Alliance for Children’s Rights

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to continue funding a job training program aimed at helping marginalized teens and young people gain paid work experience.  Though the Youth@Work program has not been included in the county’s 2020-21 budget, Supervisors Hilda Solis and Kathryn Barger proposed finding $20.7 million in the supplemental budget to keep the program running, a plan that was unanimously approved. 

In an urgent appeal to the governor and the California state legislature on behalf of the state’s 60,000 children and young adults in foster care, a group of leading advocates is calling for sweeping new measures to ward off devastating impacts from the spread of coronavirus.

Newly released California Department of Education data found that the rate of chronic absenteeism for California students in foster care rose for the third year in a row. During the 2018-2019 school year, 28 percent of all foster youth in the state were chronically absent – which refers to a student missing school for any reason for more than 10 percent of the days they were enrolled in a school.

As the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors moved to make big investments Tuesday toward stemming the county’s homelessness crisis, they voted to direct more of that money to support the growing number of youth experiencing homelessness.  

A recent federal report found administrative and financial obstacles challenged the ability to keep foster youth in their school of origin. Los Angeles might emerge as a pioneer on fighting those barriers, now that one of the largest school districts in the nation has approved its share of a five-year, at least $14 million transportation plan for these students.

Since the 2015 passage of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), school districts and child welfare agencies around the country have been tasked with developing transportation plans to keep foster youth in their schools of origin if that is what they prefer.

In the wake of a report examining America’s shared spaces for both children and seniors, the Eisner Foundation is investing $1 million to support so-called “intergenerational sites” in Los Angeles. Intergenerational shared sites co-locate services for young people and older adults, with activities and events that bring the two populations together.

Big changes may be ahead for the nearly 3,600 foster youth currently enrolled in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Last week, the district announced that it will start producing regular data reports on how students in foster care are faring in school and how often they are changing schools — a key issue for foster youth who are frequently forced to change placements far from home.

The Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), which offers a significant restructuring of the multi-billion dollar federal entitlement for child welfare, could not pass the Senate as a standalone bill in 2016.