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With a grant from The California Wellness
Foundation, the Children's Advocacy Institute (CAI)
is working on a three-year project aimed at expanding
the transitional services available to foster youth
who emancipate, or age out, of the foster care system
at 18. At a January 16, 2007, press conference in the
State Capitol, CAI released its report entitled, "Expanding
Transitional Services for Emancipated Foster Youth:
An Investment in California's Tomorrow,"
which details how state and federal laws and programs
fail to provide California’s emancipated foster
youth with a meaningful opportunity to attain self-sufficiency.
While some state and federal funding is available for
former foster youth, it is sorely inadequate to provide
the support necessary to enable these youth to transition
to self-sufficiency. In California, current programs
for emancipated foster youth are fragmented and underfunded,
fail to provide comprehensive assistance and services,
and do not reach a significant number of former foster
youth in a meaningful way.
CAI also released details on its proposed
Transition Guardian Plan, which would
replicate as closely as possible the commitment of responsible
parents during the transition of their children into
independent adulthood. Under CAI’s proposal, former
foster youth who opt to participate in the Transition
Guardian Plan will receive a monthly stipend and support
services. The stipend is sent to a court-appointed adult
guardian who meets with the youth on a monthly basis
to distribute the funds, plan for their use, and verify
the youth’s continuing progress toward self-sufficiency.
The stipend would be based on the youth’s needs,
but would typically range from a high of $850 per month
in the first year of participation down to $258 per
month during the fifth year of participation, decreasing
as the youth becomes more self-sufficient. An important
element of the Transition Guardian Plan is the guardian
position itself. “Ideally, this guardian will
be someone with a prior relationship with the youth
— to accomplish the continuity otherwise lacking
for many of these children. The guardian may be the
foster care provider, a relative, a CASA, the youth’s
attorney, or some other person who is competent, responsible,
cares about the youth and in whom the youth has confidence.
CAI also unveiled the results of the nation’s
first transitional services cost-benefit analysis,
which shows that significant cost savings would be attributable
to keeping former foster youth out of prison and off
welfare, and helping them become self-sufficient, tax-paying
members of society. Using just those three factors,
CAI’s analysis shows a benefit-to-cost ratio of
2.98 to 1 (or 1.85 to 1 present value) for one cohort
and 3.1 to 1 (or 1.9 to 1 present value) for 40 cohorts.
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