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NCYL’s Foster Youth Education Initiative has released its long-awaited report on how California is ensuring foster children receive appropriate educational opportunities.
Most children have parents who monitor their academic progress, attend parent-teacher conferences, enroll them in appropriate classes, and generally ensure they receive a quality education. Their parents serve as their educational advocates.
Foster youth frequently lack such advocates. As a consequence, they often fail to receive the opportunities necessary to succeed in school. This report examines an emerging strategy designed to ensure foster youth receive the opportunities they need: the creation of educational advocacy systems for foster youth.
Download the report.
NCYL is working to improve access to mental health services for California's "out-of-county" foster children: children placed in foster care outside the county where they lived when they first became dependents of the state. More than 80,000 children live in foster care in California, the largest foster care population in all 50 states. Of those, 20 percent (approximately 16,000) are placed across county lines. Due to the administrative structure of mental health care delivery and funding in California, out-of-county children experience frequent and lengthy delays in getting mental health services, or do not receive them at all. Given the prevalence of both mental health needs and placement instability among foster youth, such delays are harmful to their development and well-being, and in some instances are life-threatening. Read More
East Bay Express, Oct. 28, 2009
In 2008, Judith Crane made one of the hardest decisions of her life. She called the police on her teenage daughter Cindy. Doing so meant her daughter would soon be headed for juvenile detention for violating probation. Read more.
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Civil advocacy is an essential component of the mental health courts, and improves the diversionary potential of the courts. Most fundamentally, civil advocates improve access to resources and services. The National Center for Youth Law’s (NCYL) role in the mental health courts is to coordinate the civil advocacy component and promote potential for diversion and access to mental health services. Read more.
The National Center for Youth Law’s victory in Dyer v. CIF has prompted significant policy and legislative developments that further advance the rights of California foster youth. The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) has revised its bylaws so that foster youth can readily participate in school sports when they transfer to a new school.
Recently enacted California Senate Bill 39 requires release of important information about deaths of children from abuse and neglect. Since July 2008, NCYL has been monitoring implementation of the new law. The results to date are mixed: some compliance, but also considerable resistance. cont'd...
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