Connecting Data to Improve Education Outcomes for Foster Youth

by Stephanie Ludwig and Anna Jacobi

Despite bureaucratic roadblocks, states and counties across the United States are managing to broker two unwieldy systems- foster care and education- to mine data that will clarify the educational status of children and youths in foster care.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) restricts access to educational records to parents and legal guardians. Researchers attempting to gain access to these records, to determine foster youths’ strengths and deficiencies, often face bureaucratic roadblocks due to privacy concerns.

Some states, such as Florida and Illinois, have succeeded in linking education data to other large systems such as social services, higher education and juvenile justice, while California has begun to catch up with state and county level projects that will match and compare educational and social services data.

Having completed a four-county pilot project, researchers from the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Social Services Research are now working on creating a statewide social services data link with CAL-PASS (the California Partnership for Achieving Student Success), which uses data voluntarily uploaded by school districts.

Kristine Frerer, a research associate for the California Child Welfare Performance Indicators Project, says that the project hopes to answer some of the many questions about education for foster children that have been unanswered until now due to lack of data.

“We don’t really know how foster kids are doing educationally on a state level,” says Frerer. “We don’t know strengths and weakness of different programs.”

She said that FERPA posed a challenge to getting the project off the ground.

“It was kind of a nightmare,” says Frerer.

Because of FERPA restrictions, she said, they will not be able to update the data on a regular basis because the process of extracting and re-matching the data sample is too time-consuming and labor intensive.

After the process of de-identifying the data to preserve foster youths’ privacy, the project will link social services’ data on foster youth to educational data such as standardized test data, California High School Exit Exam results, free- and reduced-lunch status and post-secondary level coursework and graduation.

“States are mandated that they have to do longitudinal education system data and, even though it’s a federal mandate, they’re woefully behind,” says Frerer. “I think it’s a big effort, Los Angeles for example has 81 school districts that keep their own data.”

Another large project linking data from the California education and social services systems is also underway. The project is a partnership of the West Ed Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, the California Department of Social Services and the California Department of Education.

Beth-Ann Berliner, Senior Research Associate at West Ed, said the agreement took two years to come together in order to ensure the information was kept secure.

“All of the data transfer was done through a secure server,” says Berliner. “We are currently working with personally identifiable data from both services with the sole intention of making a match and finding every single student in foster care.”

Her partner on the project, Senior Research Associate Vanessa Barrat, says it has been a tricky process that has been eased by a shared commitment from the Department of Education and the Department of Social Services.

“The goal is to be able to report on the achievement of children on foster care compared to the achievement of kids not in the foster care system,” says Barrat.

The project proceeded with few FERPA-related obstacles, according to Barrat.

Other states have used data exchange to implement programs to enable foster youth to succeed in their schools. Illinois uses a system known as SchoolMinder to enable child welfare workers to find children foster homes near their school or district. After implementing SchoolMinder, the average distance of foster home changes dropped from 22.5 to 11.4 miles. Pennsylvania has designated education liaisons in each child welfare office and provides child welfare workers with an educational screening tool.

Some say the future of information exchange lies in creating large state databases so that agencies serving vulnerable populations like foster children can communicate more effectively.

A Tale of Two Fridays

And the gap for California foster youth that lies in between.

It is Friday May 4^th, at the Richmond Courthouse. Sun spills into the trash-strewn courtyard as the immediate future of soon-to-be 19-year-old foster youth David C. is decided within.

On Sunday, David will turn 19, throwing into question his eligibility for benefits provided through a celebrated California law that extends foster care to age 20. His story encapsulates a dilemma facing more than 2,000 similar foster youth throughout the state. 

In 2010, California passed Assembly Bill 12 (AB 12), which is geared to take advantage of matching federal funds to extend foster care. In the fraught negotiations to get the bill passed, legislators opted to save money by phasing the law in year by year to age 19 in 2012, 20 in 2013 and 21 in 2014 if the legislature approves. The phase-in strategy has created a funding bubble wherein the state relinquishes funding for the 2,166 foster youth who turn 19 in 2012.

For youths like David, the decision whether or not they benefit from the stability of extended foster care past their 19^th birthday now rests in the hands of three institutions: the juvenile dependency courts, the Boards of Supervisors in each of California’s 58 counties, and the State Assembly Committee on Appropriations.

In the span of three weeks — ironically falling during National Foster Care Month — the level of each institution’s commitment to foster youth will be tested by a legal challenge, media scrutiny and direct political action by foster youth themselves. Through it all emerges the possibility that this “bubble” may in fact burst; and the portrait of a frayed social services safety net wherein foster youth like David are often the ones left paying the cost. 

David’s challenge to County Counsel’s attempt to cut off services was the first such case to come to public light, and its outcome will have a direct impact on the fates of the 2,000 “bubble” foster youth who will turn 19 this year. 

This reporter and another, Theresa Harrington of the Contra Costa Times, had been briefly admitted into the hearing room that particular Friday –the day that the court would determine whether or not to terminate David’s case. David had requested our presence, but just as quickly as we entered the still courtroom, Deputy County Counsel Patricia Lowe objected and we were told to get out.

Code Section 346 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code, likely behind Lowe’s objection, states that while the public generally should not be admitted to cases involving minors, “the judge or referee may nevertheless admit such persons as he deems to have a direct and legitimate interest in the particular case or the work of the court.”

In a 1991 appellate court case, San Bernardino County Department of Social Services v. Superior Court, the court said that while the child’s best interests should be the primary concern, the “important social values” advanced by the press are also important. It added that lower courts should grant the media access, “unless there is a reasonable likelihood that such access will be harmful to the child’s or children’s best interest in the case.”  

In January of this year, the Presiding Judge of the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, Michael Nash, issued a blanket order presumptively opening that court to the media. Under the order, members of the press may attend hearings and can only be excluded if a party objects and the court determines that there is a reasonable likelihood that press access will be harmful to the child’s best interest, based on the factors listed in the San Bernardino County case.

But Contra Costa County’s stance on transparency in the courts is much more restrictive than that of Los Angeles County. Unsurprisingly, the differences between counties don’t stop there and emphasize the wider variance in support for transition-aged youth across the state. Los Angeles County intends to keep its 853 “bubble” youth in care, while Contra Costa County is terminating the cases of the 43, who — like David — turn 19 this year. While both the County Welfare Director’s Association and the California Department of Social Services said they hadn’t surveyed counties to understand their policies in regards to bubble youth, research conducted by Fostering Media Connections and the Contra Costa Times found that San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda and San Mateo Counties will keep youth like David in care.

David walks out of the courthouse with his attorney Darren Kessler and Shawn Nunn, a private social worker with a non-profit organization called Triad Family Services that subcontracts casework with the county.

The presiding judge, Joni Hiramoto, terminated David’s case, but granted a 90-day stay so that David could file his appeal.  David, who according to court documents tested positive for methamphetamine at birth and was subsequently diagnosed with Asperger’s Disorder, is concerned about the judge’s order.

At first he thinks he will have to pack up and leave his foster home that day, but Kessler re-assures him that the stay means he can remain in his Contra Costa County placement until August 3^rd, nearly two months after his high school graduation.

“At the end of the day she is splitting the baby,” Kessler says of Hiromoto’s decision. “She is giving him what he needs in the meantime.”

David is relieved that he won’t have to move out before graduation. He looks forward to starting at UC Berkeley in the fall to study physics, but remains perplexed about the fate of the other kids in his situation. “It is hard, very hard, tricky,” he says.

But the fight for David’s short-term stability isn’t over yet. On Wednesday May 9, Triad social worker Shawn Nunn says that David’s county social worker, Christopher Johnson, called with some startling news. According to Nunn, Johnson told him that the county would not pay the foster care rate, and would instead cover the costs through special education payments offered through AB 490 – a law that provides support for foster youth from the Department of Education’s budget.

Nunn immediately called Kessler and David’s sister Lily C., a first-year law student at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall. The same day, he received a call from Deputy County Counsel Lowe, who said that she would look into it.

Later that day, Nunn received a call from Johnson’s district manager, who informed him that they would now cover David for the next five weeks – through high school graduation – and then offer up the AB 490 money.

If Nunn’s story — corroborated by Lily — is accurate, the county would be acting contrary to the stay order Kessler says Judge Hiramoto issued on May 4^th. An attorney with close knowledge of the case who asked to speak on condition of anonymity says that, “depending on the wording of the order, the county is violating the stay and the next thing someone needs to do is file a contempt motion.”

Lois Rutten, acting director of the Contra Costa County Department of Children and Family Services, says, “as long as the case is on appeal we are paying. I have already authorized the payment.”

Last week, Kessler sent a notice of appeal to the court. The case will then be sent the First District Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The First District Appellate Project, a non-profit organization that provides appeal attorneys, will then take on the case.

Kessler hopes the attorney who does, files a writ of supersedeas that, if approved at the appellate level, will stay the case until resolution. That could be six-to-eight months from now, plenty of time for David to make the transition to Berkeley.

But what of the 42 other youth in Contra Costa County and the 2,100-plus others scattered throughout the state?

Along with the courts, the other county-level lever to tackle the issues facing David and other youth in his situation is the Board of Supervisors. Before becoming Contra Costa County’s District 4 Supervisor, Karen Mitchoff worked as a fiscal and legislative analyst for the County Employment and Human Services Department, which oversees foster care.

“When I saw this in the paper, I immediately called the staff to see what we are doing about these bubble kids,” Mitchoff says. “If they are living in a foster home nobody is being kicked out. Nobody in our county is going to end up on the streets.”

She argues that the county’s Independent Living Skills Program (ILSP) is working to ensure that all Contra Costa County youth have supports through their transition into adulthood.

But successive waves of budget cuts have made the ILSP program’s already difficult task of coping with the rising tide of youth in need even more difficult, according to Program Coordinator Don Graves.

Graves says that he has only been able to maintain services through aggressive grant writing, solicitations for private donations, and community awareness. “We are always trying to pick up the pieces, so we got good at that.”

Supervisor Mitchoff admits that the ILSP program is overburdened and underfunded like the rest of the foster care system and this ultimately ties the county’s hands as to what services they can provide.

”The bottom line is that we are going to have to deal with this on a case-by-case basis because we don’t have the money,” Mitchoff said.  “It is another example of how the state messed up and we are going to have to pick up the slack, but it is hard when we don’t have any slack to pick up.”

On Friday May 25^th the California State Assembly Committee on Appropriations will have a chance to pick up the aforementioned “slack.” The committee will vote on Assembly Bill 1712, which is the second attempt to clean up the inconsistencies found in AB 12.

Under the new legislation, foster care would cover all who were “younger than 19 years of age as of January 1, 2012,” effectively closing the gap that faces foster youth like David C. and allowing them to stay in foster care to age 21.

The California Youth Connection (CYC), a youth-led advocacy organization, will hold a rally and press conference advocating for the passage of AB 1712 on the steps of the Capitol on Thursday May 24.  CYC Legislative and Policy Coordinator Chantel Johnson sees this is an opportunity for state legislators to fulfill the promise they made to the counties and the youth they serve when they passed AB 12 back in 2010.  “The youth have lived up to their end up the deal,” Johnson says in reference to the eligibility requirements of AB 12. “But the government hasn’t lived up to theirs.”

Two thousand foster youth, 58 counties and scores of juvenile dependency judges and referees are left waiting to see if the state will fill the gap it created. This Friday, they will find out.

Daniel Heimpel is the director of Fostering Media Connections and the publisher of the Chronicle of Social Change. FMC intern and Harvard Law Student Jamie Kapalko contributed to this story. 

Two Big California Counties to Cover “Bubble” Teens; Will Other Counties Follow Suit?

by Tasion Kwamilele

Two of California’s largest counties, Alameda and Los Angeles, have announced they will protect foster teens facing a disruption in foster care coverage because of the structure of Assembly Bill 12, a 2010 law that gradually expands foster care services to age 21 by 2014.

AB 12 is currently only extended to the age of 19, so more than 2,100 foster youth turning 19 this year will lose their services and benefits. While they can re-apply in January 2013 for services when AB 12 extends to age 20, it still leaves a “bubble” of non-coverage for these kids.

The announcement essentially halves the number of teens who will lose services as the foster care age escalates to 21. Los Angeles County is home to 853 “bubble” teens, and Alameda is home to 139, according to a database shared by the California Department of Social Services and University of California at Berkeley.

Combined with the 75 in San Francisco, which has also announced its intention to cover “bubble” youths, just over half of the teens affected by the situation will retain foster care services.

Teens whose services are disrupted stand to lose: housing, financial assistance, and medical benefits, as well as mentorship and transitional services. California has a county-administered system of social services, so counties must decide whether or not to use county funds to keep kids in while AB 12 phases in

Child welfare advocates would like to see the other 56 counties follow the lead of Los Angeles and Alameda, which are both in the midst of a waiver program with their federal funding. But officials in Los Angeles and Alameda aren’t even sure how they’re going to pay for the teens yet.

The question both counties face is: Can it spend federal money to keep the teens in, or must it all come from county accounts? California became one of six states approved for the Title IV-E Waiver in 2006. Alameda and Los Angeles counties were approved for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Capped Allocation Project (CAP) in 2007, which allowed both counties to receive a set amount of funding regardless of the foster care population.

A report issued by The National Center for Youth Law stated that both Alameda and Los Angeles counties received more in funding since the waiver was granted than they had averaged in years leading up to it.

“Both counties have an excess amount of waiver dollars to use on these young people,” said Angie Schwartz, policy director for the Alliance of Children’s Rights,

“Waiver counties should lead the way in rolling out AB 12,” said Sokhom Mao, a member of California Youth Connection’s (CYC) Board of Directors.

It might not be that easy. The established rules for the waiver may restrict these counties from using the extra money to fund AB 12 implementation.

“When we negotiated for the waiver it did not include extended foster care,” says Alan Weibert, Children Services Administrator for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.  He says waiver negotiations mandate the funds be used for a specific purpose – “preventative services” – so the county has to use other funds to keep their children in.

Kenneth Shaw, a child welfare supervisor for Alameda County’s Independent Living Skills Program, says Alameda County is following a slightly different set of rules that closely align to the AB 12 phase-in process.

“If a young person is under 19 we can use waiver dollars for their care and we are seeking to use it to age 21,” said Shaw, but the county cannot renegotiate waiver terms until January 2013 when the waiver is set for renewal.

While Alameda and Los Angeles Counties are using their county dollars to cover youths on the bubble, it is unclear how the state’s other 56 counties are going to fund the gap of coverage for the kids in their system.

Among the other counties with the largest populations of “bubble” teens: San Bernardino (141), San Diego (128) and Sacramento (123).

“We don’t have a systematic survey for all the counties,” said Frank Mecca, executive director of California’s Child Welfare Directors Association (CWDA), “A lot of counties are putting their budgets together for next year so there’s still a lot to be figured out.”

The state law addressing the “bubble” issue goes before to the state appropriation committee in Sacramento on May 25.

Anna Jacobi contributed to this article.

Life on the Bubble

State-level worries about the cost of extending foster care have left California’s counties holding the bag; but unless something changes it is the 2,000 foster youth who will turn 19 who will really pay the price.

With only weeks until his 19th birthday, David C.’s future looks bright. In June, he will graduate from his Contra Costa County high school in the top one percentile of his class, and is excited about starting his college career at the University of California- Berkeley in the fall.

“They have a good physics club there,” the teenager says. “It’s gonna be hecka fun.”

But for David’s understandable exuberance at this pivotal moment in his life, the next months could be very rocky, as he may be cut off from foster care on his birthday because of the way the state’s new law extending care is structured.

With the passage Assembly Bill 12 in 2010, California set itself on a path to extend foster care to age 21. Despite a federal match on funding foster youth until that age, state lawmakers opted to phase the extension in over time to save money.

The way the law is written, David and the other 2,166 youths who turn 19 this year will lose state-funded support services on their 19th birthdays; May 6, in David’s case. On Jan. 1, 2013, David and other youth who are “on the bubble” like him will be eligible for foster care again when the age range expands to 20.  In May of 2013, he will again lose that support until January of 2014 – that is if the legislature takes the extra step of extending care all the way to age 21.

This leaves California’s 58 counties with a tough choice: keep teens like David connected to services without financial assistance from the state, or cut them off. It is unclear whether some, or any, will continue to support the foster youths caught in the state coverage “bubble.”

Last year, as the legislature worked on clean up legislation, CWDA highlighted the Solomonic position counties would find themselves in if the state would only fund youth until their 19th birthday in 2012.

But, according to some members of the sponsoring organizations, the California Department of Finance reported that the cost would be too high – killing CWDA’s effort in the state Capitol, and effectively pushing this tough decision onto counties and ultimately juvenile dependency court judges – who in turn choose whether or not youth like David should be left to themselves or be given the added support that may help them excel.

“The bubble occurred in the process to get AB12 signed,” says CWDA Executive Director Frank Mecca. “And beyond how horrible it is for the kids in this situation, it puts counties under pressure to allow kids to stay with the county’s the only ones paying.”

Amy Lemley, policy director for the John Burton Foundation, understands the unenviable position counties find themselves in, but is disappointed that an argument over cost in Sacramento at the 11th hour has left the fate of so many young people up to chance. “If we did this kind of planning with our own children, we would be called irresponsible parents,” Lemley says. Lemley points to the second round of AB12 clean up legislation currently being considered in Sacramento as a good opportunity to fix the issues faced by “bubble kids” like David.

The “bubble” created by AB 12 is worth noting on the national level. In 2008, President George W. Bush signed the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which allows states to use federal foster care funds under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act to extend services to youths between 18 and 21.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has approved had plans to implement IV-E extensions past age 18 to 10 states and the District of Columbia.

Tough fiscal times have forced many of those states to make only small steps toward expansion. Washington is among the 10 that have received approval from the Department of Health and Human Services for an extension of care to cover foster youths up to age 21.

So far, the state has enacted extensions that State Representative Mary Helen Roberts (D) says amount to “baby steps.” Services were extended to age 19 in 2011, but only for youths who were still in high school and had yet to graduate. This year they expanded the supports to include college students, but again only until 19.

“We don’t have the money to do it bigger,” Roberts, who is among the state legislators pushing to extend foster care supports for older teens, says.

California is not yet among the states approved to use IV-E funds for older foster youths. But AB 12 is by far the most comprehensive expansion of foster care since Fostering Connections was signed by Bush.

That AB 12’s graduated age expansion has created bubbles may give other states pause in pursuing that course, rather than say a law that expanded to 21 all at once but took effect years down the road.

In California, the 19-year-olds in “bubble” situations can still appeal to juvenile court judges to maintain their status as dependents of the court, and David, through his attorney, has done just that.

“The dependency courts need to know that they have the power to maintain jurisdiction,” says Angie Schwartz, policy director for the Alliance for Children’s Rights. “The responsible thing for the courts to do is keep kids in care.”

On May 4th, two days before his 19th birthday, Contra Costa County juvenile court judge Joni Hiramoto will decide whether to let David stay in care or not. Contra Costa’s Deputy County Counsel Patricia Lowe has moved to terminate services, arguing that when the legislature passed Assembly Bill 12, it intended the three-year transition period in which certain youth like David – would be ineligible.

David’s attorney, Darren Kessler, has filed a brief arguing that closing David’s case is against the intent of the law, and is further in violation of equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

In a brief submitted in April, Kessler argues that even if the law “was designed to be an incremental step towards addressing the needs of NDMs [non-minor dependents],” excluding youth like David must have some plausible rationale, and that the fiscal savings won through such a practice do not meet the “rational basis” test used in such an equal protection challenge.

David, who has been in foster care since 2005 and who has three siblings who have also been in the system at one time or other, understands the interplay of state and county budgets on the lives of kids better than most.

“We know funding is very tight right now,” he says ‘”The whole U.S.i s in debt. I know we need to cut them [Contra Costa County] some slack, but then again, when you are leaving these kids to go out and be homeless and not financiallystable or to end up in jail, that isn’t good either.”

John Kelly and Anna Jacobi contributed to this story.

Daniel Heimpel is the director of Fostering Media Connections and the publisher of The Chronicle of Social Change.