What's New
At Annual Convening, Sites Celebrate Success, Set Goals for Future
Youth who attended the 2007 All-Site Convening
St. Louis – Only five years after its founding, the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative has helped more than 2,000 youth open bank accounts, save for asset purchases, and develop leadership and advocacy skills that promise to change the way the nation's foster care systems prepare youth for adulthood.
Moreover, by drawing public attention to the many challenges that youth face when they age out of foster care, the Initiative has contributed to the enactment in several states of laws that provide them with health insurance, more financial support for college and housing subsidies.
"These are important developments for which you all deserve major credit," Gary Stangler, the Initiative's executive director, said here on July 18 at the opening session of the annual all-site convening. About 85 representatives from the Initiative's ten demonstration sites gathered to review the Initiative's progress, share strategies, and discuss the continuing challenges to youth who age out of care.
The Convening brought together youth and
advocates from across the nation
Since the Initiative's inception, about 2,200 youth have opened Opportunity Passport™ accounts, Stangler reported. As of last December 31, 1,740 of them had deposited a total of $1,330,867. A quarter had qualified for matched withdrawals of $850,166, which they used for vehicles housing, education, investments, medical expenses, and microenterprise. (In general, participants receive a one-to-one match for withdrawals for asset purchases. Some sites have obtained additional resources and increased this match as high as 4:1)
Stangler noted that the Initiative's successes were a source of pride at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, co-founder of the Initiative with Casey Family Programs. Stangler shared these words from AECF president Douglas W. Nelson at the Initiative's board meeting last spring: "The hope that a multi-site, multi-state initiative could have a major impact has long been an aspiration of the trustees. We now see greater traction, growing reach, state commitments to expand it, and a real demonstration of the power of youth engagement. We are approaching a critical mass for major change."
Although there's much to be proud of, much remains to be done, Stangler cautioned. A major challenge is assuring permanence for youth who leave foster care without being reunified with their families or being adopted. "It's the hardest thing we do, yet it's the most important thing we do," Stangler said. "The particular challenge for us is how we integrate permanence into preparation for independent living. Permanence is not enough."
Convening participants took part in group discussions
Another major challenge is the disproportionate representation of minority children in foster care, other speakers said. "Minority children are 40 percent of children in the United States, but 50 percent of the children in foster care," said Susan Kelly, senior associate of the Center for the Study of Social Policy. "We need to have a shift in the way we think, from, 'That's just the way it is,' to, 'This is totally and completely unacceptable.' We need to recognize that it's not just individual worker bias. It's institutional racism that is part of the problem."
Among the highlights of the convening:
- Through a role-playing exercise, participants gained a firsthand understanding of how "teaming" or "team-planning" can lead to better decisions about permanence. Adopting the perspectives of a social worker, foster parents, birth mother, relative, sobriety sponsor, and youth, participants considered how best to assure permanence for a fictitious 16-year-old youth named Ellie, who had been in foster care for five years. Ellie's mother had recently relapsed after a year of sobriety, and was seeking more contact. Although the role-playing groups came up with a variety of different proposals for assuring permanence for Ellie, each gave both Ellie and her mother the opportunity to be heard.
Sarah Greenblatt, director of the Casey Center for Effective Practice, said that teaming reflected the "the core value that the voices of youth and family are critically important. Teaming is probably the most respectful way that a group of people can come together to talk about the hard issues, and about achieving and sustaining these connections."
- A panel of speakers from Iowa, Connecticut and Michigan talked about new permanency strategies in their states. Iowa has at least 15 different initiatives, ranging from using the Internet to find relatives to using family team meetings to ensure family support after emancipation. Connecticut is focusing on changing the mindset of its social workers, keeping siblings connected, and facilitating youths' relationships with their biological families after they leave care. Michigan is trying make sure that before aging out, every youth takes part in a team decision-making meeting to assure that they have housing, medical care and the support of adults.
Among the barriers to permanence cited by panel members were youths' wariness about adoption. "Sometimes it's hard to think about adoption when you're younger, because you don't fully understand the concept," said Jewel Barner, an Opportunity Passport™ participant from Des Moines. "One thing that played a role in my not getting adopted was that I didn't want to not be able to go and see my mother any more."
Another barrier may be concern over losing certain transition benefits if adoption takes place before age 16, said Carol Behrer, executive director of the Youth Policy Institute of Iowa, an Initiative grantee. "We're almost at the point where we're providing a disincentive," she said. "I think we're creating a real dilemma for ourselves by encouraging permanency and then denying these options once they achieve them."
- Adult and youth participants met separately to discuss barriers to youth engagement in the Initiative's work. Both groups identified some of the same barriers – transportation, lack of trust between adults and youth and demands of work and school. "These are some tough hurdles to get over," observed FosterClub founder Celeste Bodner, who facilitated the discussion.
Fortunately, there's a payoff when the hurdles are overcome, she noted. "Effective youth engagement can have a lot of impact on your program," she said. "But it can also have a profound impact on the young people." Several of FosterClub's All-Star interns talked about the impact on their lives of programs like the Initiative and FosterClub.
Anthony Reeves of Atlanta: "It provided me with a sense of purpose. I'm able to see that it affects those who come up behind me. When I look into the youths' eyes, it gives me hope and pushes me to strive for better things for other people."
Sherena Johnson of Atlanta: "Being involved gave me communication skills. I had a natural desire to speak up for youth, but I was afraid to talk. When I became involved with my youth board, it made me blossom."
Alex Pringle of Denver: "It's taught me a lot about leadership skills. Now I think outside the box.."
Schylar Canfield of Butte, Mont.: "When I entered FosterClub three years ago, I had never even heard the word 'permanence' before. After I started teaching a workshop called 'Getting Solid,' I learned that I had permanence all my life, even though I didn't know it, with my sixth-grade music teacher. And this year I'm getting adopted."
- In two sessions entitled "Going to Scale," participants shared their successes in expanding the Initiative's reach beyond its initial sites. For instance, last year, the Iowa site helped persuade the Iowa Legislature to provide Medicaid coverage and housing subsidies for emancipated foster youth throughout the state. "We had to think about policy from the very beginning, and that strategy has allowed a lot of important things to happen in Iowa," said Behrer, the site director. "Having that policy piece out front has made a huge difference in our ability to go statewide."
In Connecticut, the Initiative's work was initially confined to Hartford and Bridgeport, but it has expanded recently to New Haven, with a further expansion planned to Waterbury. The Connecticut site has also begun serving youth in the juvenile justice system, which was not an initial target.
In Tampa, where the Eckerd Family Foundation is a co-investor in the site, there are plans to expand into two other counties. In addition, the site has partnered with the Lumina Foundation to provide special guidance counselors for youth in foster care to help them stay on track educationally. "That partnership was developed by stating the need and showing the data," said Dorcas Stratham-Walker, director of Operations for Camelot Community Care. "Sixty-five percent of youth in foster care are in special ed classes, not always rightly so."
MaryLee Allen, director of the child welfare and mental health division of the Children's Defense Fund, predicted that the Initiative's efforts in individual states would have an effect at the federal level. "Things happen at the federal level because they're happening at the state level," she noted. "The momentum is building. We've got to use the force that's out there to get some action now. The basic social justice issues are extremely important. We as a state have raised these children, and we have an obligation to make sure that they succeed."
Allen said the Initiative's efforts could benefit from what she believes is a growing interest in trying to do things to eliminate childhood poverty. "We've got to make sure that the groups working on this are aware of what we're doing for youth who age out of foster care," she said. "They have to see that as a group they're important to invest in."
- The Initiative's work has clearly leveraged additional investment in new supports for transitioning youth by other foundations, corporations, and state governments, the participants were told by a consultant with Cornerstone Consulting Group. "This initiative has been unusually successful in achieving leverage, not only in getting good bang for the buck, but getting other folks to put up resources, at really a remarkable level," said Ira Cutler, Cornerstone's co-director. "The case has been made convincingly for me that Jim Casey thinking has influenced a whole lot of things that might not be obvious."
Putting a dollar figure on the value of the leveraged benefits that can be attributed to the Initiative is difficult because many advocacy groups are workings towards the same ends, he noted. But in the sites that claim the most leveraged dollars, among the strategies that were crucial were building strong partnerships and involving youth in advocacy.
"Why does this work? It's the kids. In talking to the field, we have to be not only explicit about this, but also make it come alive. It's a strategy, not just a slogan," he said.
