eyes on the children

seventy percent: turning our attention to foster youth

This winter, as part of a non-profit fellowship program, I am working with a 501c3 called SFCASA, or San Francisco Court Appointed Special Advocates. Court Appointed Special Advocates are volunteer community members who work as mentors for foster children, spending time with them every week to build a trusting relationship, to learn about their needs and wants, and to then testify on their behalf in US county courts. CASA volunteers advocate for the services the child needs, the type of placement that would be best, their overall progress, how well they’re doing in school. More than anything, however, they hang out with the kid— trying to put a few fun, supportive, and reliable hours into their otherwise tumultuous lives.

SFCASA is the organization that finds the volunteers, trains the volunteers, and coordinates their relationship with the child and court, alike. It is part of the larger, national CASA program, which has outposts in most major cities and counties across the country. Although National CASA provides a basic program framework, each group is run fairly independently, with the general flexibility to structure their program as fitting. They also have the responsibility find and secure funding. This winter, I’m helping SFCASA review their service model—understanding why it’s particularly expensive as compared to other CASA outposts. The goal is to serve more children while offering quality, comprehensive support and help.

My usual, full time job is actually with the managerial consulting firm Oliver Wyman (www.oliverwyman.com). In this work, we conduct research and analysis to make recommendations for big Fortune companies. The company encourages employees to help the community and develop outside interests, hence it’s non-profit fellowship program that pays employees a stipend to do non-profit work. After developing a relationship with them this fall, I chose to work at SFCASA.

People regularly ask me “Why foster kids? Why CASA?” With so many sexier campaigns—many of which have millions of dollars of funding, people silently weigh foster care versus world hunger, AIDS work, and the thousands of other philanthropic initiatives. They muse why SF CASA rather than the Clinton Foundation or Gates. For various reasons, foster care seems to resonate with overwhelmed government bureaucracies and misguided if well-meaning social workers. And the Hollywood glitterati rarely show up at the Child Welfare Office.

I get that, but quite simply, foster care grabs me because coming from a very traditional, very supportive family it’s hard to imagine life as a foster child. Even at 25, I rely on my parents for so much, it’s saddening to me when others cannot. My mother’s calm wisdom, my father’s ready good humor, thanks to Obamacare, one more year of their family health insurance— these are elemental for me. The issue is of course compounded when I consider life at younger ages. What is a child to think if there’s no one to provide dinner at night? How does a child learn to avoid drug and alcohol abuse if she sees her parents regularly imbibing? How does he learn not to fight others if the very person who is supposed to care for him is actually beating him?

For foster children are those who are taken from their home specifically because the state has received reports that they have suffered some form of abuse or neglect at the hands of their parents. Maybe they were beaten, maybe they were raped, maybe they were starving because food wasn’t available in the house. In 2009, there were 424,000 foster children in the American system—down from the foster care peak of 567,000 in 1999.  This represents about 0.6% of American youth. California has about 20% of the foster population. There are roughly 25,000 foster care children in Los Angeles alone.

The average foster child is between 11 and 15 years old. He can be a he or she can be a she, although boys are ever so slightly common (53% vs. 47%). Similarly, although the typical foster child is White (40%), at 30% and 20%, respectively, African American and Latino foster children are far overstated in the population. Foster care lengths of stays vary from 1 month to over five years, but 22 months is most common.[1] Although 57% of children later reunify with their biological families, 20- 40% will likely find themselves back in foster care in the weeks, months, and years to come—typically because of more troubles at home.[2] Mental health disorders are more common than not among foster children, but while roughly 80% of foster youth ages 6 – 12 years old receive a diagnosis, only 50% receive services.[3] Cognitive development and class room learning is also seen as being an obstacle for foster care students.

Many of these statistics align so closely with sociological statistics we’ve heard through the ages, it’s difficult to get very up in arms when you hear them again. “Yep, that’s about right,” you think, when you hear that foster children are from poor families, where drug abuse is common, and familial incarceration rates high. “Yep, I’d believe that you,” you say when you hear foster children are more likely to drop out of high school, face unemployment, and suffer from mental health problems.

But there is one fact which is quite hard to unearth, is more likely to shock, and might the foster care mission more interesting: quite simply, 70% of prison inmates were once in the foster system. Seven- zero.

This is a figure that is often whispered among social service workers, and quite honestly, this statistic is so shocking and so difficult to nail down, I wouldn’t believe it if it didn’t come from the US government itself. And the government’s hesitancy in sharing it is not surprising. This is a figure that looks bad for both social services protagonists and antagonists. It can easily be presented as evidence of the welfare system’s failings despite the resources granted annually.  Simultaneously, it can be championed as reason for additional services—more funding, more involved intervention, more support. Arguing that additional foster care funding could diminish later prison funding was exactly the point of CA Senator Denise Ducheny (D- San Diego) when she asked for additional funding for foster youth transitional housing in 2007. Although President George W. Bush extended available funding for foster youth aged 18 - 21 in 2008, she gained no republican votes.

But rather than use this figure as a partisan point of attack, it’s perhaps most productive merely to point to it as a reason to fix our attention on the foster system. Whatever the reason, the foster population is so overwhelming over-represented in the prison system, quite clearly, we know exactly the population that could use some attention, support, and care.