Climbing Above for Foster Youth

Climbers about to set off on Mt. Shasta climb. 11:30 AM, July 21, 2012.

Ten climbers try to climb California’s 14,000-foot Mt. Shasta to raise funds for the nation’s most influential foster youth led advocacy group. 

“Rock! Rock!”

I look up the steep snowfield on Mt. Shasta’s southwest side, aptly dubbed Avalanche Gulch. Half of our party is fifty yards uphill, resting on an outcropping of rock. It is dawn, the sun somewhere hidden behind the 14,179-foot peak towering still thousands of feet above.

I hear a whizzing noise and then I see it: a rock, the size of a watermelon, hurtling past the other climbers and towards us. “Rock!” I yell. “Move!”

I step to my right. Lynette Cox, slight, and wearing a blue jacket turns her head, and before she can gasp, is struck in her arm. Standing no more than two feet away, I think I see the rock then slam into Kim Barone’s backside. Isis Keigwin made a fast move, slipped and is now sliding down the slope.

By the time she comes to rest the two other women are splayed out on the snow. The rock lays, stopped, ten feet below, all its momentum having been transferred into Lynette and Kim.

My stomach lurches.  How bad are they injured, I ask myself, worried, downright scared.

Daniel Heimpel tightens Kim Barone’s shoelaces just before a rock traveling at high velocity crashes into the group.

Isis is rattled but fine. Kim looks like she has seen a ghost and complains that her bottom hurts. Lynette is subdued, says she is okay, but ads in a murmur, “my arm hurts.” Later we would see the contusions painting her left arm like a talentless tattoo artist, but for now she and the two others are resolute; they aren’t going to give up. No, they are going to climb to the top of this mountain.

Thirteen of us assembled in the City of Mt. Shasta two days before as part of a climb I had organized to raise funds for the California Youth Connection (CYC), a foster youth led and run advocacy organization that has been at the heart of legislative change to California’s child welfare system for the past two decades.

The characters drawn to this endeavor could have come straight out of central casting.

We had Mike Jones, the director of a program called Courageous Connection, which helps hundreds of Sacramento foster youth navigate high school. His climb ended on day one, a thousand feet below base camp despite downing a 5-hour Energy drink before we set off.

CYC’s Executive Director Joseph Tietz and the organization’s highly capable administrative assistant, Angela Martin joined for moral and logistical support. Earnie Sherrard, who volunteers as an “adult supporter” for CYC’s Los Angeles chapter had driven one of the youth joining the climbing party ten hours from Southern California to the state’s northernmost reaches.

Orville Thomas, one of Fostering Media Connection’s summer fellows and a second year student at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, would make it a little past base camp, turning back in the dark of 3:30 AM while laboring up a snowfield.

Hunter Holcombe, a producer with Current TV and this adventure’s cameraman, came with a friend, Colin Murphy, who he had met while bartending in San Francisco’s rowdy Marina years before.

Somehow, I managed to convince my college friend Kim Barone to come up despite never having climbed anything close to this. Much like Kim, CYC’s accountant Lynette Cox readily agreed without any prior experience. Isis Keigwin, the Camellia Network’s strategist, would shake off the fearful rock fall and find a rhythm up the mountain.

Finally, two former foster youth and current CYC members also joined us: Kevin Clark and Crystal del Valle. Both would make it to the top.

Two thousand feet above where the rock slammed into Lynette and Kim, we reach the Red Banks, a wall of red volcanic rock that marks the top of Avalanche Gulch at 12,800-feet and the crux of the climb. Hunter, Colin and Kevin are all far above, having navigated the steep, icy gully leading through the Red Banks, which Crystal, Lynette, Isis and I now are looking up at.

Isis is directly behind me as I follow the women up. At the bottleneck of the gap, Crystal loses her footing. Kim grabs her from the back and I clutch her foot saving her from falling and sending the four of us down the steep slope and back down Avalanche Gulch. Shaken, Crystal gets up and moves forward.

We soon make it out of the worst and are staring up another 500-foot snowfield after which stands Misery Hill, a long set of switchbacks that take climbers up to roughly 14,000-feet and the summit plateau.

“I don’t know how much more I’ve got,” Isis says matter of factly. Lynnette asks how far it is to the top. Kim is silent. Crystal presses the point end of her ice axe in the snow and rests her head on the top.

“Do you want to go down,” I ask Crystal.

“Now, I am just super tired.”

I give her water and an energy bar. She offers Isis a bite. Then one-by-one the four women find their inner strength. Lynette takes off for the top, quickly leaving the three of us behind. Kim extends her legs wide on each step, willing herself up the slope; and Isis carefully zigzags up, her feet perpendicular to the 30-degree incline. Crystal pushes on for ten feet, rests, repeats. I tie her shoelaces tighter and she moves on, stronger with each step.

In less than an hour we are at the base of Misery Hill, the sun now shining on our faces. The wind whips over the shoulder of the mountain, the air cold and thin above 13,000-feet.  I head up and the four women follow.

Crystal del Valle and Lynette Cox resting on Misery Hill close to 14,000-feet.

“You look like the walking dead,” I call back as they trudge through the scree, kicking up dust. I sit and wait. They catch up and the mood has changed. They are tired, but far from beaten.

Together we make it to the snowy summit plateau, the wind stronger now and the air colder still. Very near the top we cross paths with Hunter, Colin and Kevin on their way down. I ask them to wait for us below so that we can descend through the Red Banks together.

“I’ll go back up,” Kevin says. He wants to be with his “sister” from the foster care system, Crystal. I scurry up the last section, and wait for the group at the top. Crystal walks toward me. The wind is howling.

“How do you feel?” I yell.

“To all of you who thought I wouldn’t make it, who thought I’d be on drugs, wouldn’t go to

Kevin Clark and Crystal del Valle atop Mt. Shasta.

college, would have a bunch of babies… I made it to the top of mother f_cking Mt. Shasta,” she says defiantly.

I doubt she or Kevin will stop there.

The evening after the climb, I told my father about the rock and the adventure.

“There is always a story on Shasta,” he said.

Of all the stories I have from my four trips up that mountain, this one is the best. Members from three non-profit organizations focusing on foster youth – Fostering Media Connections, Camellia Network and Courageous Connection – banded together to support a fourth: CYC. In all, the climbers raised more than $7,500.00 for CYC. But most importantly, five novice climbers made it to the top. Two absorbed the brutal force of what could easily have been deadly rock fall; and two former foster youth who had to scale so many figurative mountains before this one made the arduous climb without a complaint.

That is a story worth telling.

Daniel Heimpel is the Executive Director of Fostering Media Connections and the Publisher of the Chronicle of Social Change. 

From Left to Right: Kim Barone, Crystal del Valle, Isis Keigwin, Kevin Clark, Daniel Heimpel
Fore: Lynette Cox

Dept. of Education Still Searching for Youth Voice

By Tasion Kwamilele

The U.S. Department of Education has extended the deadline to July 31^st for its Request For Information (RFI) on strategies for improving outcomes for disconnected youth.

Annie Blackledge is on Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment from Casey Family Projects with the Department of Education. Blackledge said “the response has been good” but the deadline has been extended to give people more time to respond.

“We will be in a better position in mid-August to report out with more details,” Blackledge wrote.

President Obama’s proposed budget for Fiscal 2013 Budget included a request to implement “Performance Partnerships Pilots” that would improve outcomes for disconnected youth by working across federal, state, and local community programs and systems that provide services to this population.

As written in a previous Fostering Media Connections blog, “disconnected youth” refers to young people ages 14 to 24 that are homeless, involved in foster care or the juvenile justice system, unemployed or not enrolled in school.  This RFI looks to gather input from the public on ways to effectively approach shaping and molding laws that consider this population of youth.

California Youth Connection (CYC), a youth-led organization comprised of current and former foster youth, called on its youth members to flood the Department of Education with suggestions.

Theophilus Fowles, social media coordinator for CYC, spread the word digitally about the information being requested.

“Nearly 700 unique people viewed the campaign once it was posted to the California Youth Connection Fan Page on Facebook and 40 percent of those people shared the campaign with their friends,” Fowles said.  “While not everyone may have taken action to send an e-mail to the White House, the amount of exposure to foster youth issues certainly increased and that in itself is a success.”

To submit comments to the Depart of Education’s RFI, visit the link below:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=ED-2012-OVAE-0014-0001

Youth Comments Needed for Federal Regulation on Disconnected Youth

By Amabelle Ocampo

Modern technology is allowing foster youth around the country to raise their voice and take part in financial decision making on the federal level.

The White House is calling for youth to help them determine the best ways to spend money to serve youth in need, by logging on to the Federal Register.

The President’s FY 2013 budget authorizes $130 million in existing discretionary Federal Resource to establish 13 “Performance Partnership Pilots” designed to improve outcomes for disconnected youth (18-24) who are unemployed or not currently pursuing an education.

“We want to hear from youth or those who work with youth in local districts to submit plans of action. Specific ideas on how programs can better coordinate their activities and services especially as you look across multiple systems including schools, child welfare, labor job training, juvenile justice and other areas,” said Diana Zarzuelo, a member of the The White House Domestic Policy Council, in a press release.

“This authorization allows states and local entities to blend federal funds through multiple funding sources and obtain waivers, such as for program design, performance, and other requirements, that could bring forth more effective uses of funding to serve disconnected youth.”

Young Americans can add their suggestions for ways to address issues surrounding disconnected youth by submit comments prior to July 5, 2012 at regulations.gov.

Foster Care/LGBT Sensitivity Training Bill Headed to Senate Human Services Committee

By Rosa Ramirez

More than 40 years ago, when Jamie Lee Evans, project director of Y.O.U.T.H. Training Project, was 5 years old, her foster parents at a group home in Los Angeles taunted a young boy who they believed was gay.

The boy was effeminate. The foster parents didn’t really like that about him, Evans said.

“Not only were we required to beat him up but they would say ‘we have to beat the gay out of the little kid,’” said Evans, who now trains child welfare professionals about LGBTyouths. “It was a pretty traumatizing business as you can imagine.”

While the treatment of foster care youths who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender has improved, many continue to experience subtle discrimination, hostility and even rejection by the people entrusted to care for them, said Evans. In 2003, California passed the Foster Care Non-Discrimination Act that prohibits the harassment of youths on the basis of actual or perceived race, ethnic group, national origin, religion, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identification.

“A lot of things have changed but not enough,” Evans said.

On June 26, the California State Assembly Committee on Human Services is scheduled to hold a hearing on AB 1856, a bill that would require culturally sensitive training for foster care providers on issues facing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender children and teens (LGBT).

Authored by Rep. Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) and sponsored the largest LGBT advocacy group in the state, Equality California, the bill would require caretakers to complete 40 hours of classroom instruction and best practices for providing adequate care for LGBT youths in foster care.

It’s estimated that between five and 10 percent of the total foster youth population are LGBT, according to the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Evans said actual percentages could be higher since many of these youths face abuse at home, or get kicked out when they come out about their sexual orientation, which can which can land them in the foster care system.

Yet few resources are available to train care providers about these youths’ needs.

“There’s a lot of different forms of discrimination with the foster care system. Even well-meaning caregivers don’t have the tools to support these youths,” said Maceo Persson, program manager at the Transgender Law Center. The Center works to change policy and advocates for transgender people.

Need for cultural competency training

Gay foster youth face discrimination that could range from caretakers failing to call them by the preferred name or pronoun that’s in accordance with the gender identity to forcing the teen to dress in clothing that doesn’t fit the gender the youth identifies with, Persson said.

A 2006 study documenting experience of LGBT youth in the foster care system called “Out of the Margins” found that these foster youths are vulnerable to violence, rejection or abuse not only from their home but also in schools, foster care and communities.

“As we delved into it more, we noticed there was a dearth of training in LGBT sensitivity,” said Cecilia Tran, an assembly fellow with Ammiano’s office.

Some foster care agencies, Evans said, have forms where potential foster care parents can indicate if they’re not willing to care for an LGBT youth.

“Why are we accepting foster parents who say I don’t want or will not take of an LGBT [children]? How we can allow that to be?” she said.

Fostering Support for LGBT youths

Marissa Guerrero, a program manager for California Court Appointed Special Advocates, said there’s a push in California to incorporate LGBTQ cultural competency training for those working with foster teens.

Some CASA programs, a network of child advocates, in the state, for instance, integrate LGBTQ cultural competency into their core training. Volunteers undergo at least 30 hours of core training on dependency law, child development, among other topics. Two programs, including those in Riverside and Santa Cruz, have incorporated LGBTQ cultural competency into their core training, Guerrero said.

“LGBTQ youth in foster care need the same things all young people need – to feel safe and supported, to have opportunities to engage with their cultures and communities, and to find permanency and interdependence,” Guerrero said. “The value of cultural competency training is that oftentimes the adults in these kids’ lives are committed to ensuring and providing these things for kids, youth, and young adults, but may not know how to do this for LGBTQ youth.”

In April, California CASA hosted symposium on mental health and LGBTQ youth in the foster system, led by the Y.O.U.T.H. Training Project, a program of the California Youth Connection, and Rob Woronoff, a leader in training for LGBT youths, and director of Family Builders Putting Pride into Practice Project.

“We just have to teach general acceptance support and love,” Evans said.

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.