Foster Youth Savings Through Relative Placement Can Equal Millions

Since 2008, most state agencies have bemoaned their slashed budgets and the growing cost to maintain services. A case in point is the $7.2 billion bill to taxpayers for social services for foster teens who age out. This estimated cost is based on the 24,000 foster children who aged out in 2013 and the social services they will incur over their lifetime. However, millions in tax dollars could be saved while much more is done to help foster youth.

One financial impact area is the placement of foster children. Once a child comes into foster care, the clock starts ticking for the social services agency to locate family members. The hope is for "relative placement," having a foster child cared for by a relative. The alternative is "foster placement," where the child goes to live with non-relatives. The difference in cost for placement can result in millions of dollars in savings for a state.

California presently pays $820 a month to a foster placement parent while allocating only $351 a month to a relative placement such as a grandparent of the foster kid. The difference in payments is $469.

For now we'll overlook the numerous studies that highlight that foster youth do much better when living with a family member or the glaring disparity in payments. Instead let's focus on the potentially large savings.

When one takes this difference in foster care payments, in this case $469, and multiplies it by each foster child, the savings are huge. California had 81,174 foster kids as of 2009. If each child had been in relative placement compared to foster placement, California would have had an extra $38 million to spend on supporting the economy, benefiting businesses and improving foster care services.

These savings are based on a perfect scenario and can never be fully realized. However, it should be clear that for the benefit of foster youth, taxpayers and the state, foster care agencies must have a goal to find family members so that whenever possible, foster kids are placed with relatives. To help ensure that as many foster children as possible are in relative placement, agencies must do their utmost to search out family members including those who still live in Mexico.

There's no denying that every state budget and agency took a hard hit because of the recession. However, instead of looking back, foster care agencies need to look for solutions that will allow for more and better care of foster children while saving millions in taxpayer dollars. It's time for the public to demand more from foster care agencies; otherwise, they will continue to waste resources while leaving foster youth with dismal futures and taxpayers with billion dollar tabs.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

PS. Like and follow us on Facebook for more information about foster teens.

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Foster Children Impact San Diego Businesses

San Diego Business Owner

We all know that companies are in the business of making money. Without profits, a business won't last too long. With all the activities of marketing, sales and operations, it's easy for companies to overlook other costs that can and do impact their bottom line as well as opportunities to generate more sales and profits.

A commentary in San Diego's The Daily Transcript provides more shocking statistics about foster kids and touches on their financial impact on businesses. "On any given day, 3,500 children are living in foster care in San Diego County. Some children enter the foster care system and... never leave until they come of age."

The cost to support one foster child in California for the average stay of three years is $190,000. That's tax dollars at work including those of companies. The commentary hits on several costs that impact businesses, both in California and nationally.

"The cost of supporting foster children carries through into adulthood, which means increased social services. Unfortunately, crime is a byproduct of foster care, as is an uneducated workforce, due to the poor academic performance and dropout rate correlated with foster children."

By the way, that cost for increased social services has been estimated to be $300,000 over the lifetime of just one foster youth. Reports say that nationally 24,000 foster teens age out each year. Crunching the numbers taxpayers will pay a staggering $7.2 billion. Next year, 24,000 more foster kids will age out for another hit of $7.2 billion.

Let's put this amount into perspective.

2014 budget: $2.8 billion 2014 budget: $4.1 billion

The cost to communities and businesses for the 24,000 foster kids who aged out in 2013 is more than the 2014 budgets for both San Diego and Houston with a combined population of 3,272,122.

The commentary gives many suggestions as to how businesses can support children while in foster care and once they age out. However, one critical activity was omitted, that of supporting efforts to find family members of foster youths.

Several studies reveal that foster kids do better when they are connected with family members whether a grandparent, aunt or adult sibling. Many of these children can be reunited with a birth parent who was not responsible for the child being placed in foster care.

The solution to helping foster children is not to simply feel sadness or pity for them. Businesses can and should take an active role in helping these children. Not only will these kids benefit greatly by the effort, but savvy companies can promote their efforts to develop and increase goodwill with consumers in the community.

Business involvement can help reduce criminal activity committed by aged out foster youth. Otherwise, companies can lose financially by having to pay for expensive security products, systems and personnel, increased insurance rates and the direct cost of vandalism and theft.

Businesses could do much worse that to help foster children and create a win-win for everyone.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

PS. Like and follow us on Facebook for more information about foster teens.

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Foster Children - Knowing Their Parent Is Important

It's the start of a new week, and like many people, you may have spent your weekend with at least one family member. Most of us probably don't give it a second's thought about our time with family. We just enjoy, eat, talk, listen, eat, bicker, argue, eat, make up and repeat because it's family, and that's what families do. Unfortunately, this reality is not one that many foster children can related to because often they don't know their family.

It can be difficult to imagine how it would feel to meet a birth parent we had never known. Although she was never a foster child, Faith Hill, country singer and actress, was adopted just days after being born. After she was married, she spent three years searching for her birth mother. Faith gives us an insight into the emotional draw that exists between a child and their birth parent.

"I look like her, and I walk like her. I actually look most like her mother, my granny," Faith said about seeing her mother for the first time. "I just stared at her. I'd never seen anyone that looked anything like me. It was the awe of seeing someone you came from. It fills something."

That "something" is often left empty for foster kids. This lack of parental connection leaves a whole in their heart. There is an overwhelming need for children to know their birth parents. Time and again, we are approached by former foster children to find their parent in Mexico.

Although we do our best to help, foster youth deserve to have a quality effort exerted to locate family members including a birth parent before they age out. Foster kids would have a much higher quality of life if they knew their parent who can connect the child with other family members such as grandparents and siblings.

As a society we owe it to these children to help them, including emotionally. These connections may result in a foster kid moving out of foster care which is the goal of everyone because foster care was never meant to be a place for a child to grow up.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

PS. Like and follow us on Facebook for more information about foster teens.

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California Foster Children Costly for Relatives

Pretty much every expert agrees that foster care is not a nice place for children. Understandably, one of the goals of foster care is to move children out of the system as quickly as possible. Many child-welfare experts agrees that it's in a foster child's best interest to be placed with family members because foster kids "experience more stability, fewer placement changes and more contact with biological parents and siblings."

So it's pretty alarming to discover that only California has a policy so that caring relatives who take in a foster child receive less money than if the foster youth was placed with a non-related family. You read that right! Instead of going into the history of how this came about, the bottom line is that a foster kid's relatives are financially punished while complete strangers are paid more, respectively, a lot more.

Here's an example:

"The state pays $820 a month to a nonrelative caretaker of a 15-year-old foster child—or what UC Davis determined to be the minimum cost of caring for a foster child with no special needs—but only $351 a month to a relative provider through CalWORKs."

I can hear some of you ROFLing so let's overlook the ridiculous $820 a month that a nonrelative caretaker receives much less the insane pittance of $351. Anyone who lives in California knows that this amount is beyond fantasy and nothing close to real costs in 2014.

This issue gets even crazier when you realize that there are laws in place mandating the identification, location, and notification of a foster youth's relatives with the hope that an adult relative will step forward and care for the child. In California, the average stay in foster care for a child is more than three years with an average cost of $190,000 or $5,000 per month!

These relatives who come forward to care for their kin saving the child from a sad life in foster care also save taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. These family members do so not for the money but as Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald, who took in two related foster children, said, "We step up because we want to help kids stay with their families."

With some much benefit being received by a foster youth and the cost savings to county foster care agencies, it makes no sense to penalize family members by giving them less financial aid than complete strangers receive. Or maybe it's just another example of governmental insanity.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

PS. Like and follow us on Facebook for more information about foster teens.

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Are Foster Childen Being Protected by Foster Care System?

Almost weekly, some foster child advocacy group questions whether these children are being protected by the very systems put in place to ensure just that. The latest article comes as an editorial questioning certain aspects of the foster care system.

One area of concern involved the high level of secrecy that surrounds foster children cases. The same federal law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPPA,  that protects your medical information from being shared with anyone is the same law that protects information about foster children. No one argues against this protection, but when there is no oversight or even a chance at oversight, an environment is created where abuse and omissions can and do take place.

Some states understand this possibility for abuse and are taking positive steps. Judy Nord, a lawyer with the Minnesota Judicial Branch, shared that South Dakota is opening hearings and records to the public.

At the same time, other states, such as California, have a virtual lock on access to hearings or records. Only one, Los Angeles, out of 58 counties allows for some access by the media and "interested parties" due in large part to Michael Nash, the presiding judge of Los Angeles County Juvenile Court.

Late 2013, this ruling was being called into question by some saying that access, especially by the media, could harm the foster children involved.

However, an LA Times editorial in December of 2013 supported access to foster children cases and rebuffed any fears reporting that:

"parents who felt their cases were being rushed through by overburdened lawyers and social workers have expressed relief to have outside eyes present; lawyers who complained of judges delaying cases have welcomed coverage that creates a disincentive to dawdle. The tentative ruling cites no instance in which any [foster child] has been harmed by the presence of reporters."

Unfortunately, Judge Nash's ruling was reversed in March 2014 by the California Court of Appeal. It's expected that Judge Nash will give a new order so that some public access will continue to the benefit of foster youth.

Without this ability to shine a light on proceedings, foster youth can spend years in foster care at a cost of up to $66,000 per child per year. Family members, even those living in Mexico, can remain in the dark and without notification that their child relative is now a foster kid. This notification is mandated by many states such as California as well as by federal law. And all the while, children are suffering by the failings of the system. It simply doesn't need to be this way.

We taxpayers, who are financially supporting the foster care system, should not only want a system that is transparent but demand a system that continues to improve to deliver the best possible outcome for our foster youth. The key to knowing that the system is working is through openness.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico

PS. Like and follow us on Facebook for more information about foster teens.

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A Foster Kid's Life versus Hollywood Teen

Once again a young well-to-do teenager has mistaken his plight in life as being equal to that of foster children. While debating with his sister about their family life, Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith, was caught saying ”We have no parents all the misfits are foster kids.”

One former foster child took to writing a response. Michael Price points out that the life of foster youth is vastly different from that for their peers and world's away from the lifestyle of Hollywood kids. Michael talks about moving nine times as a foster child in less than 10 years and always with his clothes in a garbage bag.

Yet although foster children suffer greatly while in foster care, many do make it in life after they age out. Take former Miami Heat star and former foster child Alonzo Mourning, who will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later this year. He credits his success and the man he is today to his late foster mother, Fannie Threet.

Being a foster child is really a life of opposites. Many face a life of instability, homelessness, drugs and prison once they age out of foster care. Yet some foster kids go on to achieve great success, sometimes putting them at the top of their field. I agree with Michael that when this happens, we are given a glimpse into what real courage and inner strength is all about, essentially people at their best.

Jaden will have his own struggles as he becomes a man, but it may be wise not to compare himself to foster children. He just might get upstaged.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

PS. Like and follow us on Facebook for more information about foster teens.

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Moms and Foster Kids Focus of Holiday Event

Unless you have been unplugged from all media and stopped shopping at the stores, then you know that Mother's Day is just around the corner. (It's May 11th just in case you are living off the grid.) Many organizations are using this holiday not only to celebrate motherhood but also to raise funds to help foster children.

One such organization is Voices for Children Foundation in Washington. The event will have lots of activities for both mothers and children. The money raised will go to help regional foster kids.

This event is just another example of how a community can come together to have fun while helping needy foster children. We hope they have a blow out event.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

PS. Be sure to say HI (and if possible give a hug) to your mom on May 11.

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Foster Youth Lack Support from Healthy, Loving Homes

Many foster children have lives with stress levels that most people can't imagine. You may have heard this before, but it's so worth repeating:
 
"A collaborative study hosted by Harvard Medical School found that former foster youth had post-traumatic stress disorder rates up to twice as high as U.S. war veterans (Pecora, et al., 2005)."
 

Martin Guggenheim, Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law, wrote, "When a child is placed into foster care, he loses not only Mom and Dad but often brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, friends and classmates. For a young enough child, it can be an experience akin to a kidnapping."

Unfortunately, many foster youth age out of foster care and carry these emotional and mental scars with them throughout their adult life. Not only is there a real human cost for these children, but society (meaning taxpayers) also bear the cost. One researcher estimates that the cost to support one foster kid who has aged out is about $300,000. We must and can do better.

Finding relatives of a foster child is an inexpensive way to start the process to get these children out of foster care so that can have the same healthy, loving home environment as their peers.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

PS. Like and follow us on Facebook for more information about foster teens.

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