National Governor's Association Report on Foster Care, Transition to Adulthood

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices released a 2010 report on The Transition to Adulthood: How States Can Support Older Youth in Foster Care, which provides states with strategies for supporting foster youth as they age out of the foster care system and transition to adulthood.

The Table of Outcomes for Foster Youth Compared With Youth in General, on page 4, is a particularly helpful tool for advocacy.

Health Care Needs of Youth "Aging Out" of Foster Care

Did you know that:

• Each year 26,000 youth emancipate from foster care on their 18th birthday and often lose critical Medicaid health coverage?

• Former foster youth experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at six times the rate of their peers in the general population, and twice the rate of veterans returning from war?

• Only 57% of former foster youth have health coverage at ages 23 and 24 --- as compared to 78% percent of their same-age peers without a foster care history?

Beginning January 2014, Medicaid eligibility will be extended to cover children formerly in foster care who are under the age of 26.

Psychotropic Meds for Youth in Foster Care: Who Decides?

Dated January 5, 2011, and authored by the Georgia Supreme Court Committee on Justice for Children, this report makes vital recommendations:

1. Georgia needs to obtain accurate information about psychotropic medications and youth in foster care, including how many youth of what ages are receiving which medications for what purposes and at what costs.
2. Georgia needs to develop guidelines for the use of psychotropic medications for youth in foster care.
3. Georgia needs to develop a clear process for obtaining informed consent for the administration of psychotropic medications to youth in foster care. The process needs to be specific about who has authority to consent for a youth in foster care.
4. Georgia should develop one or more independent clinical teams that include a board-certified child psychiatrist to provide the following services:
   • individual case consultation to the state agency and prescribers;
   • training for those who work with youth in foster care;
   • independent review of all prescriptions for psychotropic medications that are written for youth in foster care before the prescription can be filled.
5. Youth in foster care should have a comprehensive mental health treatment plan that includes consideration of a variety of interventions and treatments that may include medications.
6. Georgia needs to establish quality assurance mechanisms to continuously improve all systems serving the mental health needs of youth in foster care and to hold all parts of the systems accountable.
7. The court system should help raise awareness about psychotropic drugs and youth in foster care.

What I like best about this report is how it describes the level of responsibility that the state has for young people in foster care:


"The state of Georgia has the awesome responsibility

of serving as parent for some 7500 children in foster care."

Serving as a parent implies: Knowing what prescriptions have been prescribed, why they have been prescribed, what the side-effects are, what the long-term treatment plan is -- and not hesitating to advocate if the medication appears to be more harmful than helpful.

Did You Know About This Progress in Florida?

Normalcy for Foster Care Youth
"For many years youth in state care were not able to participate in the same types of activities as their peers. In order to fix that problem, the state is now required to include a “normalcy” component in the case plan.

According to Fla. Admin. Code 65C-30.007(10), youth should be encouraged and supported in taking part in extracurricular activities, obtaining work, attending social events, learning how to drive and doing all the other normal things that youth do.

Preparation for Adulthood
Florida law requires that transition planning begin for youth in state care at age 13 with the adoption of an education or career plan The state is required to conduct a “pre-independent living assessment” for all youth between the ages of 13 and 15.

It should then identify services needed to meet the needs identified in the assessment. The state must then conduct a staffing once a year to ensure that the youth receives the services and training necessary to develop independent living skills. Florida Statute §409.1451(4)(a).

Forging An Education and Career Path
Beginning at age 13, the youth’s case plan must include “an educational and career path” component based on the abilities and interests of each child. Florida Statute §409.1451(3) (b)1.

This path must be incorporated in the case plan and must be reviewed at each judicial hearing. The youth, assisted by foster parents and DCF or the CBC, must chose one of these post-secondary goals:
1. Obtaining a 4-year university degree.
2. Obtaining a 2-year college degree.
3. Obtaining a career/technical certificate.
4. Beginning employment or apprenticeship after completing high school or enlisting in the military.

How does YOUR state rate regarding Child Welfare Outcomes?

Check out the Child Welfare Outcomes Report Data Customer Report Builder and find out...

Plight of the Working Poor -- the Fastest Growing Class in America

Quote from The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler:

"Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn, hold them back. The term by which they are described, 'working poor,' should be an oxymoron. Nobody who works hard should be poor in America."

Did you know that:

• The fastest growing class in America is the working poor?
• One out of every three families in the United States is considered to be "low income?"
• Over 1 in 10 children in the United States has at least one unemployed parent?

The Winter 2010-2011 Working Poor Families Project Policy Brief revealed:

• Over 10 million low-income working families in the United States, an increase of nearly a quarter million from the previous year.
• 45 million people, including 22 million children, lived in low-income working families, an increase of 1.7 million people from 2008.
• 43 percent of working families with at least one minority parent were low income, nearly twice the proportion of white working families (22 percent).
• Income inequality continues to grow with the richest 20 percent of working families taking home 47 percent of all income and earning 10 times that of low-income working families.
• Over than half of the U.S. labor force (55 percent) has “suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers” since the recession began in December 2007.

Quote from Half in Ten, a national campaign: “Call it a war on poverty, call it expanding the middle class, call it promoting economic security. Call it whatever you want, but start making the connections between the plight of middle-class and lower-income Americans, and get involved.”

Federal Reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act

On December 20, President Obama signed the reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), which funds services to protect children from abuse and neglect. CAPTA also includes the Adoption Opportunities Program, and this year the Act strengthens this program.

The Department of Health and Human Services is now required to spend 30 to 50 percent of Adoption Opportunities Program funding on key areas such as post-adoption support and recruitment efforts for older children, children of color, and children with special needs.

Counting the Invisible Men

Counting the Invisible Man: Black Males and the 2010 Census (2011), published by the Twenty-First Century Foundation and Frontline Solutions, is research brief that outlines:

• The efforts of four communities to increase the participation and counting of African American males in the 2010 Census
• Potential strategies to utilize in 2020

State of Homelessness in America

The National Alliance to End Homelessness recently released a report, The State of Homelessness in America, indicating that:

• Homelessness is on the rise
• Youth aging out of foster care are among the four populations most likely to go without shelter
• In the course of a year, the estimated odds of experiencing homelessness for a young adult who ages out of foster care are 1 in 6

How Our Federal Tax Dollars Are Spent

Source: Center of Budget and Policy Priorities.

Youth Unemployment: An International Problem

Young people have borne much of the brunt of job losses during the recent global downturn.

Coping with unemployment is difficult for anyone. But for disadvantaged youth lacking basic education, failure to find a first job or keep it for long can have negative long-term consequences on their career prospects -- what some experts refer to as “scarring.”

From 2006 to 2010, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reviewed the youth labor markets in 16 countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Summary and Main Recommendations for the United States is available at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/30/44161929.pdf

Three key points, when it comes to the United States:

• At-risk youth are often left behind  when it comes to school-to-work transitions
• These youth often remain disconnected from the workforce for many years
• Labor market programs that target the needs of disconnected youth are underfunded

Approximately five million young adults in the United States are “disconnected youth;" defined by WIA as low-income youth who face one or multiple challenges to employment or learning.

Quote from OECD report: "Not only are the vast majority of youth currently in this at-risk group not receiving the support they need to reconnect to education and the labour market, but their number is likely to increase significantly in the wake of the current economic crisis if urgent action is not taken."

OECD Recommendations include: 

• Holding high schools accountable for the workforce and college readiness of their students
• Promoting the use of apprenticeships for teenagers (for example, in Michigan's School-to-Registered Apprenticeship Program)
• Encouraging small employers in rural areas to join together and train youth apprentices 

Health Insurance Premiums Rise Faster than Wages

According to the latest Commonwealth Fund report:

• Premiums for employer-sponsored family health insurance increased an average of 41 percent across states from 2003 to 2009, more than three times faster than median incomes. 

• Yet,insurance is paying for less. The analysis found that deductibles per person rose 77 percent on average. 

Their conclusion was:

• If these trends continue at the rate prior to enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the average premium for family coverage will rise 79 percent by 2020, to more than $23,000. 

• If reforms succeed in slowing premium growth by 1 percentage point annually in all states, by 2020 employers and families together will save $2,323 annually for family coverage, compared with projected trends.

Learn more about YOUR state by checking out their Interactive Map.

Source: C. Schoen, K. Stremikis, S. K. H. How, and S. R. Collins, State Trends in Premiums and Deductibles, 2003–2009: How Building on the Affordable Care Act Will Help Stem the Tide of Rising Costs and Eroding Benefits, The Commonwealth Fund, December 2010.

How Much Does It Cost Us NOT to Invest in Emancipating Foster Care Youth?

Cost Avoidance by Investing in Transitional Foster Care Youth

A cost analysis by Cutler Consulting in 2009 estimated that the involvement of former foster youth in the criminal justice system costs in excess of $4 billion over the lifetime of each annual cohort of youth exiting foster care.

The cost associated with a higher than average pregnancy rate for youth aging out of foster care is 15 years X $7,708,490 (the cost per year) = $115,627,350 for each cohort year.

Raising the graduation rate of one year’s cohort of youth aging out of foster care to the national average would result in increased earnings and lowered public costs of more than $1 billion.

Source: Cost Avoidance Bolstering the Economic Case for Investing In Youth Aging Out of Foster Care. Cutler Consulting, 2009.

States Can Achieve Better Outcomes, Lower Costs by Supporting Youth Transitioning From Foster Care to Adulthood

The NGA Center for Best Practices is the nation’s only dedicated consulting firm for governors and their key policy staff.

Their recently released report, The Transition to Adulthood: How States Can Support Older Youth in Foster Care (December 2010), explores the following strategies:

• Promoting educational attainment
• Connecting youth with employment and career training
• Enhancing access to safe and stable housing
• Helping youth access and manage health care
• Helping youth build stable, lifelong relationships

As NGA Director John Thomasian states, "Because states continue to face austere budget conditions, many of the strategies described in this report have little or no cost; involve getting existing systems, such as education and health, to work more collaboratively; and leverage available federal and private funding in new or different ways."

This report demonstrates that successful state supports not only improve the outcomes for foster youth, but reduce costs to states that result from negative outcomes such as criminality, low educational attainment, lack of medical insurance, homelessness and an increased need for public assistance like food stamps.

From Which Piece(s) of the Pie will Ohio's $8 Billion Deficit Be Taken?

Ohio Senate Districts Pre- and Post-Election

Ohio House Districts Pre- and Post-Election

Ohio Congressional Districts Pre- and Post-Election

Standing On Shaky Ground

The recession of 2008 and early 2009 took an economic toll on 93 percent of American households, according to a new report from the Rockefeller Foundation and Yale University, the first to detail how economic insecurity affects the well-being of Americans.

The Worst of Times: Increase in Extreme Poverty from 2008-2009

A new Southern Foundation study, The Worst of Times: Extreme Poverty in the United States in 2009, reveals that:

• Americans living in extreme poverty (below 50 percent of the official poverty threshold) were the fastest growing income group in America last year.

• In 2009, 18.8 million people, including nearly 6.5 million children, were living in households with income below 50 percent of the poverty threshold.

• Half of the additional 2.1 million persons who fell into extreme poverty in 2009 resided in only seven states: Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New York, and Ohio.

• Between 2008-2009, the number of persons in extreme poverty in Ohio increased with an additional 87,420 people.

In the meantime, the Republican members of the House of Representatives have proposed cutting this fiscal year’s non-defense discretionary spending back to 2008 levels and also rescinding any unspent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) money.