California’s Contribution to National Educational Opportunity for Foster Youth Movement

By. Daniel Heimpel

On January 1^st, the House passed the Uninterrupted Scholars Act, a bill that marks another important step on the longer road to increased educational opportunity for students in foster care.

Beyond the immediate significance to the more than 50,000 children living in foster care in California, Uninterrupted Scholars builds on a larger, national movement towards educational opportunity for foster youth largely born in the Golden State.

The act, which had passed in the Senate unanimously on Dec. 17^th, 2012, will amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to ease child welfare agencies’ access to foster children’s student records.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who as the most senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee was critical in getting the bill to the floor, explained the bill’s importance during a Dec. 30^th session of the house.

“Foster children are some of the most at-risk students,” Miller said. “Throughout their young lives they may change care placements multiple times…. Each move can put their educational success in jeopardy. That’s because the caseworkers who advocate for them as they move from one school to another often do so without critical information.”

As the law stands, child welfare agencies must have a court order to be granted access to student records. This legal hurdle not only slows down the transfer of records as students bounce from school to school, but also creates missed opportunities for social workers to intervene when a child struggles academically or celebrate academic success.

Jetaine Hart is a former foster youth who now works as an educational mentor for foster youth in Alameda County, Calif. California took a lead on the education of foster youth in 1981, launching Foster Youth Services, a statewide program that brought educational liaisons and mentors like Hart to county offices of education.

In California, educational mentors and liaisons are critical to making sure that records follow students in foster care, but there is no mirror program in non-county aligned school districts.

“A lot of time the social worker is the only person who keeps of track who knows the history,” Hart said.” 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.”

Teri Kook, the child welfare director for the San Francisco-based Stuart Foundation and a national expert on education and foster care, concurs. “Ultimately, I believe this ability to share information, craft individualized academic plans and build upon the resiliency and strengths of students in foster care will improve high school graduation rates and college access and success for this vulnerable population,” Kook said.

In addition to the launch of Foster Youth Services in 1981, state legislators passed Assembly Bill 490 in 2004 to increase school stability for foster youth. The law gives students in foster care the right to stay in their school of origin even if a changed foster care placement forces them into a new school district, and ensures the rapid transfer of their records when a school move is deemed necessary.

In 2008, the federal government followed suit with strict provisions around the educational stability of foster youth in the landmark Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. In 2011, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) passed an amendment to the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) calling for the Department of Education to consider the educational stability and success of foster youth.

The bi-partisan, bi-cameral Uninterrupted Scholars Act bolsters the strength of this movement. This issue – that of leveling the educational playing field for our most vulnerable children – is one that ever more leaders are focused on solving. Their success in improving the educational achievement of foster youth could light the way for the broader education reforms this country so desperately needs.

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

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.

News Series on Stressed Family Courts Wins duPont Award

Jessica London and Karen Foshay won a duPont Award for coverage of L.A.’s cash- and time-strapped family courts

By. John Kelly

A television production exploring how budget cuts to California’s court system have adversely affected Los Angeles Counties Juvenile Dependency Couts was awarded one of this year’s prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards.

SoCal Connected, a program of community television network KCET, was granted constrained access to a Los Angeles family courtroom and interviewed key players in the city’s dependency court process.

What producer Karen Foshay and correspondent Jennifer London found in the piece, “Courting Disaster,” was a court where judges were overextended by large dockets, attorneys were appointed to represent more than 200 people at a time

“It’s actually fairly accurate to say that…we’re dealing with these families in a much more superficial way than we really need to in order to achieve the best outcome for kids and families,” L.A. County Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Michael Nash told London in the piece. “And trust me, that’s a problem.”

At the same time, London and Foshay found, funding cuts to programs and services for parents and children have delayed and at times jeopardized the reunification of children with their birth parents.

“It was the worst feeling I’ve ever had to think that I might not get my little girl because I’m on some waiting list, and I have this time limit and I’m doing everything I can to try and get into somewhere,” parent Michelle Dodge told London, referring to court-ordered drug rehabilitation she managed to access at the last minute.

In a video for the DuPont Awards, Foshay and London recounted a drawn-out process to gain access that was nearly derailed.

“It took a year of me returning to that courtroom, meeting the judges, the attorneys, trying to gain access,” Foshay said.

The two were running out of time before the SoCal Connected season ended when Judge Nash notified them one day that, if they could file a petition by 5pm to cover Judge Amy Pellman, and she agreed, he would grant access.

Pellman signed off on the project, although on the day the team showed up to film, they ran into further resistance.

“We still ran up against a number of attorneys who on the day, said. ‘We don’t want you here, and we’re filing motion with the court to block you from coming in,” recalls London in the video segment.

Months after SoCal Connected spent a day with the court, but before the piece aired, Judge Nash made a  controversial decision to grant greater media access to reporters. A group that represents many of Los Angeles’ dependent children, Children’s Law Center of California, has expressed concern about the decision.

Last month, Nash and law center Executive Director Leslie Starr Heimov were featured speakers at Fostering Media Connections’ forum on open courts. Click here to watch part one of the forum, and here to watch part two.

SoCal Connected re-aired the piece tonight on KCET at 5:30pm and 10:30pm. It is also available here on the program’s website.

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

Event Spotlight: Angels in Adoption 2012

Families and individuals from all 50 states will descend upon the nation’s capitol tomorrow, September 12, in celebration of the Angels in Adoption Program.

A yearly event, Angels in Adoption is an award ceremony hosted by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) that gives 140 congressional members the opportunity to recognize people who have made a difference in the lives of children who experience foster care and/or adoption.

“The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s (CCAI) Angels in Adoption™ Program provides Members of Congress the opportunity to honor an individual, couple, or organization from their district that have made an extraordinary contribution on behalf of children in need of homes” said CCAI in a statement. “These heroes hail from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico and represent the wide spectrum of individuals involved in the adoption and foster care process.”

The CCAI will also honor celebrities and national figures whose contributions to foster care and adoption have had a national impact. This year the National angels will include Emmy Award-winning actress Katherine Heigl and her husband, singer-songwriter Josh Kelley, who are the proud parents of two adoptive children, and Grammy Award-winning R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo who founded the Compound Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to supporting youth in foster care. People Magazine will also be recognized.

The event will be held at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. To learn more visit the website.

Ryann Blackshere is a multimedia journalist with Fostering Media Connections.

For Foster Youths at Calif. Universities, Procedural Snags Delay Crucial Chafee Benefits

by John Kelly

Federal dollars meant to assist California foster youths with college are being held up by an unsigned agreement between two state agencies, leaving financially strapped students with a $2,500 hole as they returned to classes this month.

The federal Educational and Training Vouchers (ETV), a supplement to the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program that is matched with state funds each year, are a critical support for college students who will soon lose the financial supports of the foster care system as they age out into adulthood.

“They use it for basic needs,” said Michael McPartlin, program coordinator for the Guardian Scholars Program at the City College of San Francisco, a program that was established at the University of California-Fullerton in 1998 to assist foster youths and has expanded to 20 colleges in five states.

“Rent in a high rental cost city, child care – we’ve got a number of single moms in our program – and food,” said McPartlin. “It’s not very exotic, it’s just basic needs.”

One of his students faced a rent increase of $600 when he moved from transitional to subsidized housing. The student could not make it without his ETV check, which would have been $2,500 for the fall semester, and was evicted.

The execution of ETV grants is a shared responsibility of two agencies in California: the Department of Social Services (DSS) and the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC).

DSS receives California’s allotment of the $45 million Educational and Training Vouchers Program (ETV) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which supplements the $140 million John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program. DSS also sets policy on which students are eligible for ETV funds.

CSAC then receives the funds from DSS, and distributes ETV funds of up to $5,000 per year, per youth, for post-secondary education and training for eligible youth.

In the past, the Student Aid Commission and DSS had poor procedures in place to efficiently determine eligibility and get checks into the hands of students who needed help with housing, tuition and textbooks.

“Years ago, it was still a paper driven application process,” McPartlin said. “Youth had to prove they were in foster care, DSS wasn’t even using its own database.”

The two agencies developed an interagency agreement aimed at better facilitating the vouchers. The agreement expired, and a new three-year agreement was written to govern the program through 2015.

Completion of the agreement was delayed until early August because the state had not finalized a realignment of child welfare funding, according to Weston.

“What does anything about [realignment] have to do with an interagency agreement about these grants?” McPartlin said when he was informed of the reason. “Nothing’s changed around that.”

By Aug. 9, a letter from DSS to CSAC said that it planned to approve the agreement as “expeditiously as possible,” according to CSAC spokesman Ed Emerson.

The problem is, neither side has put a signature on the agreement. Emerson told The Chronicle on Thursday that it had approved the agreement, and had announced award amounts based on anticipated funding for ETV.

“We’ve got our foot on the gas,” said CSAC Spokesman Ed Emerson. “We’re just waiting for DSS to send official paperwork on the interagency agreement.”

But, Emerson said, CSAC would not distribute funds to students until the agreement is signed and the money is transferred to them from DSS.

DSS spokesman Michael Weston told The Chronicle on Friday that DSS had that very day approved the agreement. According to Weston, it was then sent to CSAC for a signature; once CSAC signed off, DSS would do the same.

Weston said he expected both signatures to be on the agreement by early next week. Once both agencies have signed the agreement, Weston said, the state Department of General Services had between two and eight business days to approve the agreement.

California has received nearly $72 million in federal funds for Chafee Educational Training Vouchers since 2003.

Typically, McPartlin said, 3,000 youth statewide are deemed eligible but because the funding cannot accommodate all them, about 2,000 will receive vouchers.

The state received about $8.5 million each year in the early years of the program; it received $6.5 million in 2010, $6.3 million in 2011 and $6.2 million in 2012.

-John Kelly is editor-in-chief 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

Juvenile Dependency Courts 101

What it’s like to be a parent involved in the dependency court system.

- by Stephanie Ludwig

Imagine, you need to rush your child to the hospital and you don’t have a car seat. You make a split second decision to hold your child on your lap. On the way to the hospital, another driver runs a red light and hits your car, killing your child.

This was the scenario that landed a Los Angeles father of three in Los Angeles County Juvenile Dependency Court in 2009. The court ruled that the two surviving children could be removed from their father’s care and placed in the foster care system. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the California State Supreme Court recently upheld this ruling, citing a “breach of ordinary care” that was substantial enough to trigger child welfare intervention.

The reality is, in the blink of an eye, parents can find themselves embroiled in a confusing court system, fighting to keep their children. According to the National Center for Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, 1.81 million juvenile court cases were filed in the United States in 2002 alone.

One of the first steps in entering the dependency court system is a call from the social worker who interviews parents and notifies them of court date. Deborah Levine, a private practice attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area who spent 20 years working for the Contra Costa County public defender’s office, says many parents become overwhelmed early in this process.

“There’s a difference between what the social worker says and what happens,” says Levine. “The judge makes the decision. Social workers can take a very heavy-handed approach and tell people what’s going to happen. I think that’s frightening for parents because they feel powerless, and it’s not in reality what happens.”

Usually, each participant, the county, the child and each parent have their own attorneys. Parents may hire a private attorney or have one appointed to them by the court.

“Basically, my job is to discuss with the parents what their goals are, explain the procedure of the courts and the likelihood of achieving their goals,” says Levine. “If the evidence is insurmountable, the best thing is to determine an alternative for the child and assist parents to get necessary services.”

Levine says that with county budget cuts, she has increasingly encountered lawyers who are not adequately compensated by the county and thus do not have the time to appropriately represent complex cases.

“There’s such a volume, and the judges are looking at huge volumes of people coming through it’s not easy to determine if the attorney isn’t doing the work,” says Levine.

Children are represented by a court appointed attorney. The Children’s Law Center based in Washington D.C. provides free legal services for over 2,000 children per year. Executive Director Judith Sandalow says the first step in her attorney’s process is gathering information.

“We try to talk with the child’s parents and anybody who has been very active in the child’s life and look at school records and medical records so we can learn about all the different things going on in a child’s life including whether they are abused or neglected,” says Sandalow. “Just because the government says there’s been an allegation doesn’t mean it’s true.”

She says that the law leans toward reunifying children with their parents or another adult they are already attached to, but that the child’s physical and emotional safety must be guaranteed.

“For us, we know it’s in a child’s best interest to be safely with a person they are deeply attached to,” she says. “It may be in the best interest of the child to get that parent some services.”

Sandalow adds that going to court may be difficult for children, and attorneys must evaluate the appropriateness of a child’s presence in the courtroom on a case by case basis. She says many children struggle to understand the role of social workers, judges, lawyers and other unfamiliar adults after they are removed from their homes.

“I think understanding the notion that the judge gets to make such an important decision about their life is hard,” she says. “It is really hard as a teen to accept that adults make decisions for you, it’s even harder for it to be adults that haven’t been in your life.”

Attorneys must do their best to balance the child’s preferences and needs, the facts of the case, and their own impressions. They spend time discussing their own cultural and personal biases.

“I don’t think it’s possible not to bring your own personal experience and educated experience to bear,” says Sandalow. “Just like the adversarial court system isn’t perfect, I think we feel that way about being best interest lawyers. As a society we don’t have a better solution. Someone has to advocate in the courtroom.”

Despite the imperfect court system, attorneys and advocates like Sandalow say it’s the best shot many parents, like the Los Angeles father of three, and children have to determine the best interest for children that have experienced abuse.

“There’s a reason why dependency court is in a court, which is due process,” says Sandalow. “We’re making a very big decision which is taking away parental rights. It is not something we should do lightly.”

This is part of a series of stories that will describe the juvenile dependency court system as seen by Chronicle of Social Change reporters.

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