Out of County

Last week, The Imprint wrapped up “Out of County, Calif.,” a lengthy series focused on the significant portion of California’s foster youth who are cared for outside of the county they once called home.

I was 17 years old when I graduated high school and went away to college. There were several reasons I wanted to move to a new county. I had a desirable scholarship package at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), which has a great acting program.

The Imprint’s series on out-of-county placements for foster youth provided excellent examples of the problems caused by placing foster children out of county or far away from home. In the District of Columbia, where I worked as a social worker with foster children, over half of foster youth are placed in the Maryland suburbs.

Last month, we kicked off our “Out of County, CA” series with a story about Heather Matheson. When Heather was 15, her placement near the San Fernando Valley high school she loved fell apart. Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) had hopes of placing her...

Recent articles by The Imprint have described a long-standing problem wherein many children who are removed from their homes due to abuse and neglect are provided inadequate access to mental health care.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge shares her perspective on how out-of-county placements and distant placements have a profound effect on children, their parents and the prospects for family reunification.

San Francisco’s endemic housing crisis is contributing to a startling exodus of older foster youth, leaving neighboring counties to shoulder the responsibility.

For out-of-county children on a path to adoption, the lack of consistent and timely mental health resources can have especially perilous consequences.

As the city’s economy booms, foster-parent recruitment in San Francisco lags, creating financial and demographic barriers to finding foster parents for the city’s most vulnerable children.