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Cutting foster care money likely costs California in the long run |
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Written by Byron Williams
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Monday, 03 May 2010 |
 When there’s a fiscal crisis like the one facing California, it is expected that programs, even those proven effective, might face drastic cuts or elimination.
It is clear programs related to foster care have fallen into this unfortunate category.
Without the benefit of high-priced lobbyists, the state's financial ax can fall on foster care without much blow back or political reprisal.
California's THP-Plus program, which provides transitional housing and life-skills training for youths transitioning out of foster care, is facing drastic cuts for the second year in a row.
Last May, $80 million in cuts resulted in 400 social workers being laid off, the elimination of stipends for transitioning youths, reduced the number of foster youths able to attend college and forced 1,400 THP-Plus participants and 200 of their children onto the streets.
Moreover, 65 percent of 18-year-olds coming out of California's foster care system are homeless within a year and this shameful statistic could get much worse very soon.
In January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2010-11. Among his budget proposals was the complete elimination of THP-Plus funding, if the state is unable to secure an additional $6.9 billion in federal funding.
For many in foster care, the transitional age of 18 often results in being dropped off at a bus station with their clothing and other personal items in a garbage bag and a few dollars in their pocket.
This is the norm more than the exception, representing the initial stage for many who may permanently end up on society's margin.
Up to 80,000 youth will find themselves in the state's foster care system. Mostly low-income and minority, these children often struggle with mental or emotional problems.
In the Bay Area, roughly 600 youth annually lose access to all state-funded foster care services once they reach 18. Without housing, education or emotional support, in addition to the 65 percent that will face imminent homelessness, 20 percent will be arrested or incarcerated, 46 percent will complete high school and only 1 percent will graduate from college.
Moreover, 70 percent of the inmates at San Quentin have some experience with the foster care system.
The state is systematically grooming children who are among the most vulnerable and emotional portions of society, by forcing them to immediately confront, without much preparation, life's bitter realities.
The brutal irony to this dilemma, the rationale for cuts in services today, will almost certainly be ignored should the need arise to do more to address the crime that many within the failed foster care system will likely commit.
The difficult dilemma California finds itself facing raises a familiar philosophical question: Why is there more money for reactionary policies than proactive measures?
First Place for Youth, located in Oakland, receives THP-Plus funding. It assists foster youth through the transition into adulthood and has been such as success story that it has rapidly spread throughout four Bay Area counties and is expanding this summer into Los Angeles:
86 percent of First Place's kids end up in stable housing.
70 percent attend college.
First Place graduates are one-third as likely than other foster-care youth to be arrested or to have a child before the age of 21.
The range of services First Place for Youth provides are often things that most of us take for granted, including housing stability, economic stability, education attainment and community connections.
It is not uncommon to see blank stares during the "how to fill out a job application" segment when kids are asked to put down emergency contact information. It is especially disheartening to know that the reason for the blank stares is that "nobody" is the appropriate response.
Later this month, Sam Cobbs, First Place for Youth's executive director, will be acknowledged for a Leadership Award from the James Irvine Foundation.
Cobbs has led an organization whose primary mission is to work with a faceless population that too often is not a priority when it is time to discuss the budget.
Based on its record, any reduction in First Place for Youth's ability to deliver services stands to have an adverse impact on the communities it serves. Given California's recent track record and deteriorating economic condition, it is likely First Place for Youth will once again face drastic cuts.
Even in a fiscal crisis, cuts to the foster care system will not save the state money in the long run. If anything, it is apt to cost California more, much more, down the line.
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