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

 

 

 

 

 

Youth Services Insider: Time for New Numbers on Adoption Disruption

by John Kelly

Youth Services Insider was able to attend a recent roundtable discussion on prevention the disruption of adoptions involving children in foster care. The conversation started on that subject, but grew to include discussion other aspects of adoption policy.

Following are a few thoughts from the discussion, which was led by former foster youth and child welfare researchers.

How big is the problem? Who knows?
Twenty-eight years ago, University of Maryland School of Social Work Dean Richard Barth completed a study in California aimed at projecting how many adoptions of foster children are disrupted. There’s a few ways a disruption occurs, but the majority of times it entails new contact with the child welfare system or a youth running away from home.

“In California, we went to each county and asked them if they could give us a list or some information about what the disruption rates were,” Barth said in an interview the week after the roundtable. “Some counties had spreadsheets ready, and some didn’t have a clue.”

Barth and his colleagues then asked if the agencies could contact the families where disruptions occurred, and ask if they’d agree to an interview with researchers. Ultimately, he said, just over 100 families agreed to discuss their experiences.

Barth’s team found that about 14 percent of adoptions disrupted. Since then, two studies in Illinois, conducted in the 1990s, found similar rates. And while the federal government helped spur a rise in adoptions out of foster care with financial incentives in the Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997, it has never required states to report on the success of those adoptions.

Illinois is generally considered to be one of the better states at handling adoptions. But even if we assume the national rate is really been steady at 14 percent since the 1980s, that means there are a whole lot more adoptions disrupting than there used to be.

The number of adoptions from foster care exploded during that time period – from 28,000 in 1996 to 50,000 in 2011. So now, it would be 14 percent of a much bigger pie.

Barth called at the roundtable for a new study to get underway this year and to be ready in time to mark the 30th anniversary of his initial venture.

How would he structure this iteration, we asked Barth on the phone a week after the discussion? He said the best approach might be to find between six and ten states that have some capacity to track children post-adoption. Massachusetts and Illinois are pretty much able to do so now, he said.

The trick would be finding a common way to follow an adopted child out of, and then back into, a system. A big challenge to that, said Barth: in most cases, “their names change” when they get adopted.

YSI mentioned that the Chronicle had, in a recent Knight Foundation grant competition about data, pitched the idea of using social security numbers to follow adopted youths. The theory being: only a youth who was adopted and then had a new child welfare case initiated afterward, would have a SSN show up twice.

“Social security numbers are not in all the [state] databases,” said Barth. “If you got adopted, say you’re 17 now and adopted at 3 in 1998, it is very unlikely that your SSN was entered” before the adoption.

Social security numbers are “much more routinely used” now by agencies, he said, but they are loath to divulge them and risk youths falling prey to identity theft.

Medicaid numbers are issued to most youths in the system, he said, so that might be a better or safer way to use data as a trace on adoptions.

Regardless of the trace identification method, Barth points out that this would only reveal the youths who made further contact with child welfare systems after an adoption. It would not include some of the youths who run away from adoptive homes or children who were placed into residential treatment directly by their adoptive parents.

Either would constitute a disruption, he said; following ID numbers would capture neither.

What is being espoused now might not be working
Barth expressed a similar dim view of the knowledge base around what works to keep adoptions from disrupting.

“Casey Family Services did a big study on its post-adoption services” in Maine, Barth said. “They couldn’t come up with any real evidence that the services had an impact.”

Residential placements are an option that adoptive parents will often pursue on their own, said Barth; indeed, he mentioned at the roundtable that he put his own adoptive daughter in a residential care facility after she threatened his wife a number of times.

Years later, he said, he commiserated with other adoptive parents about how foolish a choice it was. The data on “residential care is pretty bleak, there’s almost no evidence it works and some evidence that some kids get worse.”

Actually, the more accurate take is that the net effect of residential care is zero, Barth said in the phone interview: some adopted foster kids do thrive in the setting. So it may be worth examining what factors into successful residential programs: what are the characteristics of youths who thrive there? What type of program components have the greatest benefit?

Barth also said that efforts should be made to establish a standard, national home visitation screen. James Williams, a former foster youth from South Carolina, agreed. He discussed his experience being adopted by unstable parents that would quickly abuse him, landing Williams right back in foster care.

“Whenever youth go into adoptions, there should be more adult visits,” said Williams. “My adoptive parents had a record of domestic violence. It’s insane when you think about how badly systems want to get kids out. They’re willing to put [youth] with anyone.”

Inform Kids
Based on the experiences of the four former foster youths on the panel, systems generally listen to children’s views on adoption. The problem, according to 23-year-old Tawny Spinelli, is that very little is done to shape the view of children about the possibilities of adoption.

“When I was approached about adoption, I was 13,” Spinelli said at the roundtable.  “I had already had seven different placements with seven different families, some relatives some others. If I don’t belong with other families, why would an adoptive family work?”

But nobody helped her think through that quandary, and her initial reaction was to say no. And nobody brought up adoption with her again until her foster parent mentioned the prospect casually when she was already 17.

Connection to birth family: option, not mandate
Marchelle Roberts, one of the foster care alumni who spoke at the roundtable, said  that little effort was made to keep her connected to relatives when she was still in foster care, and then after her adoption was finalized.

“My adoptive family made me who I am today,” Roberts said, “but I want relationships with any fellow siblings or uncles, etcetera, that I can.”

Ashley Lepse, also a former foster youth, said she was forced to visit with her biological mother even though she did not want to and was on a path from foster care to adoption. Lepse said the mandate was what she disliked, and agreed with Roberts that every foster and adoptive youth should be able to find and seek out their biological family members if they choose to do so.

John Kelly is the editor of The Chronicle of Social Change

Bill Would Curb Foster Care Entries Linked to Deportation, Immigration Issues

by John Kelly

A bill was introduced yesterday that aims to curb the number of children placed in foster care because of immigration enforcement, and end the termination of parental rights brought on because of deportation proceedings.

“While current law allows undocumented individuals to become a foster or adoptive parent, our child welfare system continues to be biased against undocumented caregivers,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), who  introduced the Help for Separated Families Act yesterday, in a statement on the floor of the House of Representatives. “Undocumented parents love their children and want the best for them as all parents do.”

The legislation comes eight months after the release of a report from the Applied Research Center (ARC), which found 46,000 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported in the first six months of 2011, leaving more than 5,100 of those children in foster care.

ARC also visited six detention centers and interviewed almost 70 parents for the report. Nineteen had children in foster care, and many more said they feared that their children “might enter foster care because the child welfare system might decide that their children are not safe with their current caregiver or that the caregiver is too poor to support them,” according to the report.

“Immigration status in itself has become grounds to permanently separate families,” said Roybal-Allard, who was born in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, for decades an historic landing spot for immigrant families. “This is absolutely, unquestionably inhumane and unacceptable – particularly for a country that values family and fairness so highly.”

The Help Separated Families Act would amend Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, under which states receive matching funds through an entitlement that exceeds $6 billion each year. The changes would address four central issues:

-Child welfare standards at the state and county level must ensure that “the Immigration status alone of a parent, legal guardian, or relative shall not disqualify the parent, legal guardian, or relative from being a placement for a child.”

-Child welfare officials may not question the immigration status of any relatives seeking to have a child placed with them, “except to the extent necessary in determining eligibility for relevant services or programs.”

-Officials must accept legitimate foreign documents – such as a passport or consulate card – as sufficient identification with which to conduct a criminal background check.

Roybal-Allard included this in the legislation after learning that many caseworkers and attorneys mistakenly believe it is impossible to check a criminal history without the use of a Social Security number.

-Child welfare agencies may not file petitions to terminate the rights of parents “based on the removal of the parent from the United States or the involvement of the parent in an immigration proceeding,” including one leading to detention. The only exceptions to this would be if the agency could demonstrate to a judge that the  “parent is unfit or unwilling to be a parent of the child,” or if it can demonstrate that is has exhaustively sought family members inside and outside the United States to care for the child.

The requirements would take effect on the first of the day of the state fiscal year the followed a president’s signature on the law, unless a state demonstrated the need to pass legislation to comply with it.

YSI: Reunification Talk on Capitol Hill

by John Kelly

Youth Services Insider caught most of the Congressional briefing on family reunification this week, which was hosted by a quartet of organizations: the American Bar Association, the National Foster Care Coalition, Children and Family Futures and the Child Welfare League of America.

The general thrust was this:  The successful execution of reunification plans gets short shrift when it comes to improving child welfare systems. Making foster care situations better, and increasing the number of adoptions, garner much of the attention for reform, even though both are more expensive propositions than returning a child home.

This is not entirely the fault of the system; it takes both an amenable court and a willing parent to make a reunification plan work. Speakers Robin Lyde and Sue Jacobs of New York’s Center for Family Representation (CFR) argued at the briefing that overburdened courts and caseworkers were poor partners in reunification, and that a more personal approach is needed.

That is the model CFR and a few other organizations have developed in New York. CFR pairs each family sent its way with a staff attorney, caseworker and a parent advocate to help them meet the requirements of a reunification plan.

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) has introduced a bill (H.R. 3873) that would amend the federal Court Improvement Project to include potential funds for “the provision of legal representation to parents and legal guardians with respect to child welfare” proceedings.

The bill would increase the Court Improvement Project authorization by $10 million dollars, and set aside the funding for grants to help family courts provide representation. Applicants would have to demonstrate how they would set up the program, how it will prioritize services and collect data on the program.

It could open up some pilot replications of the CFR approach. If courts partnered with a similar area nonprofit, the funds could alleviate the biggest cost (lawyers) and allow the organization to focus other funds on parent advocates.

The advocate is the crux of the CFR model. A vigilant lawyers and caseworker can help craft the best plan and explain it to a parent, but it’s the advocate that has the credibility to push the parent to stick with it.

Another advocate, Curtis Lindsay of D.C.’s Parent Advocate Project, spoke emotionally at the briefing about including parents formerly involved with the system. Kayla Becker of the American Bar Association got his speech on video, and was kind enough to share:

Feds and Foundations to Fund Supportive Housing for Homeless Families with Child Welfare Cases

by John Kelly

The Administration for Children and Families announced a $35 million initiative, $10 million of which is private foundation funding, to replicate a New York City program aimed at stabilizing families in crisis through supportive housing.

The “Partnerships to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing for Families in the Child Welfare System” initiative will provide five-year cooperative agreements between ACF and the winners who apply from non-profits, for profits and government agencies. Those agencies will be charged with establishing triage systems to screen and accept “reports received to determine which such reports require an intensive intervention due to severe housing issues,” according to the funding notice (FOA) issued this week by the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, a division of ACF that focuses on child welfare and early childhood development.

“This initiative will help those working within child welfare systems and the supportive housing field to improve the functioning and social and emotional well-being of vulnerable children and families,” said ACYF Commissioner Bryan Samuels in a statement.

ACF will spend $25 million, given out in five-year cooperative agreements in five different communities. The money is drawn from discretionary funds appropriated under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, which was reauthorized in 2010.

Government, nonprofit and for-profit entities are all eligible to compete for the funding, and there is no cost-sharing or match requirement. The deadline to apply is July 30.

Four foundations have agreed to partner with ACF on the initiative, and will provide the following amounts to the project:

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF): $6 million

Casey Family Programs: $2.5 million

Annie E. Casey Foundation: $1.25 million

Edna McConnell Clark Foundation: $750,000.

The foundations’ role will be to assist public agencies or human services organizations that enter into cooperative agreements.

“Post-award, the consortium of foundations is offering opportunities for successful grantees to access technical assistance and to participate in further knowledge development in this area through additional evaluation,” according to the funding notice posted by ACF.

The venture seeks replication of a New York City pilot project called Keeping Families Together, which is operated by Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), a 20-year-old New York-based nonprofit that funds supportive housing projects around the country.

Keeping Families Together began in 2007. CSH recruited 29 families who had been homeless for at least a year and had an open child welfare case. The families moved into housing provided by six area nonprofits. CSH channeled money for job training, education and health services to the families through the housing provider partners.

An evaluation of Keeping Families Together found that of the 29 families moved into stable housing in 2007, 26 remained there in 2009. A comparison group of 15 families lived in shelters for an average of 15 months during that same time frame.

Families in the program experienced 46 abuse/neglect cases in the three years prior to their move to supportive housing, according to the evaluation. During the families’ residence, the number of cases decreased to 13. No children were removed from the home and only two ACS cases were reopened during the KFT pilot.”

Robert Wood Johnson funded CSH to establish Keeping Families Together as a pilot project, and recently provided the organization with funds to explore replication of it. Samuels visited CSH and some of the housing sites this year, and received a briefing on the pilot project evaluation findings.

How CSH factors into the ACF initiative is unclear at the moment. It could seek to assist the five winners, or it could compete to actually win one or more of the cooperative agreements.

“That is a choice our program officers will make,” said CSH Spokeswoman Susan Donley. “We don’t know yet what our formal role will be, if any. We hope to be involved in some way.”

Click here to read the entire funding notice.

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

Lawmakers Aim to Help Foster Youth Earn an A+

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

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

By. Daniel Heimpel 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life on the Bubble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Kelly and Anna Jacobi contributed to this story.

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