gain admission to a four-year university. The program is in more than 30 campuses across California, including private universities, and relies on private funding.

Guardian Scholars receive up to $5,000 to pay for costs not covered by financial aid, such as rent, transportation, and childcare. At City College, about 200 students are part of the program, said Michael McPartlin, coordinator of the Guardians Scholars Program at City College.

But even programs like Guardian Scholars are finding it difficult to meet the growing needs. McPartlin said he no longer advertises the program because it is now filled up to capacity. And City College has about 900 students enrolled who have identified as former foster care youths, according to McPartlin.

Matthis also worked and received scholarships to help support himself and his children, Lerone Jr.,10, and Kaelyn, 2.

While higher education can lead to career advancements and economic independence, access to higher education continues to be dismal for former foster care youths. Estimates suggest that between 7 and 13 percent of students from foster care enroll in college.

A 2010 study by Casey Family Programs found that only 2 percent of young people from foster care complete their bachelor’s degree, compared to 30 percent of the general population. Common barriers to accessing college include low high school graduation rates, emotional and mental health issues, long-term effects of abuse and neglect, academic learning gaps, and records transfers, according to Casey Family website. Paying for college is also a key barrier to completing college for these students.

In a time when California continue to slash funding for schools, and programs that help low-income students, programs like the Guardian Scholars have become essential.

This month, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed, under the revised budget, to decrease Cal Grant awards in the 2012-2013 by $111.5 million by lowering the amount students can get while attending public colleges. It will affect about 30,800 students, according to the governor’s website.

In addition, changes to the Federal Pell Grant staring in July will limit the number of years students can receive the grants from nine to six years. Former foster care students, as well as other low-income students, often start in remedial math and English courses due to challenges in their K-12 education, which can include attending multiple schools during the school year or learning in overcrowded classrooms. This means that for these students, it can take them more than six years to complete their undergraduate degree.

For students like 22-year-old Guardian Scholar Sugyn Paynay, it means having to take out student loans to complete her education, something she says will be difficult since she plans follow a career path where she may not earn enough to pay back large loans.

“It’s okay to get a loan if you’re becoming a nurse. You’ll eventually make a good [amount] of money but I’m going into teaching,” she said. “Getting a loan will be a real financial burden on the present time, while I’m in school, as well as the future.”

Paynay, a former foster care youth, graduated from Benicia High School in 2007. She attended City College in spring 2008. Even with priority registration as a Guardian Scholar, some of the classes were sometimes full by the time it was her time to sign up for classes, she said. Paynay, who is completing her Associate of Art degree in child-development, had to take four remedial English courses before she could enroll in an English course that would transfer to a four-year university.

In spite of educators’ enthusiasm to improve access to higher education for foster care youth, government agencies are faced with the realities of persistent budget deficits, said Jill Berrick, co-director of the Center for Child and Youth Policy at the University of California-Berkeley.

“Until the economy turns around, very few social programs in California are going to be experiencing anything close to full funding,” she said.

This means that programs such as Upward Bound, which provide financial support and preparation assistance for low-income high school students planning to attend college, need to focus on recruiting foster care youth, says Berrick.

On Saturday, a white, red and blue ribbon with a medal hung around Matthis’ neck. His graduation cap had the year “2012” airbrushed on it. On the back of his black graduation gown were two large pictures of his children with the words that kept him pushing forward when things became challenging: “Congratulations Daddy.”

“My kids love their daddy. But I worried they would never be proud of me,” Matthis said.

Matthis grew up in Richmond and entered the foster care system when he was a teen. He was moved from group home to group home in the three years he was in foster care. He felt he didn’t belong in those homes, which made him break his curfews.

“I was never comfortable with them. It was hard to tell other people how you are feeling alone, lost, separated, and alone,” Matthis said. “Many times, I didn’t come back or I stayed out a day or two because it wasn’t my home.”

There was a time, he says, he wondered if he could make it past 25-years old without spending his life in prison. “Many of my friends were dying. The dangers of being shot plagued my everyday life,” he recalled. “Sometimes I begged for the ending of my existence.”

During a stint at the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, he learned about a college program San Francisco State University. Admissions people told him it was too late for him to enroll but that he should try City College.

Being part of the Guardians Scholars Program, and other support groups on campus, allowed him to face the emotions he felt as a teen. This year, he spoke at a conference in San Diego about mental health problems in black males as part of his efforts to educate others about males in the foster care system or correctional facilities. As Guardian Scholar, he says, he learned to raise his own expectations of what he can accomplish.

Often times, he said, school personnel have low expectations of former foster youths and automatically steer them toward short-term vocational programs. He has taken it upon himself to share his story with educators and guidance counselors.

“Although former foster youth are dealing with significant challenges that are attributed to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, they can and will succeed if given the right tools or guidance,” Matthis said.

Gap Kids Await Assembly Vote

California foster youth are eagerly anticipating this week’s Assembly vote on AB-1712. 1712 would fill the funding gap for the 2,000 plus foster youth turning 19 this year who will have their foster services stopped as part of a year-by-year cost saving implementation of AB-12, an extension of foster care services to the age of 21.

Recent coverage of AB-1712 and AB-12 by The Chronicle of Social Change have spurred stories in the Sacramento Press, San Francisco Chronicle, KPIX, and The Contra Costa Times.

-Orville Thomas

Louisiana Budget Bill Would Erase Juvenile Justice Contracts for Community Programs

The Louisiana State Senate will take up this week a budget bill that would take the state out of juvenile justice-related community services, at a time when local governments are unlikely to fill such a gap.

House Bill 1, which would eliminate about $11.2 million from the Office of Juvenile Justice’s (OJJ) budget designated for contracts for community-based services for juveniles, passed the Louisiana House and now rests with the Senate Finance Committee.

Some of those services are for juvenile offenders coming home from state-controlled juvenile prisons; others are alternatives to incarceration in the first place.

The bill would mean that 472 current juvenile inmates would “would eventually return to their communities without any re-entry and community support services,” according to a letter circulated today by two state advocacy groups.

“Additionally, due to the proposed cuts, all community-based support services for the 3,599 youth currently under OJJ supervision for probation and parole would be cut,” said the letter from Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL) and Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC).

Elimination of re-entry and community sentencing programs could jeopardize strides the state has made with its management of residential care. Without reintegration services, juveniles returning from secure care “will come home with five bucks and nothing,” said Melissa Sawyer, founder of the New Orleans-based Youth Empowerment Project.

“It goes without saying, that the elimination of these educational, job-training, and other support services greatly increases the risk that these youth will re-offend,” said the letter from FFLIC and JJPL, referring to the youths under OJJ supervision in the community.

HB 1 came in $268 million under the request of Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), and the Senate is expected to add more spending to the package.

House member Patrick Williams (D), who sits on the of the state’s Juvenile Justice Initiative, said it was long expected that the House would approve a bill that erased the juvenile justice contracts, along with scores of other contracts in the 2011 budget.

Williams said he expects the Senate to add funding for community programs in through amendments. But he voted against HB1 because “you shouldn’t send a bill” to the senate when you “have no idea what will happen.”

The jeopardy faced by the community contracts appropriation has advocates concerned about the future of juvenile justice reform in Louisiana, which had one of the highest juvenile incarceration rates in the country.

HB1 would essentially end the community contracting aspect of OJJ’s operation, confining the state to facilities, probation and parole. Two years ago, the legislature approved an $11 million cut to community-based contracts, said Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana.

Youth Advocates Program (YAP), a Harrisburg, Pa.-based organization that provides community-based services in 18 states, has two contracts for a total of $400,000 to provide juvenile reintegration and intensive mentoring services for juveniles in 13 parishes. [Parishes are the Louisiana equivalent of counties].

If the state budget excludes community contracts, YAP’s programs will halt at the beginning of July, said Talvin Paul, director of Louisiana programs for YAP.

“It’s horrible for kids and families,” said YAP Southwest President Gary Ivory. “It costs $30 to $40 bucks per day for in-home, and secure care costs $200 per day. And the driver is, ‘We just don’t want to pay for anything.’”

Other state contractors include multi-state providers such as Boys Town and Associated Marine Institute (AMIKids), and local providers such as the New Orleans-based Youth Empowerment Project, and the Baton Rouge Harmony Center.

The state’s secure juvenile facilities were subject to a federal lawsuit in 1998 that alleged unconstitutional conditions because “the state failed to provide reasonably safe conditions, adequate educational, medical, dental, mental health, and rehabilitative services,” according to the state’s Office of Juvenile Justice website.

The state entered into a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to address the problems. Louisiana was released from federal oversight in 2006; a year after the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation selected it as a pilot state for juvenile justice reform.

The same year Louisiana joined MacArthur’s Models for Change Initiative, it published a five-year strategic plan that included increased attention to community involvement and partnership.

In 1999, the state incarcerated juveniles at a rate of 553 per 100,000, according to Kids Count, 56 percent higher than the national rate of 356. In 2006, Louisiana’s rate was 279, below the national rate of 295.

-John Kelly is the editor-in-chief of The Chronicle of Social Change

Calif. Budget Shift Could Jeopardize Budding Transition Program

A key compromise in two-year-old legislation in California promised the expansion of Transitional Housing Placement Plus, a well-regarded transition program for older foster youth with high needs. Now, proponents of the program fear that the circumstances of a proposed state budget realignment may steer many of the state’s 58 counties away from it.

Expanding THP Plus became a trade-off in 2010 negotiations over AB 12, the state legislation that gradually expanded foster care to 21. The administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to exclude the most expensive foster care option -group homes – as a placement option for almost anyone over 18.

But realignment plans now include the removal of THP Plus as a required program, rendering it optional.

Michael Weston, a spokesman for the state Department of Social Services, said nothing is certain yet about how child welfare funds will be restricted under realignment.

“No final decisions have been made,” he told The Chronicle. “The realignment process is ongoing.”

The proposed elimination of a dedicated spending level for THP now “honestly feels like a bait and switch,” said Amy Lemley, policy director at the San Francisco-based John Burton Foundation, a San Francisco-based group formed by current California Democratic Party Chairman and former Congressman John Burton. “We took the group home restriction, and now there’s no THP.”

Excluding group homes for older foster youth was a significant factor in the AB 12 expansion. California has reduced its use of congregate care in recent years, Lemley said, and the youths who remain in group homes at 18 would be tough to place with a foster parent or kin (presumably, attempts to do so would already have been made).

In return for support on that, the legislation included the promise that a new version of THP Plus –THP Plus Foster Care – would be implemented as a primary foster care option for youths who would be forced to leave a group home at 18.

THP Plus was established in 2001 as a way to help 18-year-olds in foster care move into adulthood, and it currently serves about 2,000 former foster youths between 18 and 24 each year. THP Plus involves a combination of affordable housing and common-sense supportive services, such as educational and vocational training.

A study of participants leaving the program in 2010 and 2011 showed relatively meager academic gains, including a high number of participants who entered college during THP Plus but dropped out.

The program did have enormous success connecting participants to housing stability: 92 percent of participants maintained stable housing at THP-Plus exit, with only five percent exiting into homelessness, an emergency shelter, or other unstable housing and three percent exiting into incarceration.

In 2007, the program was serving about 20 percent of the approximately 3,200 youth who were homeless after leaving foster care, according to an annual report on THP Plus produced by the John Burton Foundation. In 2011, the program served 60 percent of approximately 3,645 homeless former foster youths.

Right now, the program is funded entirely from state money. All but nine of California’s 58 counties are implementing it, Lemley said, using money that flows to them from the state. The only way to get funding for THP, in fact, is to demonstrate its implementation in the county.

Most THP Plus participants do not enter the program directly from foster care; many experience homelessness first, and are directed to THP Plus. The idea under AB 12 was that the new version, THP Plus Foster Care, would usher 18-year-olds directly into the program.

That plan was based on the presumption that the state would connect its expansion of foster care to the offer of federal funds for older foster youth, which was made possible when President George W. Bush signed the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act in 2008. Counties could fund part of THP Plus Foster Care with reimbursement from the federal “IV-E” foster care allocations.

But California has yet to get its state foster care expansion plan approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). And now, a proposed realignment of state funds this summer would hand counties a large block of money from the Department of Social Services, and give the counties more freedom on how to use those dollars.

Where THP Plus funds were once tied to actual implementation of the program, under realignment it would simply be one option for spending a pot of money that  covers a wide range of social services for children and adults.

The amount of funding available in this pot depends in large part to the state’s sales tax revenue. With California’s economy improving mildly, Lemley said, realignment might actually send more dollars to THP programs in the short term. But the sales tax scheme leaves a vague future on the horizon.

“Really the concern is medium-long term,” Lemley said. “There’s no certainty about sales tax revenue, and when counties are in corner, fiscally, the money could address things like pensions” instead of child welfare services.

Even within the child welfare arena, Lemley said THP funding is at risk because it is an expensive program that targets a relatively small amount of the youth known to a county system.

Lemley said about 20 percent of the 18 year-olds in California foster care live in group homes.  “The promise was made that [THP programs] would be the step-down option,” she said.

Diane Cummins, a former fiscal advisor to Burton who is handling realignment for the Department of Finance, did not respond to requests through the department’s press office for comment about THP Plus.

Counties will be forced to seek “hail mary” placement options for teens aging out of group homes, Lemley predicts. There is a Supervised Independent Living Placement option. It offers foster youths affordable housing during a transition out of the system, and requires that they meet with a caseworker once a month.

“Imagine being in a group home, with 24-7 services,  and moving from that to one visit per month,” Lemley said.

Lemley voiced concern over the plan in a letter to Department of Social Services Deputy Director Greg Rose earlier this month. The letter addresses the potential gap for high-need youths coming out of group homes.  It also suggests that, if the state receives federal reimbursement approval for its AB 12 expansion plan, removing the dedicated line for THP Plus will violate federal requirements that aspects of an approved IV-E plan.

“Counties do not have the legal authority to ‘opt in’ or ‘opt out’ of parts of a federal entitlement which California has included in its Title IV-E State Plan and for which it is claiming federal financial participation,” the letter said.

Weston said Rose did receive the letter, and that the agency sees the realignment process as “fluid right now.”

Weston said that if THP Plus is optional under realignment, a county could choose to partner with another county on one program.

-John Kelly is the editor-in-chief of The Chronicle of Social Change

Major Hurdle Cleared in Effort to Bridge Foster Care Funding Gap

Members of the California Youth Connection rally in support of AB 1712 on May 25, 2012.

By: Orville Thomas

A key legislative committee today approved a bill aimed at providing services to foster youth after they turn 19.

Assembly Bill 1712 passed through the California State Assembly Committee on Appropriations with a 12-0 vote today, with the committee’s five Republicans abstaining. AB 1712 was designed to remedy a funding gap created when lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 12 (AB 12), which took advantage of federal funds to extend foster care to age 20.

In a statement given to The Chronicle of Social Change’s Rosa Ramirez, AB 1712’s author, Assemblyman Jim Beall (D-San Jose) said, “This bill will help close an inadvertent loophole in existing law that would have prevented foster youth from receiving extended foster youth services simply because they happen to turn 19 this calendar year.”

During the tough partisan negotiations to get AB 12 passed in 2010, lawmakers cut a deal to save cost by phasing the law in year-by-year.

Former assembly speaker and current U.S. Congresswoman Karen Bass (D) was, alongside Beall, co-sponsor of the bill and fought for it throughout the legislative process. “I thought it was more important to pass the bill and get it into law, and then fund it along the way,” Bass said in an interview with The Chronicle today.

This compromise created a funding bubble wherein the 2,166 foster youth who turn 19 in 2012 lose the state’s support in extended foster care; leaving cash-strapped counties with the hard decision of choosing whether to keep youth in or terminate care.

Alameda, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties are funding their 19-year old foster youth, according to research conducted by Fostering Media Connections and the Contra Costa Times. Both the County Welfare Director’s Association and the California Department of Social Services told Fostering Media Connections reporters that neither agency had conducted a survey to determine which counties are extending services and which are not.

“The bill will prevent a lot of foster youth from missing out on vital services and become homeless this year,” Beall said in the statement.

AB 1712 will go to the Assembly floor for a vote next week.

Rosa Ramirez contributed to this story. 

16 Countries Joining Together For International Foster Care Summit

Thirty youth representing 16 countries are coming together in June to create an action plan for easier transitions from foster care for youth around the world.

The International Summit for Youth in Care (ISYC) will provide young leaders with skills to help them advocate for better experiences in foster care within their respective countries.  For three days the youth will create presentations, discuss their concerns, and produce action plans for ways to make emancipation from care more successful for children around the world.

“There hasn’t been anything done like this that has been entirely alumni-led,” said Latrice Ware, chairwoman of the Summit.  “It’s an opportunity to not just support each other but to have a direct impact and produce action within our communities.

Ware is the Executive Director of LIFT Teens, a non-profit dedicated improving the lives of youth in foster care. Ware said she initiated the idea of an international summit when because while there were many national conferences around foster care issues, there wasn’t an international convening of youth in care.

She plans for ISYC to not only provide discourse around current and common issues, but create ideas that will be implemented immediately following to turn the international foster care community into a small network.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is have an international community in care, and it will include everything from financial services, host homes in different countries, it’s a five-year action plan,” said Ware.

Collectively, the 30 youth have 381 years of experience in the foster care system they will be bringing to the conference.

In preparation for the summit on June 26-29, each of the 16 youth delegates are writing weekly posts about a topic assigned by the summit committee. All of their posts will be compiled into one report by students of Vanderbilt University.

ISYC will culminate with an expert forum, during which 30 stakeholders in the child welfare industry will listen to the youths’ concerns and help provide an action plan.

Participating leaders include Dr. Maria Herczog of the United Nations Children’s Rights Committee; Bryan Samuels, commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; and Julie Rosicky of the International Social Service, which assists children and families confronted with social problems involving two or more countries as a consequence of international migration or displacement.

“The delegates want to be looked at as solutions, and not victims, and they want the stakeholders to join them in finding solutions,” said Ware.

The 16 countries sending youth delegates are: Armenia, Canada, Check Republic, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, India, Ireland, Netherlands, Scotland, South Africa, United Kingdom, Russia, Ghana, Kenya and the United States.

The forum will be streamed live on the summit’s website. Updates will also be shared via Twitter at @YouthInCare2012.

-Ryann Blackshere