|
Publications from the Vera Institute ++++++++++ Education for Homeless Youth: The McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act The act ensures that children are entitled to continued enrollment in their home school or immediate enrollment in a new school. It also provides a stream of federal funding for an array of supports including, but not limited to tutoring, transportation, and cash assistance. Communities nationwide have applied McKinney-Vento eligibility to young people who have runaway from a foster home, group home, or other placement, and children in a number of temporary living arrangements including shelter, foster homes, group homes and evaluation centers. Useful links: ++++++++++ On Their Own – Youth Aging Out of Foster Care This new book tells the stories of ten young people who have made the transition from foster care to adulthood with varying degrees of success. It includes chapters on policy, practice, and advocacy. Its authors are Martha Shirk, an author of two previous books on social issues, and Gary Stangler, the former director of social services for Missouri. The list on this book is $24.95, but I found it for $16.97 on Amazon. ++++++++++ The Link The latest issue of CWLA’s juvenile justice/child welfare newsletter is on the internet to read or download. Articles of Interest:  | Youth in Foster Care Who Commit Delinquent Acts: Study Findings and Recommendations |
++++++++++ Youth Skills Development and Training Program – unique alternative educational program in Chicago for foster care youth. The program is all-encompassing. It provides not only education, but learning and life skills, and social and cultural needs. 65% of all students graduate, become employed, transfer to another school or remain enrolled. ++++++++++ Rights of Foster Parents At the National Foster Parent Association web site you will find several different versions of the Foster Parents’ Bill of Rights, including those enacted by law in a number of states. ++++++++++ How You Can Create a Positive Educational Experience for the Foster Child The Vera Institute of Justice presents this kit, designed primarily for use by caseworkers and educators, to lay out challenges to the educational success of foster children. The kit includes tools and lessons that can be adapted for use in any community. For example, these: how to facilitate school registration and how to increase adult attendance at parent/teacher conferences. Downloadable pdf file. About 30 pages. ++++++++++ Therapeutic Foster Care A CDC Task Force on Community Preventive Services review reports research shows that therapeutic foster care programs reduced violent crimes among adolescents ages 12-18 with a history of chronic delinquency an average of 70% compared with programs for youth in standard group residential treatment facilities. Therapeutic foster care programs place troubled youth with trained foster families. During the program adolescents live for 6-7 months in a structured environment where they are rewarded for positive social behavior and penalized for disruptive and aggressive behavior. ++++++++++ Fight for Your Rights: A Guidebook for California Foster Youth, Former Foster Youth, and Those Who Care About Them The National Center for Youth Law prepared this manual intended to help foster youth to understand the rights and services available when leaving the foster system. Its author is an attorney and a former foster youth who aged out of foster care in Los Angeles. ++++++++++ View From the Bench: Obstacles to Safety & Permanency for Children in Foster Care A nationwide survey of judicial officers provides an extensive look at how judges who hear child dependency cases view their own courtrooms and hurdles to providing permanent families for children in foster care. Among the survey findings: | Overcrowded court dockets delay finding, safe, permanent homes for children in foster care, according to a majority (52%) of judges for whom abuse and neglect cases make up more than 1/4 of their dockets. | | Barely half (40%) of all judges who hear abuse and neglect cases received any specialized training in child welfare issues prior to hearing child abuse or neglect cases. | | When asked to rank their number one frustration with the child welfare system, 46% ranked the lack of available services for families and children in need as their greatest frustration. |
The link above is to the executive summary of the survey. Click here to read a CNN article about the survey that includes comments from Chicago judge Nancy Salyers and Nebraska judge Douglas Johnson, both NCJFCJ members. ++++++++++ Investigative Report: Failing Texas Foster Children This is a video of an investigative report on state care done by K-Eye TV in Texas in May, 2004. The report includes footage of the death of a teen in secure care and interviews with a number of officials, including Judge Jeanne Muerer. Click on the link above and scroll down to the May 5 report. ++++++++++ Zero to Three/NCJFCJ Publications About and For Courts One in five children who enter foster care is an infant. Infants are the largest group of children to enter, remain and re-enter the child welfare system. Court Teams for maltreated Infants and Toddlers – three page fact sheet describing the Court Teams project. Multidisciplinary court teams, co-led by a judge and a child development specialist, with the intent to raise awareness, increase knowledge and skills, and to change practice regarding the needs of maltreatment infants and toddlers and their families involved in the child welfare system. Ensuring the Healthy Development of Infants in Foster Care: A Guide for Judges, Advocates and Child Welfare Professionals – A working tool to help understand the questions to ask and the resources that can address the special needs of infants in foster care and strengthen their families. 32 page pdf file. The link above will take you to a page entitled Babies, Toddlers, Foster Care and the Courts with these two publications as well as a publication from NCJFCJ all available as downloads. ++++++++++ A Family’s Guide to the Child Welfare System Published by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), this publication is intended to help families learn about | law and policies within the child welfare system that direct the actions and decisions of agency workers and courts. I | | service systems, the roles of the people who work in them, and their roles with families. | | ways to advocate for family rights | | parent responsibilities when involved with the child welfare system, and | | practical tips from other parents. |
The guide is 140 pages in length with chapters about CPS and out of home placement, adoption, guardianship/kinship care, independent living, a terms and definitions section, and a resource section. It is downloadable as a whole or by chapter and can be purchased in hard copy from CWLA. ++++++++++ Final Report of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care The Pew Commission released its final report on foster care on May 18. The study examines federal financing and court oversight of foster care. Recommendations for courts call for: | Adoption of court performance measures by every dependency court. | | Incentives and requirements for effective collaboration between courts and child welfare | | Leadership from Chief Justices and other state court leaders in organizing their courts to better serve children, provide training for judges, and promote more effective standards for dependency courts, judges, and attorneys. |
The recommendations also require stronger accountability for how public dollars are used to protect and support children. The key components to the Commission’s financing recommendations are: | Preserving federal foster care maintenance and adoption assistance as an entitlement and expanding it to all children regardless of their birth families’ income and including Indian children and children in U.S. territories. | | Providing federal guardianship assistance to all children who leave foster care to live with a permanent legal guardian. | | Helping states build a range of services from prevention to treatment, to post-permanence. | | Encouraging innovation by expanding and simplifying the federal waiver process and providing incentives to states. | | Strengthening the current Child and Family Services Review process. |
Complete text for the recommendations available in the Executive Summary (12 page pdf) and/or the Compete Report (70 page pdf ). ++++++++++ Children, Families, and Foster Care: Issues and Ideas The latest issue of The Future of Children journal examines the plight of children in foster care. It highlights three key areas that can improve how children and families experience foster care and can enhance accountability within the child welfare system: | Routine monitoring of key indicators of healthy development for all children in foster care. | | Better systems integration to ensure that children and families receive the services they need. | | Case plans more focused on the individual needs of children and their families. |
This means the foster care system must broaden its goals beyond securing safe placements for children in foster care to helping children and families thrive. This is the last hard copy issue of The Future of Children. Future issues will be available online. To read this, and previous issues, click on the link above. ++++++++++ The vMentor Program www.vmentor.com The Orphan Foundation of America (OFA) is a program to demonstrate how e-mentoring can work. The site serves to establish relationships between adult volunteers and foster youth living in remote locations. It can also enhance communications for adult/youth mentoring pairs who cannot meet face-to-face as often as they would like. The expenses associated with e-mentoring are about half those of traditional mentoring. Another service, www.fosterclub.com, puts foster care youth in touch with each others and serves as an information clearinghouse, providing youth with immediate answers that would normally have to wait on responses from overworked case managers. Both sites offer secure, password-protected connections. ++++++++++ Education for Foster Children in Illinois Falling Short In an article about education for children in foster care in Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reports on a University of Illinois study that estimated that high school age state wards miss an average of five weeks of school a year. Younger children have the same experience. Experts agree that multiple transfers and lengthy absences put students at disadvantage. ++++++++++ ++++++++++ Guardianship Procedures in Maryland to be Reformed Maryland’s largely unregulated process for appointing guardians of abused and neglected children will be rewritten by the state’s Department of Human Resources to screen all prospective guardians for physical and mental fitness and certification that the guardian home has passed fire and safety inspections. No current state laws in Maryland regulate guardianship. The primary distinction between foster care and guardianship is that foster parents receive state money for support of the child and guardians do not. ++++++++++ Pew Commission Report on Children in Foster Care The Pew Commission has released its first report on children in foster care (Thank you, Christy). The study was established to develop recommendations to improve outcomes for children in the foster care system. Voices From The Inside identifies six long-term costs of foster care in terms of the price they cost in human lives: | The Cost of Insecurity | | The Cost of Poor Communication | | The Cost of Inflexibility | | The Cost of Not Securing Timely Help | | The Cost of Professional Burnout | | The Cost of Stigma |
Read more about the study at the link above. To read or download the executive summary (32 pages), click here. ++++++++++ ++++++++++ Ensuring the Healthy Development of Infants in Foster Care - A Guide for Judges, Advocates and Child Welfare Professionals The Zero to Three Policy Center and the New York State Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children jointly published this working tool for those involved in the court process to understand the questions to ask and the resources that can address the special needs of infants in foster care and their families. The Zero to Three Policy Center and the New York State Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children jointly published this . Infants are the largest group to enter, remain in, and re-enter foster care. This is a downloadable PDF file. This is a downloadable PDF file. ++++++++++ Educating Children in Foster Care At the National Conference of State Legislatures web site you can read and/or download this monograph discussing the problems of school attendance for children in foster care. According to the article a number of studies have confirmed that foster children perform significantly worse in school than do children in the general population. The causes of poor school performance for foster care children are varied and include a history of abuse and neglect, changes in placement, state problems of responsibility and accountability for foster children, and lack of coordination. ++++++++++ ++++++++++ Fewer Children Enter Foster Care in Wayne County, Michigan—But Costs Skyrocket Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan’s costs for foster care come from a complex system that uses 31 separate funding streams to pay for foster care and adoption services for children. On the other hand, an innovative community-based juvenile justice system has saved state and county taxpayers more than $10 million since it was launched in 2000. Reporter Jack Kresnak talks about the delinquency reforms and funding changes that made the $10 million savings possible. He also talks about the complexities of the Michigan child welfare system and the difficulty of making changes there. ++++++++++ Project Visitation Project Visitation is a project of the Family Court of the First Circuit in Hawai’i . It was created to maintain the relationship between siblings who are living in separate foster homes by bringing them together for monthly visitations. The program is a joint effort by state and private agencies. Social workers refer cases of separated foster siblings to the program and volunteers are trained to work with them. Two volunteers usually work with one sibling group, especially when children live in different parts of the island. The Human Services Department loans its eight-passenger vans for the visits. The project now has 68 volunteers and 31 sibling groups with 128 children. Once again, thanks to Judge Mike Town. Read Honolulu Star-Bulletin articles about Project Visitation Project Visitation web page ++++++++++ Identifying and Addressing the Needs of Children in Grandparent Care This new publication from the Urban Institute looks at the hardships experienced by grandparents and children in kinship care relationships. Those hardships include low income, grandparents’ health problems, and children’s well being. The report, for instance, finds that while all grandparents caring for a grandchild are eligible for financial assistance through child-only TANF, few receive it. It concludes that grandparent caregivers need specific services, suffer from a lack of income, are often unaware of the services available to them, and have limited access to services. ++++++++++ Raising the Broken Heart The South Bend Tribune has published a five part series on four former foster care children and their lives since they were released from foster care at age 18. Tribune staff followed these four for a year, interviewing and observing their lives, their foster parents, and their friends and mentors. The has published . Tribune , their foster parents, and their friends and mentors. Des Moines Register Series on Homeless Children The Des Moines Register follows four young homeless Iowans as they fight for survival. About six out of 10 homeless people in Iowa are 21 or younger. This is a week long series. The page you link to here will take to you all of the stories in this series. Thanks go to Sharon Starling, a Brevity reader, for sending me the link for this eye-opener of a series. ++++++++++ National Governors Association Center for Best Practices Issue Briefs ++++++++++ Kentucky Foster Care Census The Kentucky Foster Care Census is “a proactive, innovative, and child-centered response to provide comprehensive data about the location and well-being of all Kentucky ’s children in out-of-home care.” The Census was initiated in July 2002, to: | verify the safety and placement of every child in out-of-home care in the state; | | gather data on the essentials of child well-being identified in the federal Child and Family Service review and the literature; and | | conduct a needs assessment interview with foster and pre-adoptive parents about child wellbeing and the relationships between foster parents and the Cabinet for Families and Children.. |
Between September 9, 2002 and January 6, 2003 131 census takers visited all 1,338 DCBS Resource Homes. | 100% of the 2,996 children in DCBS homes on 8/25/02 and still committed to the state at the time of the census visit were met in their resource home. | | Standard data on child well-being indicators were collected from the foster parents for every child. | | 84.5% of all foster and pre-adoptive parents completed a comprehensive interview on child well-being and their needs as foster parents. |
Read the complete report (9 pages) with very readable, very clear graphics. PowerPoint presentation link too. ++++++++++ Improving Educational Outcomes for Youth in Foster Care: Perspectives from Judges and Program Specialists (Scroll about 2/3s of the way down the page for this and the bulletin below) This recent Technical Assistance Bulletin from the Council’s Permanency Planning for Children Department is one of the outcomes of a joint project of the Casey Foundation, CWLA and NCJFCJ. It reflects the fact that foster youth consistently lag behind their non-foster peers in educational attainments. The TA Bulletin identifies and describes promising efforts designed to address and support the educational needs of youth in care. Readers may also want to look at a PPCD Technical Assistance Brief, The Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 and the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program (A companion document, Improving Educational Outcomes for Youth in Care: A National Collaboration is available from CWLA. ++++++++++ $$ Help for Former Foster Youth This program in Washoe County , Nevada provides assistance to former foster youth ages 18-21 through a fund created by a $1 recording fee on all real estate documents handled by the county recorder’s offices. The fund will help young people with child care, car repairs, utility deposits or other expenses to establish a foothold in society. ++++++++++ Preventing Unnecessary Detention of Children in Foster Care Involved With Juvenile Justice For the past three years the Vera Institute of Justice’s Project Confirm has helped the New York City child welfare and juvenile justice systems work together to nearly eliminate detention bias against foster children. Before the program began police, juvenile probation officers, and detention staff had struggled to identify children in foster care, contact the adults responsible for them, and convince those adults to come to the station or courthouse. Today Project Confirm staff check child welfare records to determine whether they are in foster care. They then notify appropriate agencies, inform the agencies of their obligation to provide information and stand up for the kids in court, and guide them through that process. ++++++++++ Frontline: Failure to Protect This Frontline report examines the death of a five year old girl while in foster care in Maine . Her foster parent was a Maine DHS caseworker who was found guilty of manslaughter and is serving 20 years in prison. Materials available at the site include the history of Logan Marr, caseworker interviews, interviews with national experts, discussion on child welfare policy , resources, readings, and links. Includes a section on ASFA (Adoption and Safe Families Act – 1997) ++++++++++ Children of Incarcerated Parents Project The State of Oregon created this project to improve outcomes for the children of incarcerated parents. The Oregon Department of Corrections in partnership with the Oregon Social Learning Center has developed a parent education program. Inmates participate in a six week parent education course. Following the course, qualified inmates will participate in therapeutic visitations. ++++++++++ Lost in Plain Sight: The Legacy of Foster Care (scroll down the page) The Tallahassee Democrat is running a five-part series on the lives and experiences of five former foster children. Staff spent six months conducting interviews and reviewing hundreds of pages of state documents and studies on the child welfare system to produce the series. The first two parts have been published and can be read at the newspaper’s site now, the three remaining segments will be published Sundays through March 9. ++++++++++ From the Children's Bureau Express: Disproportionality in Juvenile Justice System May Have Roots in Child Welfare - 17 States have now implemented programs to help youth in foster care earn college degrees. Improving Higher Education Opportunities for Foster Youth - Research suggests that cultural and racial bias in child welfare decision-making may compound the problem long before children reach the justice system. ++++++++++ Foster Care/Youth Transition - Includes guidebooks developed by the Annie Casey Foundation expressly for use by foster children to educate them about personal finance, future goals and transition materials, including school to career publication and a guideline for the development of foster care handbooks from CWLA. Free. Order online. ++++++++++ Indiana Appleseed - Report on youth aging out of foster care. Scared, Lonely and “Up Creek” reports on what happens to kids in foster care in Indiana when they turn 18 and offers suggestions for reform. About 10 pages. Downloadable. Kansas Appleseed – Foster Care Teens: Kansas’ Forgotten Children, this report criticizes Kansas SRS use of federal funds earmarked for foster care teens and poses recommendations to import services to increase post high-school educational support for youth who age out of foster care. About 10 pages. Downloadable. |
Subject Library 
