Aging Out of Foster Care: How do we mitigate the risk of homelessness for students transitioning out of foster care?

Nikevia Thomas:

Well, good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining “Are All The Children Well? 2.0,” our series on homeless education and family engagement. You are joining our second session of this series called “Aging Out of Foster Care: How do we mitigate the risk of homelessness for students transitioning out of foster care?”

We are delighted that you are joining us today. Would you take a moment to please type in the chat where you are joining us from? We love to see where everybody is tuning in from. I am here in summery, but rainy Maryland at the moment. Where is everybody else?

Florida. Oh, Ohio, Dayton, Ohio. Philadelphia, Texas, West Virginia, Doylestown, Philly, Illinois. Pittsburgh? Yeah. Pittsburgh. Welcome everybody. Washington State. Oh, Southern California. We have people here from the West coast. North Wales. Wow. Welcome. Oh, PA. Welcome all the same. Welcome. Welcome.

So I encourage you all to keep typing in where you’re from so we can get a sense of who’s in the room. We’re going to move forward in the interest of time. So as I said before, we are MAEC and we are champions of innovation, collaboration, and equity. And now we’re going to delve into our webinar etiquette for our session today. So to communicate with each other, please use the chat box to engage with each other and even the hosting panelists if you have a questions. We recommend that you click on the chat icon on the bottom or top toolbar of your screen.

We are not using the raise hand function. There will be a Q&A towards the end of our webinar today. So please put your questions that you have for the panelists in the Q and A box. For enabling and disabling live captions, it is already enabled by default, but if you want to activate it or unactivate it to turn it off on your webinar controls at the bottom of your Zoom webinar, select live transcript or close caption button and then select hide subtitles. To view the subtitles again, simply repeat step two and select show subtitles.

And I’d like you to meet the webinar support team. We do a lot of work behind the scenes to make the webinar happen. So today we have joining us, Ian is a Data and Evaluation Consultant and he is working on the operations and tech support side of our webinar. Allegra is a Communications Associate at MAEC and will be working on the social media and post webinar supports. And then there is me, my name is Nikevia, and I’m a Senior Specialist at MAEC and I am the virtual event planner for today’s session and I will also work on the chat box support.

So I would also like for you all to meet our facilitators for the afternoon. We have Kailanya Brailey, who is a Senior Educational Equity Specialist with the Center for Education Equity and then Jessica Webster, who’s a Senior Family Engagement Specialist with CAFE, the Collaborative Action for Family Engagement.

So I pass it over to them. Let’s get started.

Kailanya Brailey:

Thank you, Nikevia, again. We thank you all for joining us. We are so excited for all of the learning and the experiences that we’re going to have during this webinar today and we are ready to get to it. So I will briefly go over a bit more introductory information and we will be able to get started.

Here’s our agenda for today. Again, we’ve already had our welcome and begun our introductions. We’ll move into our section called Centering Voice, followed by an overview of Foster Care And Obstacles In Aging Out. We will have a spotlight on South Middleton, followed by a spotlight on Latin American Youth Center and then we’ll have an opportunity to do some Q and A before we close out.

But before we do, I would like to give you some background information about who we are and what we do here at MAEC, which will help everyone to understand why we strive to connect and support all communities. MAEC was founded in 1992 as an education nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to a high quality education for culturally diverse and linguistically and economically diverse learners. MAEC envisions a day when all students have equitable opportunities to learn and achieve all at high levels, and our mission is to promote excellence and equity in education to achieve social justice. We believe that all students deserve to feel welcomed, respected, and safe at school and provided with the opportunities to thrive.

This webinar today is brought to you through a partnership with CEE, our Center for Education Equity and CAFE, our Collaborative Action for Family Engagement. CEE operates in 15 states and territories through support from the Department of Education and CAFE is the statewide Family Engagement Center for Pennsylvania and Maryland.

And this image is an overview of the region covered by region one, our equity assistance center. Again, that’s CEE, the Center for Education Equity. And as you can see, we reach all the way from Maine down to Kentucky and we also support Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. And again, CAFE serves Maryland and Pennsylvania. And now I have the pleasure to turn it over to my co-facilitator, Jessica Webster.

Jessica Webster:

Thank you Kailanya. So our objectives for the day. We want to make sure that you all feel that you’ve gained knowledge of the foster care system and the Independent Living Program. That you’re able to identify policies, practices, and systems of supports that are available to students in foster care who are transitioning into adulthood, and that you’re able to identify effective policies and practices that will lead to the development of impactful strategies.

And so we’re going to kick off on the next slide with our Centering Voices segment of our webinar. In this homelessness series, CAFE and CEE are committed to sharing voices of those who have experienced homelessness so that you have the opportunity firsthand to hear about their lived experiences. In the first installment of our webinar series, we had a youth panel who discussed their experiences. Today we’re going to do it a little bit differently and we’re going to hear from Christina who was a young adult in New York City who aged out of the foster care services, and we’re going to hear about the barriers that she encountered along the way. As you are listening to her story from NBC news, feel free to jot down in the chat any of your wonderings or “aha” moments or how this story impacts you and the work that you do as we move forward. All right, so let’s meet Christina.

Christina Abraham:

Everybody looks forward to their 21st birthday, but in my case, I’m old enough to not have anywhere to live. I’m old enough to be subjected to homelessness.

Antonia Hylton:

Christina Abraham is a child of the foster care system. Born in Harlem, she’s lived in New York City her entire life. Her 21st birthday looms like a day of reckoning.

Over a period of five months, we visited with Christina repeatedly, learning about her life in foster care as she prepared to age out of it.

Did any of your foster parents treat you like you were their actual child?

Christina Abraham:

No.

Antonia Hylton:

Not one?

Christina Abraham:

Nope. The best experience I’ve had with a foster parent is a foster parent who did nothing. I’d rather you do nothing than actively make my life harder.

Antonia Hylton:

How did that change you? Living with people who weren’t caring for you, feeling that sense of instability all the time?

Christina Abraham:

It made me feel terrible. It made me feel like I didn’t matter. I struggled with my mental health. I struggled with depression. I was diagnosed with depression at 10 years old and to feel like I could die tomorrow and nobody would know. Nobody cares about me and that is a terrible feeling to feel like you’re in a world full of billions of people and your life does not matter to anybody. It made me feel like, you know what? Let me please people so that I can have somewhere to stay, because in foster care you’re walking on egg shells. If your foster parent doesn’t like you, they could just say, “Hey, leave my house.” But you can’t say, “Hey, I don’t really like that foster parent,” or, “Hey, can I get another one?” You don’t have that privilege.

Antonia Hylton:

Christina doesn’t know if the group home will let her stay past her 21st birthday. When in New York, like in most states, foster youth are supposed to leave the system. Last year in New York City, more than 500 young adults aged out. She hasn’t found an apartment she can afford.

What possibilities are you looking at right now?

Christina Abraham:

I’m looking at nothing really. Even though I want everything, I’m looking at nothing. I know these streets like the back of my hand.

Antonia Hylton:

Christina wants to return to Harlem, steeped rich Black history, despite the pain she endured here.

Christina Abraham:

This is where it all started.

Antonia Hylton:

It’s where she entered foster care after an abusive childhood. Christina became a permanent ward of the state at eight. She remembers her mom leaving her alone here. Her mother says officials separated her from Christina and she was not allowed to say goodbye. You’re just a little person. Did you understand what was happening?

Christina Abraham:

Unfortunately, I did because this had been the second time now, and to know that for the second time in less than 10 years, my life would be like this. Yeah, it was just something I’ll never forget.

Antonia Hylton:

And everything was different after that point?

Christina Abraham:

I have never known freedom from the system since that day.

Antonia Hylton:

Christina spends most of her free time doing this, messaging landlords asking if they’ll take a rental voucher she received from the city. The market is competitive under normal circumstances. The average rental price of a studio apartment in New York City is upwards of $2,700 and she suspects landlords see her as a bruised apple at the bottom of the bunch.

Christina Abraham:

Between calling and emailing, like I’ll email so many, so many, so many people-

Antonia Hylton:

I can see all the addresses.

Christina Abraham:

So many addresses. Hello. I would like to move as soon as possible. Hello. I would like to move as soon as possible. Hello. I would like to move as soon as possible. Hello? I would like to… They never got back to me, as you can see.

Antonia Hylton:

After all that work, empty-handed.

Christina Abraham:

Hours. It takes hours a day, hours a day, every single day.

Antonia Hylton:

21 comes and goes without a party. Christina spends the night sleeping in a relative’s abandoned apartment with no electricity, anything to avoid the group home. She finds a studio apartment in Harlem, but it fails inspection three times. Seven weeks have now passed since her birthday.

Christina Abraham:

We were in a situation where my voucher could potentially expire. I would lose the lease on my apartment.

Antonia Hylton:

But meeting with us that day, things are starting to look up. She tells us she might soon be able to move into the new studio.

Christina Abraham:

Today we are going to see the apartment I should be moving into in the next 10 days. That’s what we’re going to do.

Antonia Hylton:

What do you think is going to be running through your mind when you walk through the door?

Christina Abraham:

Does it feel like home? Whatever that means, I guess, but I’m excited. Do my outlets work? It’s like is everything-

Antonia Hylton:

Check the toilet flushes.

Christina Abraham:

Toilet flushes, outlets work. Do I have good service in there? I mean, even if I didn’t, I’m still going to move in, but whatever.

Okay. Top floor, we have a nice little island dishwasher and this is the bathroom.

Antonia Hylton:

How are you feeling though? I mean on the one hand cause for celebration, but you’ve also had these moments where you thought everything was set and something fell through.

Christina Abraham:

Honestly, I feel less happy than I should feel because I am reserved, because I know that things can be set in stone and then the rug can be pulled under you at the last moment.

Antonia Hylton:

Christina says the city foster agency failed to submit her housing paperwork in time. She says in part because she’s had six different overwhelmed caseworkers in the span of a year. She has to ask the group home to let her stay longer again. We catch up on a video call.

What’s it like to still be there?

Christina Abraham:

Disappointing, honestly, but extremely disappointing. I kind of had a breakdown in a sense to have that point be consistently pushed back. It messed with me because I felt like, am I ever going to get this apartment?

Antonia Hylton:

Are you kind of angry?

Christina Abraham:

I am. I’m very angry because I feel like the worst part about this whole system and my situation is that I am a human life that hangs in the balance. What people do directly impacts what I can do. I can’t sleep anywhere. I can’t go anywhere. I want to go sleep anywhere I want to go. I can’t put my head down in my own place.

One camera.

Antonia Hylton:

Public areas in the home are under constant surveillance. Christina says girls get into physical fights every week. She can’t open a window and breathe fresh air without an alarm going off.

Christina Abraham:

What? Oh yeah. Here we go.

Antonia Hylton:

We reached out to New York City’s administration for children’s services or ACS. In a statement they said, “Youth reception centers have a variety of safety measures in place to protect those living inside the facility.” Every day, Christina hangs a curtain in front of her bedroom door for privacy.

Christina Abraham:

If you lift it up, there’s a window. And so anybody who walks by can look inside of your room at any time. These are some of my suitcases I use to keep clothes in, and I always keep a thousand bottles of water. I know it looks crazy, but on the weekends we run out of water and sometimes food.

Antonia Hylton:

They just let water and food run out?

Christina Abraham:

Only supervisors have access to the fridge and supervisors aren’t in on the weekends and neither is the chef. So on the weekends we go hungry.

Antonia Hylton:

ACS told NBC news, “We expect youth reception centers to serve food of good quality and sufficient quantity and that refrigerators should not be locked and youth should not need a supervisor to access food.”

When you first moved in there, what was going through your mind?

Christina Abraham:

I was kind of distraught that I ended up here because my whole foster care, I guess life or career you can say, I tried my best not to end up in group homes, not to end up in kind of things that I saw it was like pits of despair. Once you get here, it’s kind of like you’re stuck here and then you kind of go through the shuffle of between this group home and this group home, between this group home and this group home, between this group home and this group home. Somebody pulled the fire alarm.

Antonia Hylton:

Christina tells us someone has just pulled the fire alarm, forcing everyone to evacuate.

Christina Abraham:

I prefer not to be here at all, but if I’m here, then I definitely do stay in my room. I’m like one of those persons that I’m just going to stay in my room, because outside of my room, crazy things happen. I understand the need for the metal detectors. I understand the need to follow people with every room they go into. I understand the need for having to request for a real fork or a knife or a blender or anything sharp or a hot comb or hairspray. I understand that, but it’s like, then again, it’s like it’s crazy. ‘Cause at the end of the day, I’m-

Antonia Hylton:

Dehumanizing.

Christina Abraham:

Very. And it’s every single day. It’s every single day that it’s dehumanizing. There’s not a day. As soon as I walk into the place, I already feel less than.

Antonia Hylton:

Do you think you’re ready for this?

Christina Abraham:

I know I have to be. I know that I’m more capable than most because I’ve been conditioned to the situation.

Jess Dannhauser:

We’re listening to say, tell us what it is you want.

Antonia Hylton:

Overseeing the city’s foster care youth is Jess Dannhauser, commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services. He can’t comment on specific cases, but did address broader criticisms.

We’ve seen some of the conditions of the group homes and had descriptions of violence, of a lack of privacy. Is that safe and secure?

Jess Dannhauser:

We absolutely would not accept that being a place where we want young people to be, in a place that’s not safe or secure. My whole goal as commissioner is to make this system more humane.

Antonia Hylton:

That goal includes those leaving the system, like Christina.

Jess Dannhauser:

We’re also providing supports through coaches. We all thrive through interdependence, so we’re building out this extra support through coaches all the way until 26 years old.

Antonia Hylton:

Why are we seeing so many Black and Latino kids caught up in the system and stuck in it until this ending point?

Jess Dannhauser:

It goes to the very beginning. We know that we get more reports for young people of color, for families of color. We have a project that we are working on to make sure that who we’re investigating really reflects where there’s concern, is not biased. If someone needs support and it comes to our attention, we go out with a supportive lens. It is not an investigation.

Antonia Hylton:

His team is looking for new ways to provide financial support to foster youth.

Are the resources that are being provided to these young people, do they match the reality of a New York that has a competitive housing situation? Costs are rising. If you are a 21-year-old aging out of the system, how are you realistically actually getting on your feet?

Jess Dannhauser:

I think there’s a couple ways. One is we are reorienting our college program so that where young people want to go to college, the resources will follow them. For young people who are moving into housing, thankfully the city has made a commitment to a voucher program here that young people have access to and is at market rates.

Antonia Hylton:

Two and a half months after turning 21, Christina finally leaves the group home for good. She had the keys to the Harlem unit, put all her possessions into trash bags and left with about $150 to her name. This was supposed to be her big leap, her first time having a place to call home, commuting to her first full-time job at a fashion merchandiser.

Are you all right?

Christina Abraham:

I’ve been better, but I’m feeling better too.

Antonia Hylton:

What’s going on?

Christina Abraham:

Right now? I’m trying to get furniture for my apartment. I have no bed.

Antonia Hylton:

To help get her on her feet, a charity called Hearts to Homes gives Christina supplies, linens, dish soap, a cutlery set.

These can be expensive. I mean this alone.

Mary Teresa McComb:

Yeah.

Antonia Hylton:

The charity’s executive director, Mary Teresa McComb, reviews Christina’s wishlist. Christina checks off most of the boxes, the grand total $2,344.

Mary Teresa McComb:

We think of this as a virtual housewarming. So we want to give the young people the same kinds of things that we would give our own children if we were helping them set up an apartment. In this case, we’re trying to give them the dignity of choice. They haven’t had a lot of choice when they were in foster care about anything really. And now that they’re going to be independent for the first time, we give them this wishlist and we say, “You choose what you want, whatever it is that you need.”

Antonia Hylton:

How great is this need?

Mary Teresa McComb:

Oh, it’s tremendous. Prior to Hearts to Homes being available, youth would be in the system, the foster care system, and then they would age out. They would not have enough resources to properly furnish a home and they would go into these empty apartments with maybe a mattress on the floor and a dresser and not much else.

Antonia Hylton:

Christina has no credit card, no credit score. She has no bed. She spends $71.75 to set up wifi. The final $78 has to cover almost three weeks of subway rides to work and most meals before her paycheck on September 7th.

Are you missing meals?

Christina Abraham:

Yes. Yes I am. I am most times not having breakfast or lunch, but I will have dinner.

Antonia Hylton:

Are you sleeping okay?

Christina Abraham:

Some days. Some days sometimes I’m excited to start my job, so I wake up with a smile on my face. Albeit off the floor, but still. Other days I’m tired.

Antonia Hylton:

She’s also a survivor and determined. 99 days after she turned 21, Christina invites us to see the very first home she could call her own.

Hi.

Christina Abraham:

Hey.

Antonia Hylton:

This is your place.

Christina Abraham:

Yes.

Antonia Hylton:

It happened.

Christina Abraham:

It did.

Antonia Hylton:

No more fears that she might be left homeless. No more nights tossing and turning on the floor. A new bed and food in the fridge feel like a triumph.

How long have you been waiting for this moment?

Christina Abraham:

The short version? Maybe six months. A long version, 21 years.

Antonia Hylton:

When you look out at this version of New York and you’re in your personal space, what’s the message you receive?

Christina Abraham:

Harlem.

Antonia Hylton:

Born again in the same neighborhood, this time with the chance to chart her own path. Antonia Hilton, NBC News, New York.

Lester Holt:

Thanks for watching our YouTube channel. Follow today’s top stories and breaking news by downloading the NBC News app.

Jessica Webster:

Oh, that was a lot. I think as I was watching that I both times have different takeaways, but one of the takeaways that I have is that there are so many wonderful people doing the work to support our youth and that part of our job is to make sure that we connect our youth with the right supports because it’s kind of a little bit of a patchwork system. I mean, that’s an amazing charity that was able to help her furnish her apartment, but how are we making sure we’re connecting our kids to those things?

So hopefully today we’ll spend some time talking about that. We are going to break this into three parts. Our first is Sara Bigley from the National Center for Homeless Education, and she’s going to do an overview for us on the foster care system and the obstacles faced with children, youth, who are aging out. And then we have two spotlights. The first is Angelina Romano from the South Middleton School District, and then we have Jessica Rufino from the Latin American Youth Center. So let’s go ahead and get started with Sara.

Sara Bigley:

Okay, thank you so much. It is great to be here. Again, I’m a program specialist at the SERVE Center. I work out of UNCG with the National Center for Homeless Education. It’s wonderful to be here. And I’m going to talk a lot about almost pre-aging out. There’s a lot about some laws that I want people to know and understand because we want to build our allies and knowledge and support for our youth before they get to a point where they’re aging out.

So we know… I often talk about, to me, I guess I refer to it as that “compelling why.” So I’m going to talk a little bit, and a lot of people don’t know this, about Title I provisions and our child welfare counterpart laws, but this is that “compelling why.” It’s the rationale behind Title I provisions for the Every Student Succeeds Act. And to follow up, I mean nothing can say, what Christina did, obviously that is so… What she has lived and experienced, sharing that speaks more than I could ever say. But we know that our students in foster care have more traumatic events. They have more unscheduled school changes. They have delays in enrollment, lower graduation rates, lower academic achievement and higher grade retention, absenteeism and suspensions.

So when we look at data and information, again, this is a little background building up to these laws. How did these laws come about? Why are they here? It is because our students in foster care are not experiencing success. So when we look at our children coming into foster care who then have to change schools, so we’re looking at like pre-K-12, up to 75% on average, 56% to 75% of children have to change schools immediately when they enter into foster care. So when they’re taken into custody or they have to have a placement change for some reason, something that is completely out of their control, they have to change schools.

When we look at our 17- and 18-year-olds, they have experienced five or more school changes, 34%. I think that’s a conservative number. And when we look at reading levels, because of all of these disruptions and changes and trauma that our students experience, the average grade level for reading is seventh grade. And then again, we can see that their likelihood of being absent, receiving special ed services and out of school suspensions is two or more times than that of their peers. So again, all of this contributes to how do we come about these laws and why our students not being successful?

So mobility, when we look, our students in foster care are so highly mobile and vulnerable. Christina is so resilient that she’s amazing. But when we look at data of how many students by age 18 are completing high school, it’s only about 50%. And those who attend college after completing high school is only about 20%. So about 20% of 50%, when we look at total numbers across the country. But to Christina’s point from that video, about 84% of 17- and 18-year-olds want to go to college. They aspire for better, they want, they desire, and they’re motivated. And still, optimistic studies just show that about 6% will actually earn their bachelor’s degree.

So again, this is that rationale. What happens when our students have to change schools? They lose some of the only and most meaningful close relationships with students, with friends, with supportive adults. Many of you I’m sure are social workers and teachers and counselors and administrators. They can lose class credits. One high school to the next, they don’t necessarily have comparable programs, particularly in our rural states and in our rural areas across states. They can lose extracurricular activities and involvements that are so important to our students and potentially educational services. So again, this is all that compelling why? Why is this important? Why are we talking about it?

I included this to show the risk for future homelessness. So when we look at that very first block there, youth with less than a high school diploma or GED have a 346% higher risk for future homelessness. So again, we’re going back to 50% of our young adults in foster care are not completing high school. So when you look at that number, that has a huge impact. So again, in thinking about inter-agency connections, our allies, our housing allies, our other community supports, so important. And then there are other good parts of this study that we’re more specifically talking about homelessness. But again, this also can apply to our students in foster care in relation to our African-American, our Black and Brown students, our LGBTQ+, our Hispanic Non-White. And so just very important information and quite startling really.

So again, building up there are two really important laws that I just really wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of. The first was called Fostering Connections, is Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. This was passed in 2008. Now this is our Child Welfare Friends. And then every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. These are educational partners. So Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. These are again IV-B/IV-E agencies, our child welfare partners, that they have to make assurances what the law says and the current law for the Title I provisions under Every Student Succeeds Act mirrors this. It talks about how a child’s placement takes into account the appropriateness of current educational setting and proximity to the school of origin. Child welfare agency coordinates with the school district or local education agency to ensure that a child in foster care remains in his or her school of origin when it’s in their best interest. And if it’s not that, then they are immediately rolled in their new school and records are transferred immediately.

So then 2015, Title I. So this was when there was the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and ESEA, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is about equity for all students and equal access to achieve high levels in school. So this is the very first time that foster care provisions were codified in federal education law. So this is when new provisions came into place. Often I’ll say ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act. These are the Title I provisions that complement fostering connections. And it emphasizes that shared agency responsibility between our school districts, local education agencies, and child welfare agencies.

And that is so important because we share the children and yet often we don’t talk together. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But this law, these two laws together form the strength to make sure that that happens. There’s another important point about this, and there used to be in education law, an area under McKinney-Vento for students experiencing homelessness, that there was an awaiting foster care and that was removed with the foster care provisions. And so now students either qualify under McKinney-Vento and they’re experiencing homelessness or they are under foster care in terms of educational provisions. So that’s important to note, too.

So what are some of these provisions? Some of the most important ones are that students have the right to remain in their school of origin. So through no fault of their own, if they have to have a placement change or they’re taken into custody, there needs to be a determination whether they stay in their school of origin or that they’re immediately enrolled in the new school. And the law really assumes that it’s in their best interest to remain in their school of origin unless there is that determination. So also it shows that, or makes sure that, if a student needs transportation to their school of origin, they will promptly receive that transportation in a cost-effective manner. And then when it’s not as stated, they need to be immediately enrolled in their new school of residence. And this is really important because often what has happened in the past is that students in foster care, they can’t produce records, and so they’re just told you can’t enroll.

This law supersedes that. Federal law supersedes any local policy. The other important thing about this is that there has to be a state point of contact within the SEA, State Education Agency, and then every school district, every LEA needs to designate a point of contact. So when you have questions or you’re not hearing something, you have people to contact and people, every education agency list these on their website, on their state websites and within their local school district. So that is very important for you to know, again, where do I go? How do I find someone to help with this?

So I’ve talked a little bit about those Best Interest Determination meetings. Every state, and they look similar, but they can be a little bit different, requires that collaboration for school stability. So this is about school stability, giving our students that jumping off point that they need. So those horrific data points that we know have happened for so long with them being below grade level, et cetera, do not continue. So the BID meeting is a meeting between the school district and the child welfare agency to determine is it best for them to remain in that school of origin or to be immediately enrolled in the new school?

And there are a lot of factors that can be taken into account for that. Usually that BID meeting is scheduled by the child welfare agency or the child welfare social worker. They work in tandem with the school district foster care point of contact. So it considers things like appropriateness of current educational setting. And really the whole thing is about child-centered factors. And one important, very important point, is that transportation costs cannot be considered when determining a child’s best interest. So neither agency can say, “Hey, we don’t have the money for this.” We have to figure out how to make that happen when it’s determined to be in their best interest.

So again, multiple, these are just a few child-centered factors. The child’s preference could be considered. Educational decision makers, the child’s parents or foster parents, attachment to the school, those meaningful relationships, how long that they’ve been in that school, where the other siblings are, if they have other siblings. Are there safety issues or not? The availability potentially at the current school or the new school for educational services that they need. Those history of transfers, how many times have they moved? I can tell you as a former principal, it was hard for me to keep a grade level at the same place in the curriculum guide. And we planned every day of the week, practically. We had weekly and monthly, very in-depth plannings. It is so hard.

So when a student leaves one school through no fault of their own and has to move to another school, that other school can be two weeks ahead of where they left. So now they’re behind. And again, it’s through no fault of their own. So again, those BID meetings are so important. And as advocates and allies, you all need to know about that. So also that history of transfers and the length of commute. What is that length of commute and the developmental age of the student, and then other special services that they may have.

So who should attend those BID meetings? A wide variety of people might attend those bid meetings. Child welfare point of contact or social worker. Really the folks with the most information about the student should be attending those. And again, this is building up so that when students that have been in foster care, are currently in foster care, by the time they’re aging out and get to a point where they are aging out, they have the most options for them available. Often students as appropriate. If it’s age appropriate and developmentally appropriate, they can be in those meetings. So again, who’s best able to provide feedback for students and their relationship with the staff? That might be a counselor, a social worker, it may be a coach, a career tech person. It could be a school administrator, an AC teacher. So it really depends. And it could be a wide variety of people on the family side. It just depends upon every situation is so unique with our children.

So the outcome of the BID should basically be the selection of the school and identification of that transportation mode. That can vary greatly. In New York City, it might be the subway, it might be a train, it might be a cab, it might be an Uber. It depends. In rural areas, it might be something very different. It might be a Yale school bus. And then clear follow up tasks.

So wanted to talk about transportation just quickly because a lot of folks just want you to understand that we know that some students in order to remain in their school of origin, will need that transportation back when it’s in their best interest. And school districts and child welfare agencies need to develop clear written procedures governing how transportation to maintain children in foster care in their school of origin when it’s in their best interest will be provided, arranged and funded for the duration of their time and care. And a lot of folks don’t know this. So again, it’s important for you to know as advocates, transportation is an allowable part for funds both under Title IV-E, which is part of the Social Security Act for Child Welfare and Title I Part A under Elementary and Secondary Education Act for Education.

So again, just reemphasizing the importance of that transportation. If they need it, they should have it and it should be done at the most low cost, no cost option that’s not unduly burdensome to any agency, to either agency. And that can be hard. It takes work and collaboration between the school districts and the child welfare agencies. And again, mention that there has to be those clear written procedures governing that transportation when it’s in their best interest. So just again, don’t be afraid to ask a school or a child welfare agency, “Hey, I want to know about this.” Some of the best, most effective school of origin transportation situations have come because someone else advocated and it happened faster than even a BID meeting could get set up. So please advocate for our students.

This, I just wanted to include because there are a lot of folks that think, oh, well, this is just an education thing. So this is just an education law. It has to be paid for and arranged by the education system. And this is right out of the law. And it clearly says that the child welfare agency can reimburse the school district for the cost of the transportation. The school district can pay or they can share the costs. So I don’t mean to emphasize the costs so much, but just want all of you here to know that this can be done in a wide variety of ways and it is done in a wide variety of ways across the country. So yes.

So transitioning to higher education. Wanted to talk a little bit about fee waivers and rights that students in foster care are eligible for. They’re categorically eligible for fee waivers, for advanced placement exams, for ACTs, SATs, college application fees. This is very important. So we need to know that so that we can make sure to again, advocate for our students.

And the FAFSA. One day after 13th birthday, students are eligible for thousands of dollars in aid. And they don’t know this. Our child welfare counterparts, both education and child welfare are very busy and burdened and stretched in a lot of directions. And I don’t say that to make excuses. I do say that to just let you know that they are eligible for these things. And our students in foster care are not aware of this often. And even though they should have a case plan that’s being worked with and managed through both the schools and the child welfare agencies, often that doesn’t happen. So there’s on the FAFSA, there’s a foster care box that they can check and they’re automatically considered an independent student. And so they don’t have to provide any financial aid for their biological parents, foster parents, guardians, et cetera. So that is very, very important to know because we want our students, which again, going back to 84% of our kids want some sort of higher education, whether that’s community college or college. They want access to those opportunities.

And I’m going to finish up with the Chafee funds. John H. Chafee Foster Care Program For Successful Transition to Adulthood. This is a national program. These funds are provided to states to assist them in offering supportive services to our youth who experience foster care at age 14 or older and up to 21, and that can vary a little bit from state to state. Some states have older foster care ages, that Students can opt in essentially to remain in foster care. And for many of our students, that can be of a benefit. So states are expected to use these funds to provide a full range of services and supports intended to help eligible youth such as educational assistance, career exploration, mentoring, preventative health, et cetera.

So eligibility, just again, students between age 14 to 21 if they’ve aged out between 18 to 21 and higher in some states. That can depend. Students who left foster care at age 16 or older for kinship or adoption. So this really covers a wide variety of our students and we want them to know about these and ask about it. We want you to advocate and ask about this. This is typically done through the child welfare agencies. This is not something that’s done through the educational system, but some states do assign this to an independent group. But if you research and look for your state Chafee program, you will get information for this.

And again, how does this help? Education, employment, financial management, housing, emotional support and assurances, assures connections to other caring adults that can support. So again, that is the purpose of these funds. They should be advocated for and used. Now these do vary a bit state to state as I mentioned, but they are there for our students as they transition into adulthood and get the supportive services that they need, hopefully through K-12 education and then beyond. These are meant to support our students so that they are better equipped and do not have the challenges that so many of our students in foster care have had in the past.

Kailanya Brailey:

Thank you, Sara, so very much for that wealth of information, including the clarification regarding Title I and ESSA foster care provisions, BID meetings, school placement changes, and of course the laws that directly impact our youth in the foster care system. And these youth experience so many disruptions and challenges and we appreciate you giving voice to that, but also ensuring that we are aware of how we can support and advocate for them at various levels.

Also, we want to thank our participants as well for your engagement in the chat and in the Q&A box, we do want to make sure you know that we will be coming to your questions at the end of our presentation, so you’re encouraged to continue posting those. We’ll be collecting them and giving our presenters an opportunity to share out. But now we’re excited to move into our first spotlight today with Angelina Romano with the South Middleton School District.

Angelina is a school social worker and homeless liaison at South Middleton School District, which is a district of about 2200 students in South central Pennsylvania. Since 2017, Angelina has worked alongside families and youth addressing a range of issues related to mental health, substance use, homelessness, trauma, suicidality, and poverty. She has worked within various settings including the child welfare system, juvenile justice programming, drug and alcohol treatment, schools, and the mental health system. Angelina is committed to her direct service work while also engaging in systems level advocacy for equitable practices in education and child welfare. She’s passionate about working with unaccompanied homeless youth, believing that education is key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Welcome Angelina, and we’ll turn it over to you.

Angelina Romano:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you guys having me come. And I think that what I’m going to share with you is certainly going to be helpful coming off of what Sara had just shared with us. So to kind of jump into things, I am Angelina Romano. I’m from South Middleton School District. I am our only social worker here in South Middleton. I work with our population’s about 2200 students. I’m also our homeless liaison for McKinney-Vento and our foster care point of contact. So I do a lot of generalist work within the district here. So we are located about 20 miles southeast of our state capital of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg. And we’re just a small little district, so we are only 52 square miles. And what is a little unique about Pennsylvania for those of you who are not from Pennsylvania, are not familiar with us, is that we are not a countywide school district state.

So our state has 67 counties, but we have 500 school districts. So that’s 500 points of contact, that’s 500 homeless liaisons and we’re all trying to navigate 67 different county child welfare agencies. So a little bit about us. We are historically a rural setting. The Interstate 81 corridor runs right through our school district, and that corridor is a major transportation route for movement of goods and freight across the northeastern United States. We are close in proximity to major metropolitan areas such as Harrisburg, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore. So it’s really an ideal hub for distribution centers and warehousing. So we’ve seen a major increase in warehousing over the last 10 years, and with this increase has been an increase in people coming to the area for these jobs. With increased residency, we see more amenities and demands for things like hotels. And coupled with our housing crisis, we see lots and lots of young people and families moving to the area for work and living in our hotels near the school district.

So I have 10 hotels in my school district. I’ve got two campgrounds, and about two years ago we actually added a transitional living home for youth that are aging out of foster care. They serve young women that are aged 18 to 23. So our district has seen a dramatic increase in the number of homeless children and families coming out of care or coming out of our district. And we see a lot of kids actually coming out of care, and I say kids, but they’re 18.

So with our foster youth, what we sort of see is that there is a significant shortage of foster homes in Pennsylvania. I’m sure nationwide. Post COVID, there’s just been fewer people signing up to be foster parents. And we’ve seen at least locally our counties are using more congregate care settings. And this is actually in opposition of what the federal government has advocated for, but there’s simply nowhere else for these youth to be. So what I see is these kids turn 18 years old and they eagerly sign themselves out of care on their 18th birthday. So we will enroll students who are moving into the hotels, into the campgrounds or into the transitional living home after they’ve literally just signed themselves out. They no longer want to live in congregate care or if they were maybe in a kinship home with an extended relative, they turn 18 their time’s up and they’ll end up in a hotel here.

So to move on to our challenges, like most foster youth exiting care, without Independent Living services set up, these students, they lack basic needs, vital records and housing. Oftentimes they’re resistant to aftercare services because they’re typically associated with the children youth agency that they came from. And it’s difficult to get these kids what they need. It’s hard to get them connected to housing or food stamps or medical assistance because we lack their vital records. We have no problem enrolling them into school because oftentimes they come to us as unaccompanied homeless youth living in these settings. But once they’re here, it’s really hard to track some of that stuff down.

With these students coming from all over the state, it can be really difficult to advocate to their county of origin for Independent Living services. And again, to kind of piggyback off what Sara was saying, these kids are all Chafee eligible for Independent Living services, but with such a patchwork of services and no one specific agency to go to in the state, you really end up needing to advocate county by county and case by case.

Another challenge is that these kids come to us with significant credit deficiencies. So there are difficulties with transferring credits due to educational instability. As Sara had highlighted, there’s lots of instability with these kids. And even though we have things, laws in place to protect them, to keep them in their district of origin, we know that practice and policy does not align in that area. I’m really proud to say that where I’m from and my county and my region, I think we do a great job with that. But it’s definitely not common practice to always keep these kids in their districts of origin. So the difficulty with us is that in Pennsylvania, we’ve got a state minimum graduation requirement of only 21 credits, but then each local school district based on locality, can make up their own requirements that are higher than that 21.

So in my tiny district, we have a requirement of 30 credits to graduate. If you go three miles west of the building that I’m in now, the graduation requirements only 24 credits. So again, patchwork of eligibility services from even township to township.

So the last difficulty, the challenge that I especially have at times is building rapport with these kids. These youth often have been marginalized by the education system, by the child welfare system, by the juvenile justice system. So they’re not eager to work with me at first. They hear social worker and they’re like, “No way.” Although I often want to talk about resumption of care or Independent Living services, the first time that I meet a 18-year-old living in a campground, I really have to back it up. So I need to build a relationship with these students first or these students to be. Sometimes that means bringing them a lot of those basic needs that they don’t have until we build enough rapport to be able to get them connected to what they need.

So next, I’ll move on to our solutions. So the biggest takeaway that I can advocate for is to know your relevant policy and legislation. So in Pennsylvania we have this wonderful thing. It’s called the Independent Living Bulletin. It was published in 2014. It’s 145 pages long. It was published by our state’s Office of Children, Youth And Families. And I know that document the back of my hand, I’ve got it up here on my wall, I reference it all the time. If somebody’s going to tell me that my student is not eligible for something using Chafee money, I’m going to tell them that they’re wrong. I’m going to get out that document and I’m going to scan it and I’m going to highlight it and I’m going to say, “This is what makes them eligible. You need to help me providing case management services. You need to help me get their vital records. You need to help me with housing funds. These are all things that I know this kid is eligible for.”

So with that document specifically in Pennsylvania, there are actually also allowable expenses for other kids too. And this is one of my favorite things because what we know is that Independent Living services are definite for our youth that are exiting foster care, those Chafee eligible kids. But in Pennsylvania at least, there is allowable funding for youth who do not meet any of the above criteria, but for whom the county identifies as being in need of Independent Living services. And thanks to that sentence, I’ve been able to get funding from our children and youth agencies to actually support unaccompanied homeless youth who were delinquent or maybe they were just homeless. They don’t have parents. They’re on the cusp of being 18 years old and I say, “Hey, we can use IL money or this kid is going to go into care.” So it’s so important to have that document and to know it and to use it to advocate.

After a few weeks of knowing a student or a potential student, I’ll often then broker a meeting with my county’s ILS coordinator just so that the student can understand at least what they’re entitled to. It doesn’t always mean, at least here in Pennsylvania, it doesn’t always mean that they’re going to receive services through my county. It may be that, “Hey, you have to receive services through your county of origin, wherever you came from,” and then our counties will talk to each other and kind of determine how that’s going to be possible. So really depending on the student’s level of comfortability, I will sometimes have that Independent Living coordinator working side by side with me. Other times I’ll have them working in the background assisting with vital records, social services. There are times that you really need to know your law because it varies not just state to state, but truly county to county. It can be very different. So I’d really encourage you to figure out what your laws are out there regarding Chafee and Independent Living.

Next big law I want to highlight is whenever we have those kids with credit deficiencies due to school instability, I often use what just came out about a year and a half ago now, Pennsylvania’s Act One of 2022. So like Sara had also highlighted, the lack of a high school degree is actually the single greatest risk factor for young adult homelessness. So for our students that have experienced this educational instability, I can advocate under this act that our students can actually graduate under the state minimum requirement. So instead of needing that 30 credits, they only need 21.

Additionally, I can advocate that a student can get issued credits for experiential learning. So if this student comes to me and he speaks Spanish, I can give him the final for Spanish one and Spanish two and Spanish three. And if he passes those finals and if he shows competence in that area, we’re issuing him credits. Another example of that is if you have a student who is in foster care or exiting care and they’ve got that Independent Living services plan, maybe that plan says that they’re going to get a driver’s license and they get the driver’s license. I’m giving that student a credit for driver’s ed because they’ve showed competence in the area. So again, state to state, there are laws that are actually their model laws after this Act One. SchoolHouse Connection, an advocacy group out of DC, has done a lot of work developing these laws and getting them on the books in states across the nation.

So there are 20 states that have laws like this. Know these laws, and go to your school administrators and advocate for your kids that they’re able to mandate things such as awarding partial credits, allowing for experiential learning credits and reducing the caseload that these kids might need to graduate.

So those are my two big laws. Obviously I also rely on McKinney-Vento all the time. And then also provisions of ESSA and IDEA where they may be applicable. The next biggest solution that we’ve seen is community resources. So really leaning into your churches, your civic groups, your advocacy groups. I work so closely with my faith organizations here, and I never anticipated it, but what’s happened is they will do drives for me, laundry detergent, gift cards, feminine hygiene products, and I have all that stuff on hand. And what I do for these churches and these civic groups is I just give them stats. Once a quarter. I’ll say, “Hey, your laundry detergent helped 12 kids this month who were living in hotels. Those gift cards were able to provide gas to this many families who were trying to navigate getting back and forth to work.” So it’s actually a really self-sustaining system, and it provides me the building blocks to actually build meaningful relationships with at-risk youth. Because when I start to provide for their physical needs, that’s what gets them coming into school.

And also, I would say reach out. You have outside of the box community resources. We’re a really rural setting, so you have to be kind of unique, although we’re a little unique because we have this transitional living home. The phenomenon of children and young people and families living in hotels is definitely not new. So to reach this population, I’ve forged relationships with all my hotel managers. They know who I am. I check in often. My campgrounds, I’m there, I’m seeing families, and I’m checking in with staff and I’m saying like, “Hey, do you have any young people? Have any young families moved in? Do you suspect maybe someone’s living here instead of actually just camping?”

So with all that, I think the most important thing that I can highlight is really building relationships, not just with students, but again, with positive relationships with social service agencies, with children youth agencies, faith organizations, your school administrators, because you’re going to be that squeaky wheel citing the law. And in working with these youth, the goal is to really build a network of support around them that they can rely on. So I have sent the MAEC staff some really relevant links about Independent Living and also Act One and where you can find the information on whether or not your state has equivalencies. So I’m sure that those will be passed on to you guys then at the end. Thank you guys so much.

Jessica Webster:

Thank you so much, Angelina. That was amazing. Amazing amount of information to share. Our last spotlight today is with Jessica Rufino, who’s the housing deputy director with LAYC. She is a licensed clinical social worker in the District of Columbia and Maryland, and she’s been working at LAYC, specifically social services and housing departments for the past 20 years, and she has been committed to serving foster care in the runaway and homeless youth population throughout her years there. She started working out as a foster care social worker in 2003, later serving as the housing department clinical supervisor from 2008 to 2018, working with all programs serving runaway and homeless youth.

In addition, Jessica spent a year and a half as a program coordinator of the Teen Bridge Program For Females when it was in existence, and she transitioned to her current role as a housing deputy director in July of 2018. In 2006, she was recognized for her work with the Foster Care program by DC’s Consortium for Child Welfare as the Social Worker Of The Year. She’s also certified in trauma treatment practitioner and a certified managing aggressive behaviors trainer. She’s fully bilingual in English and Spanish as her family is from Ecuador, and she lives in Maryland with her husband, Leonardo and two children, Mateo and Maria Pia. So Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today and we are excited to hear about the work that you are doing to support our foster youth.

Jessica Yepez Rufino:

Thank you, Jessica. Thanks everyone for having me. As Jessica said, I’ve been working at the Latin American Youth Center for about 20 years, and I am based in our housing department. We previously did have a foster care program that we transitioned out of last year, but a lot of our youth continue to come back and to receive services from us in several capacities. And I wanted to share with all of you guys a little bit about the programs that we have that serve homeless and runaway youth, but within that population we have a lot of former foster care youth, and so we wanted to share what we have available for those youth who are looking for housing.

In our housing department, we have 11 different programs, one of which is a drop-in center for homeless and runaway youth, and part of that is also our street outreach program. And then we have 10 residential programs that we work within our community. Our housing program serve youth between the ages of zero to 24, depending on the program. Some serve older youth, some serve the whole spectrum of youth. And then obviously we work with their families whenever possible and when appropriate.

Our programs are located in four different locations. We have three mainstream apartment buildings that are within normal communities where people are paying market rent, and we rent units in those apartment buildings. And then we have our one unit on 3045 15th Street where it is our main hub. So we have our drop-in center for homeless and runaway youth there. And then we have office space up on the top two levels.

So the types of programs that we have can be split into three different programs. One, we have our drop-in center where youth can come and get services for basic needs. So you can come in off the street if they need a nap. We have some beds where they can take naps. We provide food. We have washing machines and dryers where they can wash clothes and do laundry. We have computers where they can work on resumes, get connected through Facebook, Instagram, and whatever other social media they’re using to connect with family and or friends. We also provide case management to these youth and any other basic needs. We have a clothing closet where they could get clothes if they’re in need of clean clothes. We also provide diapers to our young parents that are in need of diapers for their small children.

And that is basically… And I’ll talk about that in a little bit, but it’s basically our hub and our front door to all of our other programs. And then the other two sets of programs are our congregate care programs and our family-based programs. And I’ve spelled them out, I’m not going to go through all of the different programs that we have just because there are several in each group, but I’m going to talk a little bit more about in the next slide about the difference between the two sets of programs. So our congregate care setting programs are apartment style programs where we have 36 different apartments in three mainstream buildings. So in two of those buildings we are the master lease holder. So the Latin American Youth Center is on the lease as the lease holder. One of those buildings, the youth is the actual lease holder, so they’re responsible for signing the lease and carrying through all of the requirements set up in the lease.

Each apartment, depending on what program they’re in, is set up a little bit differently. So our programs for single youth are typically two youth per apartments or two bedroom apartments where they each have their own room and the rooms are able, they have a key to their own room, but they share a common area. So the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, and the common space gets cleaned by both of them, but each youth is responsible for their own space. In our young families programs, we have one young family per unit, and it may be a one bedroom or a two bedroom depending on the number of small children that they have. But we do allow one, whether it’s a young mother or a young father with one or two small children.

And so in these programs, we do expect that our residents complete about 40 hours a week of productive time. And that can be either through employment or they’re enrolled in school. And many of our youth are doing both at the same time. The idea of these programs is to really prepare our youth for independence for when they leave our programs. We don’t want them to reenter the homelessness system once they’ve completed the program. And these programs, depending on the program, are anywhere from 18 months to two years. And so we do our best to help prepare them. And we’ll talk a little bit more about the life skills later on, but in getting them their education underway and also getting them at least part-time work and getting them to save is really important in taking those first steps. The other part of this is we do have our youth pay into escrow accounts and we call it rent.

They’re not actually paying rent to the landlord or to us. What they’re doing is paying into an escrow account where we hold the money for them. Ideally, we would request that they pay in 30% of their income just to get in the habit of paying rent. But at the end of their stay in the program, we do return any money that they have paid into that account so that they can use either as a safety deposit on a rental unit that they want to rent. Maybe they have other needs, they want to… We’ve had youth who’ve saved $14,000 across the span of time that they’ve been in our program and they’ve been able to put down payments on their own, whether it be an apartment or a house. So really our youth get what they put into it. So some youth are more at a place where they’re able to give more and are able to get more out at the end. And others who really are not choosing to participate really don’t get as much out. But that is the idea there.

So the other sets of programs that we have are our family-based programs, and these are often set up as foster homes in the sense that we recruit, train, and license families within the District of Columbia and Maryland, and we provide the training in both English and Spanish. And so long as they have a room, an extra room in their home, that room has a window and a closet, they’re financially stable enough to provide for themselves without the stipend because we do provide a stipend to take care of the youth’s basic needs, so like food, clothing, transportation, things like that.

But the idea is that the youth is coming into their home and becoming a part of their family as a foster home would. These programs tend to be more for youth who are not quite ready to live independently, they need a little bit more handholding. And oftentimes these youth tend to go through our continuum of care so that they move from these family-based settings into our more Independent Living transitional living programs that I just spoke about in our congregate care programs. We do have 18 beds in 13 different families across Maryland and the District of Columbia right now. But we’re always looking for more families.

So aside from the actual housing services that we provide them, we also help our youth with intensive case management. All programs have case managers who help with referrals to mentoring services, educational services, vocational services. They provide life skills. And we’ll talk a little bit more about what life skills we provide, but we help with budgeting and financial education, parenting skills for those young parents. We have mental health counselors in each of our programs, and we also have, in our agency at large, we have a behavioral health unit that does mental health and substance abuse counseling as well.

We also work with families when possible and when appropriate, because we do find that it’s really important to work with these families because oftentimes when push comes to shove and youth are back on the street, they eventually go back to their families of origin as healthy or unhealthy as those families are to them. And so if we can work with the family and put services in place for them, it makes a situation a lot better. And we also provide crisis intervention, and that is across all programs, whether it be our congregate care setting or our family-based programs.

So life skills that we go through with our youth are in two different modalities. We use either individual and group settings. Oftentimes our youth like getting together in groups, but sometimes it does not work for their schedule because they are working or in school. And so if youth are not able to participate in group workshops, they will come to individual one-on-one setting life skill sessions with their case managers. And these topics include everything from soft skills like stress management and coping skills, healthy relationships, anger management, sexual wellness. We do money management. We’ve done cooking classes, things as in depth as like how to clean your apartment and what kinds of tools you use to clean your apartment or how to put in maintenance requests when you’re living independently. So pretty much anything a youth may request that they don’t know how to do, we’ll find either someone to come in and teach that life skill or we will, if we have someone on staff who knows how to do those things, we will have those sessions one-on-one with them as well.

So how we get youth into these programs is really, if you could just kind of click to the next slide. It’s a little bit of a complicated situation, but as I said, ideally our street outreach program will bring youth in off the street. It’s also, we get a lot of word of mouth referrals in the community, and they’ll come in through our drop-in center. So once someone comes into our drop-in center, our case managers will bring them in and complete an assessment. We in the District of Columbia use the [inaudible 01:18:16], which determines their level of need and care. And so with that score, it’ll determine where they are placed on the city’s DC coordinated entry by name list.

And that team meets every two weeks to go through the by name list to see who comes up from week to week and how we can match them to available slots within the city. So a youth, just because they’re assessed in our drop-in center, doesn’t necessarily mean that they would get matched with one of our housing programs. They would get matched with the first available spot that they’re eligible for given their score. So they may get matched to another program in the city as well. And so once they’re matched, they go through an interview process, one just like a basic intake, and then a second more in-depth mental health assessment to ensure that it’s safe for them to live in our Independent Living Programs or our Transitional Living Programs.

Because we are not suited necessarily for all types of youth, we do, our Independent/Transitional Living Programs are less structured and we don’t have staff 24/7. They are quite independent. And so if there are youth who need a little bit more structure and supervision, we either will place them with a family and/or another program in the city that has 24 hour supervision or staff available that they can access.

Additionally, if we figure out that a youth is under the age of 18 and it is a situation of abuse or neglect, we often have to refer that over to Child and Family Services Agency so that they can assess the situation and determine whether it’s something that needs to be brought into the foster care system.

And so that concludes really what we do here in our housing department, and it’s a very brief overview, and if anyone has any questions, we’d be happy to answer them.

Jessica Webster:

Thank you so much, Jessica. We do have a few questions. The first one is for you and Beverly was asking, how are things like rule breaking and substance use, rule breaking and other normal adolescent behaviors responded to? Is the model reflective of a Risk Harm Reduction Youth Thrive PYD, or some combination or other model?

Jessica Yepez Rufino:

So at LAYC, we are a very positive youth development oriented agency, and we do also employ Harm Reduction because obviously for as much as we can educate our youth on the risks of using substances, we know that they’re going to do whatever they’re choosing to do in that moment, wherever their life may be in that moment. And so we do want to educate them on ways to reduce any likelihood of harm and risk. But we do see a lot of substance abuse. We do see a lot of what would be considered normal adolescent or young adult behavior, especially for youth who are living on their own for the very first time. I mean, oftentimes we discuss it with staff. A lot of our 18, 19, 20 year olds, 21 year olds, it’s as if they’ve gone to college or are living in a dorm and they have independence for the first time and don’t have their parents there.

And they’re testing boundaries. And there are parties sometimes, and there are things that happen that are not what we would choose for them, but it’s about educating them. And sometimes there are real life consequences that, as I said, they’re living in mainstream apartments with people who are paying quite pricey rent in nice areas of the city. And so if they have someone who has to get up early the next morning and they’re having a party till four in the morning, well those neighbors often complain to building management and then the consequences come through there.

We do have situations where we do have to sometimes suspend youth for small parts of time to give them a consequence and to have them think about whether this is the right placement for them, but we’re always welcoming them back at the end of their suspension and talking through kind of what went well, what did go well, what we could have done differently. But yeah, I mean, our youth, just because they’re homeless and or former foster care youth doesn’t make them any different than a lot of the youth we see day-to-day, are raised with two parents in a home that doesn’t have any of these situations.

Jessica Webster:

Yeah. Thank you so much for that. Another question that came up is are foster students considered homeless. Are they able to access McKinney-Vento? Sara, I don’t know if you’re able to answer that one for us.

Sara Bigley:

Yeah, definitely. So it’s a great question and it is very confusing, but just to very briefly clarify, when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was reauthorized in 2015, it separated the two. So Foster Care Provisions are now codified in educational law and it separated McKinney-Vento. So students that are in foster care would not qualify, would not be looked at as… They would be looked at under Foster and not McKinney. Now our students in care sometimes come in and out. Sometimes they are experiencing homelessness. They might be identified under McKinney-Vento, and then they go into foster care or vice versa. Sometimes they’re in foster care and they leave, and then they might be identified as McKinney-Vento, but the law separates the two. So they’re either specifically qualified under Foster Care or McKinney-Vento. I hope that helps a little bit.

Jessica Webster:

It absolutely does. Thank you. And then the last question, Angelina, I’m going to ask you to take this one. So the Chafee Act, the kind of questions are if you’re in foster care, do you qualify for Chafee if you are in foster care prior to being 14 years old, are you eligible? And then what other financial aid benefits are options for our students?

Angelina Romano:

Yeah, so Chafee eligible funding is only, and Sara, I’ll have you correct me if I’m wrong, but only for students or youth that are 14 or older and in care. So if there was a foster youth who was in care at 6, 7, 8 years old, they do not qualify for Chafee if they achieved permanency before age 14. Otherwise, it’s state specific. We in Pennsylvania have the Statewide Assistance Network, SWAN, that supports any and all families that adopted a child age one to 21.

Jessica Webster:

Thank you for that. And one more follow up question, not related to that, but for you, Angelina, in your segment, you referenced an Independent Living Bulletin for PA. And when Kevin was looking, he said there’s a number of documents available that cover various areas. Would you know the specific document number that you recommend?

Angelina Romano:

So I think somebody put it in the chat and it would be the very last link that is the 2014 Independent Living Services appendices. And I would recommend getting a highlighter and sitting down and reading the entire thing. There’s all very applicable to many of the kids that we work with.

Jessica Webster:

Excellent. And I think we put it in the chat, the link for that in the chat for everyone as well. All right, Kailanya, any last thoughts for us?

Kailanya Brailey:

I would just say that this has been so valuable and we are just so appreciative to all of our presenters for the information that you have shared and just empowering us to be able to support and advocate for these youth. So I will just take my moment to thank you for your time.

Jessica Webster:

I echo that. Yeah, we really appreciate it. It’s complex what our kids need.

Kailanya Brailey:

Yes.

Jessica Webster:

And so arming ourselves with that information is extremely helpful moving forward for us. All right, so with that, thank you for joining us today. We did put the link for our feedback survey in the chat. Oops, sorry. I have a train going by. And so we just ask that you take a moment by either scanning the QR code or hitting the link in the chat. It’s really important that you take a moment to do our survey for us. It really informs the programming that we do here at MAEC. We want to make sure that it’s relevant and helpful for all of you out there in the field doing the work to support our kids and giving our students equitable opportunities for a great education. So please take a moment to do that. And thank you so much for joining us today on this wonderful summer day, and please get in touch with us if you have any further questions or if you’d like to connect or looking for some support.

Kailanya Brailey:

Thank you.