Two obvious sponsors of AB 12 were its creators, Jim Beall and Karen Bass. Beall’s interests are in helping foster care children, low-income families, and people with disabilities. Bass’ interest in child welfare issues and foster care issues is seen in the legislation that she sponsors; one of her priorities is to improve America’s foster care and adoption system.
Strong supporters of AB 12 are legislative Democrats and Republicans. Many people and groups were on board with AB 12, realizing that the change was needed. Co-sponsors of the bill were the following 9 prestigious agencies: the Judicial Council of California, the largest court system in the nation makes the policies of California courts, which is an alliance of over 110
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The California Youth Connection made sure that they partnered with various child welfare organizations for 2 years to ensure that the long-awaited AB 12 transpired. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Governor of California, was also a proud supporter of AB 12 and its pledges. In an interview in 2009, Schwarzenegger stated that he was committed to work with key players in AB 12 to ensure that foster children and youth were “…provided with the tools needed to succeed at life.”11 Along with this, he believed that the issue at hand was one that was very important to many Californians and also believed the solution to the issue would be to better equip California’s youth by offering the resources and services needed to transition into their adulthood.11
The California Department of Social Services sponsored an AB 12 Kick Off Event where the implementation of the bill was discussed on January 26, 2011, a whole year before its actual implementation.7
Professionals from all over the state whose primary goal is social well-being backed this bill based on their beliefs about giving youth an extension of time to be able to thrive further in life.2
Success/failure
Under the California Fostering Connections to Success Act, Speaker Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Assembly Member Jim Beall of San Jose introduced AB 12 on December 1, 2008. The bill went through the lengthy process that bills
AB 12 lets foster teenagers stay in foster care until they are 21 years old. Often, when foster youth turn 18, their foster parents kick them of the home out due to no longer receiving payment, and the youth have no place to go. With the implementation of AB 12, they can choose to stay in a foster home and the foster parent continues to get a stipend to help pay for the foster teens expenses. The foster teenager also has the option to move out of the foster home and get a monthly stipend that goes directly to them. This stipend is used to help pay for expenses such as rent, utilities, food, etc. This all sounds great, but I don’t feel that it is working for foster teenagers. The concept is good, but definitely needs to be reformed and restructured. To receive AB 12 funding, a foster teenager still has to meet with a county social worker monthly and meet certain criteria which include going to school, working, or looking for work. They can lose AB 12 funding if they do not meet these qualifications. Often, it is hard for the youth to meet these qualifications because they have not learned the necessary skills to effective apply and hold a job or learn how to navigate the college university system to enroll in school. What is happening is that the youth are not qualifying for AB 12 and if they do they are so used to the money that when they turn 21 and lose the AB 12 funding, they end up not
When an adolescent comes into for therapy there is really never an easy task of finding out what is going on. Adolescent that come in who are part of the foster care system will add another degree of challenges. Children and adolescents that are put into the foster care system are not there because they choose to be, they are there due to some event in their life putting them there.
As of September, 2011 in the United States over 400,540 children were in the foster care system. The Minnesota Department of Human Services, 2011) defines foster care as, ?A 24-hour substitute care for children placed away from their parents or guardians and for whom the State agency has placement and care responsibility.? Of the 400,540 children in foster care nationwide, 195,400 were Floridians. With the fifty social service programs nationwide, Florida is one of a very few states in the nation with statewide privatization of social services, for this study, with an emphasis on privatization of foster care. In the present paper, the privatization of foster care plays a significant role in the care and placement of Florida?s abused, neglected, and abandoned children. The major thrust of privatization of foster care was implemented under the administration of Governor Jeb Bush, a staunch political conservative. The purpose of privatization was to provide better foster care services to stake-holders, primarily to find permanent homes for foster children. The Bush administration was always trying to adhere to the conservative mantra of fiscal reduction as it pertained to social services
Each year, an estimated 20,000 young people "age out" of the U.S. foster care system. Many are only 18 years old and still need support and services (. Several studies show that without a lifelong connection to a caring adult, this older youth are often left vulnerable to a host of adverse situations. Compared to other youth in the United States, kids who age out of foster care are more likely to not have completed high school or received a GED, they often suffer from mental health problems, many are unemployed and live in poverty, and nearly 40% become homeless.
In the past few decades there has be an increasing amount of children placed in the foster care system. With the amount of rising teen pregnancies and maternal drug abuse means increasing numbers of infants abandoned at birth. There have been many cases of child abuse or neglect that have been on the rise. State and local agencies are unable to suitably supervise foster homes or arrange adoptions. Statistics show that many children will spend most of their childhood and teenage years in the foster care system, which has shown to leave emotional scars on the child. Today, Child Welfare groups are looking for federal funding and legislation to increase programs and services aimed at keeping families together.
The foster care system in Texas is broken and policies like SB-4 and HB-3859 continue to fracture the system even more. The high volume of children entering into the system and the substantial number of caseloads for social workers are exacerbated by the current policies. It is our job as policymakers and policy analysts to address this issue so that ALL the children of the Lone Star state have a better future. Throughout this memo, I will highlight the current condition of the foster care
The goal of AB 12 is to extend foster care to age 21 and access the federal match of the national foster care system. According to the Assembly Bill 12 Primer (2014), AB 12 does the following:
The purpose of this policy was to provide funding for children aging out of foster care to provide independent living such as housing and job skills. According to Fernandes{ nilausa.org} (2006) “Around 30% of children who left foster care in 2003 were 12 years or younger when they entered care. This suggests that children who are leaving care without being formally reunified with a parent, adopted, or placed in guardianship are a growing concern of child welfare agencies and policymakers. Recently emancipated foster care youth are particularly vulnerable during the transition to adulthood. While many young people have access to financial and emotional support systems throughout their early adult years, former foster youth often lack assistance in developing independent living skills to ease the transition. Studies indicate that youth who have “aged out” of foster care fare poorly relative to their counterparts in the general population on several outcome measures: employment, education, homelessness, mental health, medical insurance coverage,
The implementation of the ASFA certainly carries many strengths with its amendments to the AACWA, including a title using “the term ‘safe families’ that few people would want to oppose legislation with this goal” (Jansson, 2008). One of the strengths of the new law was its movement away from bias favoring reunification that the AACWA once carried, and the placing of emphasis on child safety. Another strength was the change from selective provision of services to universal provision of services, where all special needs children would receive health coverage, regardless of whether or not they were a Title IV-E adoption. The switch to annual judicial permanency planning hearings was also an
For many teenagers, their 18th birthday is an exciting time in their lives. They are finally becoming a legal adult, and are free from the rules and restrictions created under their parents. But not all teens feel the same joy about this coming of age. For the hundreds of thousands of children living in foster care in the United States, this new found freedom brings anxiety and fear. Where will they live after turning 18? How will they get the medications they may need? How will they find a job with little to no experience? How will they put themselves through school? Aging out of foster care is a serious issue among America’s youth. Every year, 20,000 children will age out with nowhere to go, being expected to be able to survive on their
As of 2016 there were nearly a half million children in the foster care system, with roughly 25,000 “aging-out” each year (Ahmann, 2017). Most adolescents “age out” of the system with no one to mentor or serve as a caring parent figure. Foster youth are in dire need of long-term adult role models to guide them to achieve success. According to Ahmann, 50% of foster youth left “the system” without a high-school degree, as well as with having higher rates of PTSD, and depression (p. 43). Ahmann presented that research has proven teenagers, in general, that have quality relationships from adults able to provide support, do better than those that do not. If research has shown efficacy in supportive adult figures in a teen’s life then one can conclude that foster youth would also benefit. Foster children are at a disadvantage a soon as they enter “the system” so giving them resources proven positive is vital to their future success.
Providing a child with an outstanding support system is a vital key in creating an environment in which he or she can learn how to grow as a child, and as a human being. Here at American Airlines we strive to provide children with the absolute highest of quality in foster care. We are pleased to create a proposal that, we believe, will help the Dallas foster care system improve on some of their current issues. The proposal aims to not only construct and provide local events to raise awareness about these issues, but to also host fundraisers geared towards improving the living conditions of foster children. One of these issues is the overcrowding of current foster homes in the Dallas metroplex area.
One of the greatest challenges for child welfare workers for years has been how to serve the unique needs of the older youth in foster care and of those who have “aged out” of foster care. The term “aging out” refers to youth that are forced to exit foster care at the age of 18 because they have reached age- defined adulthood (NASW Press, 2015). The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 attempts to meet those needs by providing states with the option to support youth who are transitioning from foster care to adulthood. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 is a child welfare bill that was designed to achieve greater permanence and improve the well-being of children served by child welfare agencies (Stoltzfus, 2008).
Neil Sherman, a former attorney general in Flagstaff, Arizona who worked in the Department of Child Safety (DCS) for two years, agreed with the general consensus: children of color do have a harder time in the system as well as a harder time getting adopted. Sherman stated that from his perspective, the reasoning behind this is the higher number of reports coming in from people in the lives of these children of color as there are more people, per say, who see them and report or suspect abuse compared to white children,. The role the DCS plays in the mechanics of the system is removing children when they are in evident danger and placing them into the system. “The foster care system and model is inherently flawed and we want to fix it; some parts are good, some are bad, some folks take kids in only for extra cash, some really want to help other families,” Sherman said. There aren’t nearly enough foster families out there for children in general, and the amount that are available can vary
The Social Security act benefited many people. Those who fell in this category were workers, victims of industrial accidents, unemployed insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the handicapped. This Social Security act was later signed into law, by current president at the time, Roosevelt. (Social Welfare History Project, n.d.) Moving along the line in 1970 was when the CWLA helped establish the National Foster Parents Association. In August 1971, this CWLA program received a three-year grant to create an organization based for foster parents. This association was established as an outcome of the concerns of the independent groups. The people felt that the country needed a program to meet the needs of the foster families in the U.S (Family Plus, n.d.). In 1980 the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare became law. The tenacity was to create a program of adoption assistance to ultimately serve different criteria’s. Its purpose was to strengthen the program of foster care assistance for the needy and dependent children, improve child welfare as well as social services and aid to families with dependent children programs (child Welfare Information Gateway, 2012). There are a myriad of different historical information that can lead and relate to the cause of the Child Welfare services. These are all just bits and pieces of importance that historically gives this program