Articles

J4 Social Change End of Semester Celebration

Jennifer Rodriguez is New Executive Director of Youth Law Center

Attorney Jennifer Rodriguez has been advocating on the rights of foster youth since her days with California Youth Connection, when many of her efforts resulted in legislative accomplishments including the development of a foster youth bill of rights, educational rights and services for foster youth, and increased efforts for permanence for older youth.

Now as the new Executive Director of the Youth Law Center, Rodriguez will not only be able to advocate on behalf of youth across the nation, but use her own experience growing up in the foster care system to make positive change for youth today.… Read more

Big Foster Care Stories in 2012

While the news media’s coverage of California’s foster care system is generally driven by isolated cases of tragedy and systemic failings, another narrative exists.

Over the past twenty years, the numbers of children entering the system has been halved while lengths of stay for those that do enter foster care have also been reduced. California has led the nation in legislation that addresses the educational needs of foster youth and has built an incomplete but promising infrastructure to help foster youth transition to adulthood including the passage of landmark legislation to extend foster care in 2010.

But for all the … Read more

FMC To Speak At Re-Envisioning Foster Care Conference

I question whether or not I can be considered an expert on foster care. In May, I will be representing FMC at the Re-Envisioning Foster Care in America Conference hosted by Judy Cockerton and the Treehouse Foundation in Easthampton, MA. Experts from around the nation will be there speaking about ways to improve the system, top leaders like Juvenile Court Judge Lillan Miranda, National Foster Youth Action Network Founder Janet Knipe, and Vanessa Diffenbaugh, foster mother and author of “The Language of Flowers.”

I will be participating in the Innovation Panel, and sometimes wonder what I can tell people that … Read more

John Kelly on Wexler’s Exit

The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) was borne of a 1991 meeting in Cambridge, Mass., in which its founders decided it was necessary to create a single entity that would identify and challenge media coverage and what NCCPR Board President Martin Guggenheim described as a “powerful desire to blame the worst things that happen to children on their parents.”

Eight years after that founding meeting, the board was financially able to hire an executive director to lead NCCPR. It tapped Richard Wexler, a journalist of 19 years who had in 1991 published a book challenging the growing role … Read more

Education and Foster Care

The foster care system has historically been so concerned with safety and finding a stable placement that it has often missed the importance of fostering the well being of the children in its care.

As foster youth bounce from foster home to foster home they change schools at much higher rates than their peers. Early trauma affects learning, and a culture of low expectations can inhibit the educational growth of students in foster care.

But, over the last decade we have seen advances in state and federal policy, increased philanthropy support and heightened media coverage hinging on the educational stability … Read more

NCCPR, Family Preservation Advocacy Shop, Goes Dark

Richard Wexler, its controversial leader, leaves for new job.

The March 29 update on the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform blog, an acknowledgement to the organizations donors and supporters over the years, was labeled simply -30-, a journalist’s signal that a story has ended.

The post, written by the group’s founding Executive Director Richard Wexler, may indeed mark the end of the cash-starved NCCPR, which announced that it was suspending operations on March 30 “due to lack of funding.”

“We have slowly but surely over the last couple years lost the capacity to secure level of grants made it … Read more

A Delicate Web

The promise of post-secondary education for California’s foster youth.

While oft-quoted statistics point to the hardships foster youth face upon aging out of the foster care system, a broad array of interests from higher education, policy and philanthropy have mobilized throughout California over the past two decades, creating a wide and varied array of supports as these young people try to navigate college.

This web of services – ranging from tutoring to housing – has changed the life trajectories of thousands of California foster youth. But competing forces: the evisceration of monies for public higher education on one hand, and … Read more

Adoption Institute Finds Rise in Open Adoptions

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute announced Wednesday the results of a new study which finds the vast majority of infant adoptions are “open,” meaning the two families have some level of ongoing relationship.

The new report, “Openness in Adoption: From Secrecy and Stigma to Knowledge and Connections,” is a new Institute survey of agency practices relating to infant adoption placements. The study, along with a review of other relevant research, yielded these key findings:

·         “Closed” infant adoptions have shrunk to a tiny minority (about 5 percent), with 40 percent “mediated” and 55 percent “open.” In addition, 95 percent of … Read more

Racial Disparity in the System: Why Black Children Are Overrepresented in Foster Care

There are over 500,000 Black children in CA, and almost 13,000 of them, or 2.4 percent, are in foster care.

There are 2.5 million White children in CA, and 13,500 of them are in care, or .05 percent.

Nationwide, Black children are 2.7 times more likely to be places into care than White children. And they wait in care 30 percent longer than other children.

On March 9th, FMC hosted an event with the Black Community Services Center at Stanford University to address these numbers and possible reasons for the racial disparity in foster care. Enriching the discussion was the … Read more