California's Children

OC supes learn 1/3 of foster youth walk away from group homes

May 20, 2013: Almost one-third of the 100 foster children living in group homes in Orange County "walk away" each month, according to Michael Riley, director of the county's Social Services Agency, in a report to the Orange County Board of Supervisors. While Supervisor John Moorlach was unfazed, saying, "Having a juvenile walk away from a group home seems sort of ordinary to me," others on the board were more concerned.

Reporting for Voice of OC, Nick Gerda writes:

... Supervisor Todd Spitzer, at left, [raised] questions about [those] foster children who walk away...and the lack of information that the [supervisors] receive on the issue. Walk-aways account for a large portion of police calls to the privately run facilities, some of which generate dozens of police visits annually, Spitzer said.....Spitzer voiced his concerns just before supervisors unanimously approved a $16-million, three-year contract with unspecified group home providers.

“I had no idea there were so many calls for service at some of these group homes,” Spitzer said [at the May 14th] meeting. “The numbers, to me, are unacceptable.”... Spitzer, a former police officer and prosecutor, also expressed shock at the number of police calls to group homes. He cited a group home in Orange that had 33 calls for service within a year, ranging from assault with a deadly weapon to trespassing, stealing and residents walking away. Other group homes in Anaheim and Trabuco Canyon had 31 and 20 calls, respectively....

The discussion prompted a commitment from county staff to start providing basic monthly reports to the board on walk-away incidents at group homes...The real question, [Supervisor Moorlach] said, is: “How does Orange County compare to San Diego County or Santa Clara County? What are the number of walk-aways or AWOLs per capita?”

Supervisor Pat Bates, who used to be a social worker, said [the other supervisors] should have a specific goal in seeking more group home information. ... “What is that purpose? Do we want to re-enter the discussion at the state Legislature so we have some outcomes they’re required to provide?” ...

Spitzer criticized the state for largely tying local government’s hands when it comes to regulating where the foster care facilities are placed. ...“If a kid walks off a facility or escapes from a facility, there’s no notification to the neighbors,” said Spitzer. “Our neighborhoods don’t get to know that there could be a dangerous situation.” 

Riley said he could provide supervisors with a monthly report of group home walk-aways with an overview of the incident, its precursors and how Social Services staff followed up. But due to confidentiality requirements under state law, Riley said, his information to supervisors could only list the juveniles’ first names and must exclude background information on them.

Spitzer said those constraints make it extremely difficult for the board to provide proper oversight.

“How do we do our job?” asked Spitzer. “Where’s the balance between our ability to get information so that we can work with you” to decide whether to punish a group home or see whether community outreach is needed?

Spitzer added that he “used to get complaints all the time” about aberrant behavior at group homes.

[SSA director Michael] Riley replied that his department rarely gets complaints and that “anytime there is any kind of incident” at a group home, the operator must immediately provide Social Services with a specific incident report... County staff, however, doesn't confirm through police logs that group homes are truly reporting every incident...Riley [later agreed] to audit a random sample of the county’s 36 group homes to verify whether they’ve been telling officials about every serious incident.

Riley said he found it frustrating that unlike other states, California has mostly prohibited locked facilities for foster children. Officials can’t stop foster youths from walking away from group homes unless they pose a risk to themselves or others, Riley said. By law, all staff can do is “watch them walk away.”

 

CBP: Realignment: health care "savings" w/pay for county social services

May 17, 2013: The nonprofit, Sacramento-based California Budget Project has released its breakdown of the May Revise announced by Governor Brown on Tuesday. Among the issues highlighted by CBP are programs affected by shifts in Brown's position on county/state realignment of social programs [emphases ours]:

...[The '13-'14 proposed budget] drops the Governor’s county-based approach and commits to a state-led Medi-Cal expansion. Newly eligible Californians would enroll in Medi-Cal and receive the same benefits available to other Medi-Cal enrollees. Health advocates, counties, and the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office have strongly supported the state-based approach.  

[The May Revise] maintains – and provides new details about – [Brown's] proposal to link the Medi-Cal expansion to a major realignment of responsibilities for human services from the state to the counties.

The Governor proposes that counties “assume greater financial responsibility” for CalWORKs, CalWORKs child care, and operation of the CalFresh food assistance program, thereby generating substantial state savings.

Under the Governor’s proposal, these new county costs would be funded with county savings attributable to health care reform. The state would determine county savings by comparing counties’ available health care revenues to their costs for providing health care to the remaining uninsured. Savings would be “redirected” to the human services programs, with this shift beginning in 2013-14 as the state implements the Medi-Cal expansion.

The Administration suggests that the redirected dollars – that is, funding shifted from counties’ health care infrastructure – could total $300 million in 2013-14, rising to $1.3 billion by 2015-16. On a May 14 briefing call, Administration officials indicated that the proposal would amount to a “fiscal transfer” for all programs during 2013-14, after which counties would have increased flexibility with respect to CalWORKs and related child care programs. County flexibility would be balanced with beneficiary protections, and “the state would continue to provide funding for above-average costs that result from economic downturns or policy changes outside counties’ control,” according to the Administration...

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Medi-Cal expansion & May Revise: 3rd option now on the table

"You can leave your hat on" ... LAUSD ends "willful defiance" suspensions

UPDATE, May 17, 2013: The Los Angeles Unified School District board voted on Tuesday, May 14, to end suspensions for "willful defiance" (see history below). According to CBS News, the policy, which was affecting black and Hispanic students in disproportionate numbers, allowed staff to suspend "disruptive" students for such offenses as refusing to remove their hats or turn off their cell phones.

UPDATE, April 17, 2013: Reporting yesterday in EdSource, Louis Freedberg announced that Friday State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson will release a new database showing that fully 50% of California school suspensions (and 25% of expulsions) are for "willful defiance" of authority.

Meanwhile, tonight, the Santa Clara County Board of Education heard a report on SC county suspension numbers. As reported by Jennifer Wadsworth in San Jose Inside: 

...In Santa Clara County, which counted an enrollment last school year of 265,618 pupils, 52 percent of the 19,770 suspensions last year were “discretionary,” ordered for things like “willful defiance,” cutting class and smoking on campus, according top a 2012 report from child advocacy group Kids in Common.

Dana Bunnett, director of Kids in Common, and Mariel Caballero at left, of the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office, will deliver a report titled “Zero Suspension Policy,” which outlines not only recent stats but also suspension alternatives.

From Freedberg's article:

The new database shows that African American students, who make up only 6.5 percent of public school students, comprise 19 percent of all suspensions. By contrast, white students make up 26 percent of student enrollment, but only  20 percent of suspensions. Latino students are suspended at approximately the same level as their proportion of the total student enrollment.

California Department of Education officials provided a preview of some of the new data at a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Delinquency Prevention and Youth Development chaired by Assemblymember Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento. “The California data is long overdue and I am very pleased that the department has collected the data and is releasing it,” he said.

Legislation authored by Dickinson (AB 420) that will restrict the use of the ill-defined “willful defiance” category [see history below the jump]...

The new database [was] collected as part of the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS)...

In the 2011-12 school year, there were 710,869 in-school and out-of-school suspensions in California schools, but many students were suspended more than once. The new database shows that a total of 366,629 students were suspended during that year – a suspension rate of approximately 6 percent. That means that about one in 16 of all public school students were suspended at least once during the school year. Because students are suspended much more frequently in high school, suspension rates for grades 9-12 are likely to be far higher than that.

LA County to test incarcerated girls' health program

March 18, 2013: The health -- mental and physical -- of girls who are in the custody of the juvenile justice system are "serious and complex," according to reporter Anna Gorman, writing in the March 16 Los Angeles Times. "Many of the girls don't have regular doctors, so [they] ... go undiagnosed and untreated. That continues when they enter a system that was designed for boys and has been slow to adapt to girls," Gorman reports.

Los Angeles County health and probation officials recently began working to better identify and treat the health and mental health problems of about 240 girls in custody... using ...the Girls Health Screen, a 117-question survey designed by Leslie Acoca, above left, [founder and] president of the Pasadena-based NGHJI...The Girls Health Screen ...targets an "extraordinarily vulnerable" population that has not had consistent healthcare, said Francine Sherman, who teaches juvenile justice at Boston College Law School.

(NPR's Carrie Johnson reported in October 2012 that "girls make up the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice system, with more than 300,000 arrests and criminal charges every year." Johnson was quoting a report from the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy by Liz Watson and Peter Edelman (funded by Annie E. Casey Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, and the Open Society Foundations' Special Fund for Poverty Alleviation).The Georgetown report includes detailed case students from three US jurisdictions; one was Stanislaus County (Modesto). The report also noted that "girls are still routinely detained for status offenses" (a status offense is an offense that is only a crime if committed by a juvenile, e.g., truancy, curfew violations, runaways, underage drinking).

...More than one-third of girls in custody nationwide have a history of sexual abuse, compared with 8% of boys. Girls also have had more physical abuse, suicide attempts and drug-related problems, according to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Few juvenile justice centers have shown they meet minimum healthcare standards, and girls are less likely than boys to get the care they need.

A report last November on NPR's "All Things Considered," stated that 90% of girls in juvenile detention had "experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse...41% have signs of vaginal injury consistent with sexual assault; up to a third have been or are currently pregnant; 8% have had positive skin tests for tuberculosis; and 30% need glasses but don't have them..." [figures from the National Girls Health and Justice Institute (NGHJI), funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation]. 

The Georgetown report highlighting Stanislaus County's reform efforts, emphasizes that "local reform efforts are particularly important in California because of the increasing decentralization [realignment] of California's juvenile justice system...California's committee juveniles are held in local custody in greater numbers than in most other states...due in part to a long history of problems with facilities run by the state Division of Juvenile Justice." Stanislaus County's gender-responsive reform efforts were led by Lynn Wu, a staff attorney at the Prison Law Office in Berkeley (funded by a grant from the State Bar of California and the Sierra Health Foundation). 

Webinar scheduled on new state Paid Family Leave for new moms

March 11, 2013: The State Disability Insurance program (SDI) now has an on-line system to make it easier and faster for employees to file for Paid Family Leave. On Wednesday (March 13) from 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. children's advocates and medical providers are encouraged to participate in a free online webinar that explains how to use the new SDI system; California Medical Association will host the webinar.To register for the free webinar click here.

As explained by the California Work & Family Coalition, SDI works like an insurance plan, providing workers with partial wage-replacement when they take medical leave, which in many cases is after the birth of a baby.The SDI is funded by employee payroll deductions providers; most California employees contribute to this program. Workers who pay into the SDI fund are covered by  Disability insurance and Paid Family Leave.

According to California WIC Association, having local medical providers educated on the new system is critical in supporting paid family bonding after the birth of a baby, which can increase breastfeeding.

 

 

(Above, a video from Paid Family Leave California)

Written by Taylor McCulloch.