Congress Passes Key Foster Care Education Bill

By. Daniel Heimpel

2013 started with both houses of Congress passing a bill focused on improving the educational outcomes of foster youth.

The Uninterrupted Scholars Act (USA), submitted by the bi-partisan co-chairs of both the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth and the Senate  Foster Youth Caucus, was approved in the Senate by Unanimous Consent on Dec. 17th, and made it through the House on January 1st.

Among a handful of Members of Congress who took the floor to discuss the bill on Dec. 30 was Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), who introduced Uninterrupted Scholars alongside Caucus co-founders Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) in May. ”We have a responsibility to foster youth and children who we removed from their parents’ care,” Bass said.  ”Youth who we promised to keep safe and help to succeed. The Uninterrupted Scholars Act will help help us keep this promise.”

If signed by the President, Uninterrupted Scholars will amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to allow child welfare agencies access to foster student records. When FERPA was written in 1974, lawmakers’ intended to protect parents’ control over their children’s student records. But, the unintended consequence for children whose parent is the state — like those in foster care — were time-consuming legal hurdles social workers had to jump for access to foster student records.

Jetaine Hart, a former foster youth who now works as an educational mentor for foster youth in Alameda County, California, says that slowed access to student records for child welfare agencies means missed opportunities to celebrate a foster child’s academic success or to help overcome educational challenges. ”Now social workers won’t have to wait to access this information – they will know what attendance looks like, know what’s going on with grades and disciplinary action in real time,” Hart said in an interview. “That will help them make better decisions about the educational needs of the kids.”

Further, lawmakers and advocates argue that the new law will help smooth the transition to new schools for foster youth who are used to bouncing from one school to the next as they move from foster home to foster home. Nearly two thirds of former foster youth surveyed by Casey Family Programs in a national alumni study experienced seven or more school moves from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Coupled with the existing barriers in FERPA, educational and child welfare agencies struggle to ensure student records rapidly follow foster youth through school moves. This often results in an unnecessary loss of school credits, which contributes to a dismal foster youth high graduation rate of roughly 50%, according to data compiled by the National Working Group on Foster Care and Education.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) discusses the Uninterrupted Scholars Act on the House floor, Dec. 30, 2012.

“Foster Children are some of the most at risk students,” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), and the senior democrat on the House Education and The Workforce Committee, said during the floor debate. “Throughout their young lives they may change care placements multiple times. Each placement means adjusting to a new family; often to a new community, new friends and a new school. Each move can put their educational success in jeapordy that’s because the caseworkers who advocate for them as they move from one school to another often do so without critical information. Though current law rightly requires foster care workers to move children’s educational records in their case plans, another federal law limits the ability of caseworkers to access those records in a timely manner.”

R.J. Sloke was a 2012 summer intern with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) as part of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute‘s Foster Youth Internship Program. Sloke had bounced through a dozen schools in the five years before he aged out of foster care at age 18 and lost many school credits along the way. This caused him to be held back in ninth grade three times. On July 20th, Sloke sat down with Sen. Blunt and told him his story. Touched, the Republican Senator decided to sign on as a sponsor of the Senate Bill, which was soon after introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

Upon hearing about Uninterrupted Scholar’s passage in both houses of Congress, Sloke felt encouraged and empowered.

“I feel like all the pain and suffering I went through transferring all those schools wasn’t for nothing,” he wrote in an email. “Now that USA is passed, foster youth have a much better shot at graduating high school, thus helping them to become more self sufficient in their lives.”

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

Congress Rolling on Uninterrupted Scholars Act

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and RJ Sloke appearing on FOX News Live – Sept. 17, 2012.

Last week, Members of Congress converged on Washington DC for a short legislative session before the elections. In short order, the Uninterrupted Scholars Act (USA), which would amend education privacy laws to the benefit of foster children gained momentum.

Last week, Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) signed on as co-sponsors of the bill.

At the annual the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute‘s Angels in Adoption Gala on September 12th, dozens of members of congress including USA co-sponsors Sens. Roy Blunt (D-Mo.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) alongside Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Karen Bass (D-Calif.) rose to their feet when Foster Youth Intern RJ Sloke explained how the bill would have saved him from having to repeat grades because of lost educational records.

Just this Monday, Sloke and Landrieu were guests on FOX News Live, where they discussed the importance of easing the exchange of educational records for foster youth.

- Daniel Heimpel

An Open Letter Calling for Ethical Coverage of Juvenile Dependency Proceedings

An appeal to journalists across the country to gain access to juvenile dependency courts, write about their findings and end the cloak of confidentiality obstructing deeper, necessary reform to the foster care system.

Having studied foster care and covered it for the better part of a decade, I have come to understand that the greatest impediment to improved outcomes for foster children is our current, warped public perception of the system. A combination of the system’s overt obfuscation, coupled with the news media’s over representative coverage of child death and tragedy, have painted a picture of a broken foster care system. While this may be part of the story, it is neglects to paint the fuller, more-nuanced picture of what child welfare actually is: a system that is as much progressive as backwards, and that likely helps more than it hurts. The result is a general public, who generally accept the notion that the system is broken and too often regard foster children as tainted for their association with it.

This is dangerous to those children. It contributes to the dearth of exceptional foster and adoptive parents, leads lawmakers to make knee jerk reactions and negatively stigmatizes foster children themselves.

For years, I have worked to give the public a more accurate picture of the foster care system through my writings, that of my staff and FMC’s consistent outreach to journalists across the country.

But for all these efforts an enormous barrier still remains: the cloak of confidentiality asserted by public child welfare administrations as a protection of the best interests of children in the system. Like the public perception of foster care I already described, this is only part of the truth. Confidentiality laws often become a shield against the news media’s scrutiny of the system’s handling of particular cases or flaws in general policy. This lack of transparency invariably stymies reform and arguably impinges on systemic improvements that would better the lives of individual foster children.

If the goal is a more balanced, full and thus accurate picture of the foster care system, we must knock down one of the clearest barriers to transparency – media access to juvenile dependency court proceedings.

I will not go deep into history on the subject. Jim Newton of the Los Angeles Times, Andrea Poe of the Washington Times, Kelli Kennedy of the Associated Press, Marjie Lundstrom of the Sacramento Bee, Kim Hansel of Fostering Families Today, Petula Dvorak of the Washington Post and many others have contributed greatly to an already robust debate on this subject.

Instead, I offer a strategy to grant all journalists across the country access to juvenile dependency hearings, foment trust between circumspect child welfare professionals and journalists; and through these efforts create a framework for nuanced and exceptional coverage of the foster care system.

Here you will find a report on the debate over open courts that my organization, Fostering Media Connections, produced with the help of a law student at Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program as well as a draft code of ethics for journalists who are attempting to access dependency proceedings. We have been using the code of ethics to access otherwise closed juvenile dependency hearings throughout California.

On November 15^th, 2012, FMC  - alongside the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy – will hold a convening at the University of California Berkeley’s School of Law (Boalt Hall) to promote the code of ethics as a means to promote transparency in the juvenile dependency system and ethical coverage of those hearings and the foster care system more generally.

We are now asking you to take the attached code of ethics to judges, commissioners and court referees in your jurisdiction and ask for access to these proceedings. Please write about what you see; feel free use our report as background or for attribution.

If we can collectively create a swell of coverage leading into and out of the convening on the 15^th, my bet is that we will have greatly eased access to juvenile dependency courts for future journalists.

But the real opportunity here is that by living up to the ideals of our profession, we have an honest chance at improving the lives of children.

I am not so stupid to think I have I all the answers, so I am directly soliciting your help.My cell phone number is 510-334-8636; I am waiting for your call and look forward to your suggestions and guidance.

Sincerely,

Daniel Heimpel, Director Fostering Media Connections

A Court Without Judgement

Rural Siskiyou County’s Family Dependency Treatment Court is keeping families who struggle with alcohol and drug addictions from losing their children through a mix of tough love, patched-together services and help rather than punishment. 

By. Daniel Heimpel

A woman, with drawn cheeks and well into her forties, steps out of the juror’s box and takes a seat before Judge William Davis in his Siskiyou County California courtroom. She just had a relapse, another hurdle in a life-long struggle with drugs and alcohol that contributed to her son’s entrance into foster care six years ago.

“I have support,” the woman says while fidgeting, now seated at a table before the bench. “But something is missing here, and I know that.”

“It’s not a failure to say that you need something beyond what you are getting,” Judge Davis says calmly. “That actually takes courage. I don’t want to scold or berate you about using. I just want to help you.”

“I know that,” the woman says.

The jury box is almost full. Ten parents, all to children involved with this rural California county’s juvenile dependency system, come here as often as once a week as they fight the substance addictions that contributed to their children entering foster care.

In Siskiyou County these proceedings are called “Family Dependency Treatment Courts.” In other jurisdictions they are called “Family Drug Treatment Courts (FTDC),” or other variations on the same theme. The prevailing philosophy driving the nation’s 300 or more family drug courts is to offer families on the brink therapeutic support instead of the punishment and sanctions that courts typically dole out. Since the first Family Drug Treatment Court was started in 1993, the consensus among many leading family court judges is that they have been critical in positively changing the life trajectories of otherwise hurting families.

A four-site study on the effectiveness of FTDCs produced by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children stated that: “FTDC parents, compared to comparison parents, entered substance abuse treatment more quickly, stayed in treatment longer and were more likely to be re-unified with their parents.” The study revealed that: “43 percent of FTDC children were re-unified with their parents as compared to 32 percent of those children from comparison parents.”

While the report also showed that parents who didn’t comply with drug treatment programs lost custody at higher rates than comparison parents, results like these and other studies showing cost savings have fueled a national effort to expand the courts.

“Drug court is one of the most wonderful innovations we have in our court system,” says Judge Leonard Edwards, who retired as the presiding judge of Santa Clara County Juvenile Court in 2006. Edwards is widely regarded as one of the nation’s top experts on juvenile courts and has been a prolific advocate of the efficacy of family drug courts.

“There is something about a human being coming before another human being – a judge who normally dispenses justice, punishes, has harsh things to say – but in this context has positive things to say,” Edwards says of the unique judge-participant dynamic he has seen in his own Santa Clara drug court and in the years since his retirement spent working as a judge-in-residence for California’s Administrative Office of the Courts, helping improve juvenile courts in California’s 58 counties.

While there is a cost associated with running the courts and ensuring participants have access to treatment, there is evidence that FTDCs save money by shortening the time children stay in foster care and preventing recurrences of abuse and neglect at the hands of otherwise un or under treated parents.

Judge Edwards and Judge James A. Ray cite three such examples in a report they co-wrote about the Family Drug Treatment Courts in 2005 . One example, the San Diego Dependency Court Recovery Project, created “58 percent cost savings” in comparison to “traditional child welfare models,” according to the report.

On this particular Thursday in Yreka, each individual or couple is called up before Judge Davis, who talks to them about their treatment plans and the challenges they face in maintaining sobriety. At the end of each update, Judge Davis asks how many days the drug court participant has been sober. In all, the day’s 10 participants celebrated 1,017 days of sobriety, many reporting regular employment and increasing self-esteem. Today’s participants are parents to nine children involved with the foster care system. Many have additional children who are not involved in the system.

A father in his early thirties excitedly recounts what moments free from alcohol have meant for his relationship with his baby boy. “I lay him in his crib and then I lay down next to him,” the man says with a wide grin on his face. “He puts his little hand up and I put my hand up, and then he goes to sleep.”

Whether the judge deciding these cases, a service provider or parents struggling to maintain custody of their children, Siskiyou County’s treatment court touches each party in a different way. But, the consensus among all participants is clear: the weekly sessions are critical in keeping families together.

A grant report submitted to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in accordance with the requirements of a three-year $320,000 grant to the Siskiyou County Superior Court credited the court with re-unifying 15 families since the start of 2010 out of 63 total treatment court participants.

Judge Davis, who worked as a Siskiyou County District Attorney for seven years,

Judge William Davis reads a letter from one of the graduates of his Family Dependency Treatment Court, which meets every week in Siskiyou County’s Yreka Court House.

describes treatment court as a “draining” combination of “acting like a social worker, parent, disciplinarian and cheerleader.” In his spacious, book-laden chambers, on a quiet day between the weekly hearings, Judge Davis explains how difficult it can be to parse through the hard realities that have landed children and their parents in often-tragic situations.

“It weighs on you,” he says. “Try to compare it with being a physician who works with children. If that physician gets too emotionally involved, he or she is useless.”

While the decisions are ultimately the judge’s to make, treatment courts across the country have been established to take into account the full perspectives of all the professionals who interact with parents.

Before every treatment court session, Judge Davis sits down with social workers from the Siskiyou County Human Services and a coordinator from Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services to discuss the progress of each parent.

“Alcohol has been her demon for many, many years,” says one of the social workers in Davis’ chambers just before the session where the woman with drawn cheeks will admit to relapse.

The group works through the 14 cases on the docket quickly, but diligently. Taking time to discuss treatment options, possible obstacles in a particular client’s progress and decide who deserves praise for success in maintaining sobriety or completing a program.

Michael Noda, director of Siskiyou County Human Services, says that treatment court is invaluable in “bringing home the message that they [parents] must complete the program to successfully maintain a relationship with their children. Without the court’s close supervision, the treatment doesn’t always effectively follow,” Noda says. In a rural county with heightened need and compromised services the court’s role is crucial. Over half of Siskiyou County’s 5,000 children are eligible for free lunches, according to kidsdata.org, and the median family income in Siskiyou County was substantially lower than the state average from 2005 to 2009.

“With high poverty and high unemployment, It is not only a depressed economy, but it is a depressed environment, which feeds substance abuse issues and social problems,” Noda says.

Even if the total number of children in the foster care system is low, the prevalence of those children entering the system is higher than that of the average child in California. In Siskiyou County, 9.5 out of every 1,000 children are involved in the foster care system compared to 5.8 per 1,000 statewide, according to the Child Welfare Dynamic Report System housed at the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Social Services Research.

Noda and the county workers involved in the treatment court repeatedly point to a lack of mental health and treatment services available for the parents of the 78 children in foster care and the hundreds of others whose substance abuse issues imperil their children. The County has only one true outpatient drug clinic and no detox center, Noda says.

Despite this, workers like the treatment court coordinator sitting beside Judge Davis’ desk during the pre-hearing informational session are finding ways to patch together those services that do exist to the benefit of the parents cycling through treatment court.

“You [the parents] are only going to do what you have done if that is all you know,” says the treatment court coordinator as the  group prepares to enter the courtroom. “If you show them a different way of being, then they have a chance of actually being different.”

The man, who smiled broadly before the judge when talking about napping alongside his baby, is now out front of the courthouse smoking a cigarette with his wife, the mother of the child he is so proud of. Both have fought substance abuse issues for the majority of their adult lives.

“Drugs and alcohol become a part of you, like eating and sleeping,” says the man’s wife. “The desire to use is so strong.” “But,” she says with a smile, “getting clean and sober — getting your life back — is possible.”

The two are holding two books used in Alcoholics Anonymous – “Incentives” –given to them by Davis and the treatment court team to celebrate the couple’s combined 287 days of sobriety. They walk off down one of Yreka’s quiet streets, proud, and on their way to somewhere better than where they have been.

Daniel Heimpel is an award-winning journalist, the Executive Director of Fostering Media Connections and the Publisher of The Chronicle of Social Change.

Bachmann on Being a Foster Mom, the Foster Youth Caucus and Uninterrupted Scholars

The day before Congress went into summer recess on August 3rd, Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) sat down with FMC’s Daniel Heimpel to discuss her experience as a foster mother, the formation of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth as well as the Uninterrupted Scholars Act.

The bill, which would ease access to foster kids educational records, had been introduced by Bachmann, and Caucus co-founders Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif), Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) on March 31st. The Senate followed suit on August 2nd.

- Daniel Heimpel

Sen. Mary Landrieu on Foster Care, Education and a Growing Movement

On August 2nd, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Mark Begich (D-Ala.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced  the Uninterrupted Scholars Act.

The bill would amend education policy that currently precludes many adults and institutions from access to an individual student’s records. This makes sense in most contexts , but for foster children, who do not live with their biological parents, not having access to school records can create major hurdles in their educational success.

In this interview Sen. Landrieu discusses the importance of the law and the increased attention on foster care and children’s issues in Washington D.C. and around the country.

- Daniel Heimpel

Post-Partisan; the Power of Foster Care Politics

While the nation bemoans a “gridlocked” Congress and Comedy Central’s Messrs. Stewart and Colbert aptly ridicule both Presidential candidates for a disregard of specificity on one hand and hubris on the other, I have borne witness to a very different vision of our elected leadership.

2012 Foster Youth Intern R.J. Sloke with Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.). Sloke played a key role in a collective effort to maintain momentum behind the Uninterrupted Scholar’s Act.

Instead of obstruction and partisanship, at least around one issue – foster care – I have seen members of Congress from both houses and sides of the aisle move at notable speed to introduce important, thoughtful legislation; respectfulness between ideologically disparate leaders; and an ability to transform the recommendations of experts in child welfare and foster youth themselves into cogent policy.

This story begins in Miami on March 31, during the second stop of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth’s National Listening Tour. Caucus co-founder Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) sits aside Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) and Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) at an enormous rectangle of tables peopled with Florida’s child welfare leaders. Mary Cagle, Director of Children’s Legal Services for Florida’s Department of Children and Family Services, describes how the Family Educational Records and Privacy Act (FERPA) – intended to protect against disclosure of student records to parties other than school officials or biological parents – creates difficulties for foster children, who are no longer in the custody of their biological parents.

Amending FERPA would allow social workers access to student records, she says, helping them make critical decisions in how to best mitigate foster children’s educational challenges and celebrate their successes.

“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 says to the assembled members of Congress.

Two short months later, on the last day of May, National Foster Care Awareness Month, Rep. Bass and Foster Youth Caucus Co-Founders Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.) introduced a bill that would eliminate that tension by allowing child welfare agencies direct access to the records of students in foster care, and allow for aggregate data to be used in studies intended on improving educational outcomes for students in foster care.

“This was an issue waiting to be resolved,” Rep. Bass said in an interview on the eve of the bill’s introduction, which would eventually take the name of the Uninterrupted Scholars Act. “The thought had already been put in, all we did was take advantage of the thinking and the work that was in place.”

Through the summer, foster care advocates and hill staff worked behind the scenes to elevate the issue and make sure it carried momentum through an increasingly static legislative season. As is so often the case with child welfare issues, it was a combination of expert analysis and foster youth perspective that moved the Uninterrupted Scholars Act into the Senate, increasing the likelihood it will become law before the end of this Congress.

On July 20, R.J. Sloke sat down with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to tell the lawmaker his story of growing up in foster care. It was the last day of Sloke’s internship through the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s Foster Youth Internship (FYI) Program, which places foster youth in the offices of Members of Congress.

The 2012 Foster Youth Interns immediately following their briefing on July 31, 2012.

“It felt really good,” Sloke said after a briefing in the Senate Visitor’s Center where he and 12 other of this year’s Foster Youth Interns released a report entitled “Hear Me Now” filled with their policy recommendations. “I told him about my high school situation and how the bill [Uninterrupted Scholars] would have helped me.”

According to the report he contributed to “Hear Me Now,” Sloke lived in 25 foster care placements in the five years he was care before his 18^th birthday. All the bouncing through foster homes and group homes resulted in his attending a dozen different high schools.

“My caseworkers and schools failed to communicate with each other as I would transfer schools resulting in my not receiving credits to go on to the next grade,” he wrote in the report. Despite taking ninth grade three times, Sloke managed to graduate at 19.

Sloke’s story touched Blunt, who signed on as a co-sponsor of the Uninterrupted Scholars Act. On August 2nd, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Mark Begich (D-Ala.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced the law into the Senate.

In an interview just minutes before the bill was run to the Senate floor, Sen. Landrieu, Co-Founder of the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth, described just how important hearing from youth like Sloke is to legislators.

“This kid, even after having to go through ninth grade three times, not because he couldn’t do the work but because the system had lost his records, now he’s gone on to graduate…. He will be a phenomenal leader in our nation but you know this is just way beyond what should be required. That is R.J.’s situation and there are thousands of other cases like it.”

Much like the House bill, Uninterrupted Scholars will: give child welfare agencies access to foster student records; allow for the use of educational records in studies related to promoting the educational success and stability of foster youth; and eliminate the need for duplicative, time-consuming notice when transferring records.

On August 3^rd, the day before Congress took its summer recess, I had a chance to sit with Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth co-chair Michele Bachmann. After explaining her experience as a foster mother to 23 foster children and five “biologicals,” Bachmann took a moment to explain the significance of having caucuses on Foster Youth in both houses.

“A lot of people think we can never talk about anything in Congress, that everything is gridlock and everything is partisan, and it isn’t at all. So both Congresswoman Bass and myself have come together. We created the Foster Youth Caucus, a bi-partisan caucus to elevate the issue of the problems and challenges that families deal with, with foster care, because we want solutions. That’s what we are about. Positive solutions to actually help the life situations for families in challenging situations.”

While Bachmann — like Landrieu had the day before — repeatedly referenced the goal of finding “forever families,” she noted the importance of Uninterrupted Scholars.

“We filed our bill in the House, now we see the Senate’s followed suit. We do have time yet in the remainder of this year to advance the cause of children in challenging circumstances that is what we are here to be about…. Our goal is to place children in forever families, but along the way, along the path of that journey we want them to have the best possible educational [opportunities], because if there is anything I learned personally as a foster mother its that our foster children needed a leg up.”

Congress will reconvene in early September, just as hundreds of thousands of American students start a new school year. If momentum carries Uninterrupted Scholars through, students in foster care may have that much needed leg up on the road to educational success.

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

Senate Takes up Charge on Foster Youth School Records

WASHINGTON D.C. –  Down on Capitol Hill, the air is hot, wet and gummy. With recess around the corner and the political parties settling in for a bitter election cycle, few bills of substance are moving or being introduced, save a seemingly small tweak to privacy laws that promises to dramatically change the educational cards for students experiencing foster care.

Yesterday, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) introduced the Uninterrupted Scholars Act, which would amend educational privacy law to allow foster care administrations’ access to student records.  The bill was co-sponsored by Charles Grassley (R-Iowa.), Mark Begich (D-Ala.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.),  Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects students’ records from most parties other than parents or schools. A broad array of advocacy and other groups from around the country have long argued that an unintended consequence of FERPA is that foster care social workers, administrators and even foster parents have a hard time accessing educational records, which are critical to assisting children successfully navigate school.

“There are some real horror stories from the field that we have heard about how this is really impeding our ability to help nurture and love these children and get them to a safer place,” Landrieu said in an interview.

One such story is that of RJ Sloke, an intern with the Congressional Coalition on Adoption

RJ Sloke and Uninterrupted Scholars co-sponosr Sen. Amy Klobochar.

Institute’s (CCAI’s) Foster Youth Internship Program. Sloke bounced through 12 high schools and repeated the 9^th grade three times, something he attributes in large part to long delays before his records were transferred. At a Hill briefing on July 31, Sloke and 12 other of CCAI’s Foster Youth Interns released a report highlighting the changes they would make to federal foster care policy.

During the briefing, which was attended by Sen. Landrieu and Rep. Karen Bass’ (D-Calif.) co-founder of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, Sloke told the story of how he had the opportunity to share the merits of the proposed legislation with the Senator he interned for: Roy Blunt.

“I told him my high school story and why the law would have helped me,” Sloke said in an interview after the briefing. “Every time I moved schools my social worker had a hard time obtaining my records. If you remove that barrier, you will see more youth graduate.

Sen. Landrieu said that Sloke’s story was just one of many examples of why Uninterrupted Scholars needs to move.

“That is RJ’s situation and there are thousands of situations like it,” she said. “This bill will hopefully — and the education we are going to do around it — eliminate this problem and ensure the records flow seamlessly with the child and there is a cooperation between the schools and child welfare agencies.”

In May, Rep. Bass and the co-founders of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth introduced legislation to remedy this same problem. Like the followup on the Senate Side, Bass’ bill had bi-partisan support.

As most of D.C. looks to escape the heat and groans about electoral, partisan gridlock, a small but growing cast of legislators from both sides of the aisle and both the Senate and House side of the Hill are working together to improve the educational opportunities for foster youth.

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

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

A Time for Trust

Will the foster care system trade transparency for the news media’s strict adherence to a heightened standard of ethical journalism? 

By. Daniel Heimpel

In the six years that I have covered the foster care system and worked along its fractious point of contact with the news media, an all-too-common theme has been one of mistrust, fear and subsequent misinformation.

On one side you have a foster care system burdened with the almost impossible task of mitigating the worst effects of societal dysfunction: child abuse, neglect and child death. Stymied by confidentiality laws and fear that any mistake will be met with public ire and fierce disciplinary action, workers and child welfare leaders are by-and-large afraid of the potential fallout wrought by negative – even if truthful – media coverage.

On the other side you have a cast of overwhelmingly well-intentioned journalists, who are met with a foster care system practically and – in more than half the states – legally cloaked in obscurity. Working under deadline, with limited space on the page and often lacking the deep institutional knowledge to accurately cover the nuances of this complex system, some journalists meet the system’s predisposition to obfuscate as a challenge and even worse an insult.

The system’s culture of confidentiality invariably erodes the news media’s confidence in it, resulting in more of the coverage that the foster care professionals fear. It is a closed loop, which has given us our current, warped public perception of a broken foster care system. While child welfare professionals could be explaining the solutions to the difficult and fundamental problems they face, they spend an inordinate amount of time deflecting  journalists’ probing questions about non-representative stories such as child death. The plain result is that myriad opportunities to engender public and political will are missed and children suffer as a result.

This need not be the case. Over the past few weeks, I have dived back into the old and easily re-ignited debate about whether or not journalists should be granted access to juvenile dependency hearings.

Proponents and statute in the 24 states where the courts are open argue that the news media’s ability to promote positive social change amount to a “legitimate interest” in the proceedings and thus sanction journalist access. Opponents and statute in the remaining states argue that the negative affects of releasing a child’s identifying information and the emotional stress to children caused by a journalists presence are enough to bar the media’s entry.

A thorough scan of the documented effects of opening courts to the news media conducted by Fostering Media Connections found no known-cases of a journalist’s egregious abrogation of a child’s confidentiality. A clear example of the press respecting confidentiality was throughout the recent Jerry Sandusky saga. Journalists had access to the names of Sandusky’s victims, but did not release them to the public.

Still, the fear that such an event could occur is real. If a journalist’s access to the courts runs contrary to the best interests of a child, it is understandable that the foster care and juvenile dependency systems – created on the best interests of the children they serve – would object. To protect confidentiality some courts have been opened with the caveat that if a journalist released identifying information he or she could be held in contempt.

Beyond such precautions, news outlets have their own ethical guidelines, which often, but unevenly stress the need to retain the confidentiality of minors, particularly victims of sexual abuse.

But, the majority of states still run closed juvenile dependency courts. Fear and mistrust still foment an inadequately covered foster care system and children still suffer for it. It is a time for change. It is a time for trust. And this is how we are going to get there.

Regardless of whether or not state law opens the courts to the news media, the judges, commissioners and referees that oversee these hearings have the power to do so. So what would it take to make them feel comfortable enough to allow a journalist in?

I am betting that a journalist’s adherence to a strict and explicit code of ethics would lower the bar for his or her entry into the court. In fact, I tested this very theory last week and was granted access to a docket of juvenile dependency hearings at Marin County Superior Court in Northern California – a state where the courts are presumptively closed.

Before coming in, I sent the court clerk a letter describing my intentions and the draft code of ethics that my organization had produced. Through exhaustive interviews with judges, attorneys, foster youth, journalists and other stakeholders, alongside a review of existing journalist codes of ethics, statute and precedent we created a document that forms the foundation of a longer term vision of strictly defined ethical journalism.

As the proceedings started, Commissioner Harvey E. Goldfine had me explain my intention of adhering to the code of ethics to the attorneys in the courtroom. They raised no objection, and I was able to sit through the entire docket. My presence did not seem to bother the one adolescent who was missing a day in summer school for a review hearing; and I spoke to one social worker who eagerly shared his belief that there should be more transparency in the foster care system writ-large.

But this is only one juvenile dependency court in one of California’s 58 counties. While Judge Michael Nash famously opened juvenile dependency hearings in Los Angeles County earlier this year, there are still hundreds more courts in states across the country that remain closed. I am not the first journalist to be granted access to a closed juvenile dependency hearing in California, most notably Karen de Sa of the San Jose Mercury News and Pati Poblete formerly of the San Francisco Chronicle both negotiated their way in and wrote stories that impelled substantive change to California’s foster care system. But, should we have to negotiate this access every time? I think there is a better way.

In September, Fostering Media Connections will release a report focusing on the varying levels of transparency of juvenile dependency courts across the country. We will also solicit amendments to our draft code of ethics from interested parties and announce a convening to ratify the code of ethics, likely in November.

Participants from the fields of law, journalism, social work and most importantly foster youth themselves will review and discuss the amendments with the intent of ratifying a finalized code by the end of the convening.

With a consensus-built code of ethics in our hand, we will have created an opportunity to make an important bargain between the foster care system and the news media. Both professions will be improved for it: child welfare shedding fear and journalism raising its ethical standards, offering the chance for everyone to do their best work in the best interest of children.

This is the first of a series of stories that will describe the juvenile dependency court system as seen by Chronicle of Social Change reporters. Daniel Heimpel is the Director of Fostering Media Connections and the Publisher of the Chronicle of Social Change.