Will California Fix Foster Care?

Thank you to the LA Times and the SF Chron for their editorials supporting the bill, AB12, which came before the state legislature this week. The bill is a measure aimed at fixing one of the largest problems in California’s foster care system—namely the fact that foster care kids are cut off from nearly all help or support the minute they turn 18. This occurs with very little preparation or help in getting an apartment, a car, a job, health care….and all the other elements of adult life. They are given a few referrals and a bag holding their possessions. That’s it.

As a consequence, sixty-five percent of those who “age out” do so with nowhere to live, and 51 percent are unemployed

When combined with whatever abuse and/or neglect brought a kid into the system, the effects of this sudden abandonment are stark. One in four former foster kids who matured in the system will be incarcerated within two years of leaving foster care. One in five will become homeless before they turn 20-years old.

Only around three percent of those who age out in foster care will ever go to college.

AB12 proposes to use Federal funds allocated by a bill signed into law by George Bush to extend the care and benefits for most foster kids until they’re 21 years old. The three year extension, it turns out, makes a big difference.

Here’s what the Chronicle said.

Myriad studies have shown that the period immediately after “emancipation” at age 18 is the most precarious for a foster youth. These young people – our children, our collective responsibility – are many times more likely than teenagers with family-support structures to become homeless, incarcerated or pregnant. Their chances of getting a college degree are somewhere in the single digits, according to various studies.

A new study of three states (Illinois, which extends foster care benefits to age 21; and Iowa and Wisconsin, which do not) underscores the cost-benefit ratio of helping young adults get on the right track. The study found that each dollar spent on extended-years support to foster youths returns $2.40 as a result of their increased education alone. If anything, that cost-benefit analysis is extremely conservative, considering the state costs of incarceration, teen pregnancy, homelessness and mental-health programs.

Just to put all this in perspective, a 2007 report indicated that, nationwide, kids who grow up with their own parents typically don’t become self-sufficient until age 26 — and their parents on average contribute $44,000 after they turn 18 in rent, utilities, food, medical care, college tuition, transportation and other necessities to help them get there.

Why then, are we surprised when kids who are “emancipated” from the foster care system generally do so poorly? And why haven’t we done anything to remedy the situation? (Yes, our budget situation is desperate but it is, after all, less expensive to help a kid for a few extra years, than it is to incarcerated him.)

And here’s what the Times said:

For years, thousands of California youths were abused or neglected twice over — first by parents who couldn’t or wouldn’t provide basic care, then by governmental agencies that sent them to live with strangers instead of extended family, only to cut them off from all support on their 18th birthdays.

[SNIP]
[AB12] would represent a huge step forward in fulfilling the state’s duty to see abused and neglected kids through childhood, in the care of loving family members when possible, and into college or paying jobs. But some caution is in order. As final language is hammered out, there may be pressure to divert savings to help with the state’s budget woes instead of reinvesting in foster care. That would be a costly mistake;

The human and the dollar cost of not investing in grown-up foster children has already been shown to be very, very high.

It is time for us, as a state, to act as if these kids who have been put in our care genuinely matter to us.

Actually, it’s way past time.