To the End of June : The Intimate Life of American Foster Care (9780547999531) (47 page)

11.
[>]
   
national report later that year:
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published this Final Rule on February 26, 2008. ACF created a National Youth in Transition Database at this time and required that all states engage in two data collection activities. The ACF website states that these two activities are “to collect information on each youth who receives independent living services paid for or provided by the State agency that administers the CFCIP. Second, States are to collect demographic and outcome information on certain youth in foster care whom the State will follow over time to collect additional outcome information. This information will allow ACF to track which independent living services States provide and assess the collective outcomes of youth.” The services, according to ACF, are as follows: “The regulation requires that States report to ACF the independent living services and supports they provide to all youth in eleven broad categories: independent living needs assessment; academic support; post-secondary educational support; career preparation; employment programs or vocational training; budget and financial management; housing education and home management training; health education and risk prevention; family support and healthy marriage education; mentoring; and supervised independent living. States will also report financial assistance they provide, including assistance for education, room and board and other aid.” ACF describes the outcomes as follows: “States will survey youth regarding six outcomes: financial self-sufficiency, experience with homelessness, educational attainment, positive connections with adults, high-risk behavior, and access to health insurance.” “About NYTD,” on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Child and Family Services website:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/systems/nytd/about_nytd.htm
.

12.
[>]
   
how many of their kids had aged out in the past year:
The study was conducted by Chapin Hall, a research and policy center at the University of Chicago, wherein authors contacted the independent living services coordinators in all fifty states as well as Washington, DC. They received a response rate of 88.2 percent (or forty-five states), and of these respondents, thirty-five did not or could not report the number of youths seventeen or older who were even currently in foster care and replied “do not know.” Thirty-one percent didn't know how many kids had aged out. Amy Dworsky and Judy Havlicek,
Review of State Policies and Programs to Support Young People Transitioning Out of Foster Care
(Chicago: Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, submitted to the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, Olympia, WA, December 2008), 4–5.

13.
[>]
   
who had graduated from college:
M. Courtney, A. Dworsky, J. Lee, and M. Raap,
Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth: Outcomes at Age 23 and 24
(Chicago: Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, 2009), 95.

14.
[>]
   
not prepare them for adulthood:
Mary Elizabeth Collins and Cassandra Clay, “Influencing Policy for Youth Transitioning from Care: Defining Problems, Crafting Solutions, and Assessing Politics,”
Children and Youth Services Review
31, no. 7 (July 2009): 743.

15.
[>]
   
at states' discretion, until they turned twenty-one:
This act is called the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act (H.R. 6893/P.L. 110–351). Among other things, the act also allows kinship guardians to receive subsidized guardian payments—thus increasing the chances that children will be placed with relatives.

 

12. There's Something About Mary

 

1.
[>]
   
subway travel to and from the classes can take several hours:
William Scarborough (Chair),
The Needs of Youth Aging Out of Foster Care
, testimony before the New York State Assembly Standing Committee on Children and Families, Subcommittee on Foster Care (New York: The Legal Aid Society, December 14, 2007), 6.

2.
[>]
   
priority status on the waiting list for public housing:
“Housing Support Services,” New York Administration for Children's Services website:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/support_families/housing.shtml
.

3.
[>]
   
Applications are frequently lost or misprocessed:
Scarborough,
The Needs of Youth Aging Out of Foster Care
, 9–10.

4.
[>]
   
that's when the checks were cut:
The New York Education and Training Voucher (ETV) Program is a federally funded, state-administered program designed to help youth who are in foster care. Students may receive up to $5,000 a year for qualified school-related expenses. The official website, for the 2010–11 school year, read: “Funding for the 10–11 academic year will not be available until after November 1, 2010. Funding is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis to eligible students.”

5.
[>]
   
where they can go on to get a GED, say, or a mentor referral:
Preparing Youth for Adulthood
(New York: Administration for Children's Services, June 2006).
http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/downloads/pdf/youth_for_adulthood.pdf
.

6.
[>]
   
Kids don't realize their coverage has been terminated until they receive bills in the mail:
Also, Legal Aid threatened a class-action lawsuit against ACS and the Department of Health if they didn't improve. Scarborough,
The Needs of Youth Aging Out of Foster Care
.

 

13. Experiment

 

1.
[>]
   
estimates that about 50 percent of the current homeless population were once in foster care:
The Coalition for the Homeless in its 1989
Blueprint for Solving New York's Homeless Crisis, New York City: A Report to Mayor David Dinkins
, claimed that 60 percent of the homeless in New York City municipal shelters had some history of foster care (101). In a study called
Runaway and Homeless Youth in New York City: A Report to the Ittleson Foundation, NYC
(New York: New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Division of Child Psychiatry, 1984), David Shaffer and Carol Caton found that 50 percent of the young people came to shelters from a group home, foster home, or other foster institution. Nationally, according to the Child Welfare League of America, 58 percent of all young adults who access federally funded youth shelters had previously been part of the foster care system in 1997 (Child Welfare League of America's data page, “The Links Between Child Welfare and Homelessness,”
http://www.cwla.org/programs/housing/homelessnesslinks.htm#note13
). In California, the Department of Social Services estimated in 2004 that 65 percent of the kids who age out of foster care face homelessness and up to 50 percent end up sleeping on the streets. See Ken Fagan, “Saving Foster Kids from the Streets,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 11, 2004.

2.
[>]
   
has led to some five thousand adoptions:
The Heart Gallery was launched in New Mexico in 2001 and is now nationwide. Matthew Straeb, “A Message from Our President,”
Heart Gallery of America Newsletter
, Inaugural Edition, January 2010.
http://www.heartgalleryofamerica.org/Newsletter/2010_Jan.htm
.

3.
[>]
   
forty-two thousand viewers have called up with questions about becoming a parent:
“Freddie Mac Foundation's Wednesday's Child: Finding Adoptive Homes for Children,” retrieved from the Freddie Mac Foundation website:
http://www.freddiemacfoundation.org/ourwork/founwedn.html
.

 

14. Touching the Elephant

 

1.
[>]
   
put on the state's list of failing schools in 2004:
From
insideschools.org
, a division of the nonprofit Advocates for the Children of New York, which provides individual case assistance to families and children who need educational services.
Insideschools.org
provides independent monitoring of New York City's public schools.

2.
[>]
   
“You've got women in prison making Victoria's Secret bras”:
It was widely reported that inmates in South Carolina were subcontracted to sew Victoria's Secret garments in the 1990s, and several other corporations, including Nintendo, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Eddie Bauer, have also been known to utilize prison labor, wherein they get to pay workers well below minimum wage. See, for example, Beth Schwartzapfel, “Your Valentine, Made in Prison,”
Prison Legal News
, February 12, 2009,
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/(S(v5lg5m45z4zku255xtp5ndmf))/displayNews.aspx?newsid=216&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1;
and Caroline Winter, “What Do Prisoners Make for Victoria's Secret?”
Mother Jones
, July/August 2008,
http://motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/what-do-prisoners-make-victorias-secret
.

3.
[>]
   
what happens to foster kids once they leave the system:
Julie Bosman, “City Is Urged to Evaluate Foster Care,”
The New York Times
, April 15, 2010. The author of this article wrote that ACS would review the proposed bill, and as of this publication, the bill had yet to pass. It was referred to the Committee on General Welfare at a City Council meeting in April 2010 (from the New York City Council Meeting Minutes, City Hall, New York, April 14, 2010) and then didn't seem to appear again.

 

15. Last Call

 

1.
[>]
   
it had admitted more than double that the year before:
Mark Levine, “Saint Vincent's Is the Lehman Brothers of Hospitals,”
New York
magazine, October 25, 2010.
http://nymag.com/news/features/68991/
.

 

Epilogue

 

1.
[>]
   
allowed all states to apply for flat-sum waivers from the government:
President Obama signed the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act (Public Law 112–34) into law on September 30, 2011. Read the full text of the bill at
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr2883rds/pdf/BILLS-112hr2883rds.pdf
.

2.
[>]
   
though more could still sign up:
Child Welfare Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration Projects 2012–2014 Overview
(Washington, D.C., National Conference of State Legislatures).
http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/human -services/child-welfare-title-ive-waiver-2012-thru-2014.aspx
.

3.
[>]
   
is now awaiting federal review:
E-mail correspondence with ACS press office, November 2012.

4.
[>]
   
when I was done, there were 400,540:
The first figure is from September 30, fiscal year 2007, and the second from September 30, fiscal year 2011.
The AFCARS Report, No. 19
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children's Bureau, estimates as of July 2012).
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/resource/afcars-report-19
.

5.
[>]
   
increased by 2.5 million, or 21 percent:
Saki Knafo, “Bloomberg Budget: Slashed Children's Services Contribute to National Crisis, Advocates Say,”
Huffington Post
, May 3, 2012.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/bloomberg-budget-cuts-child-care-after-school-programs_n_1475333.html
.

6.
[>]
   
at or below the poverty line in 2008:
The federal poverty level was $17,600 for a family of three in 2008.
Keeping Track of New York City's Children: 2010
, 9th ed. (New York: Citizens' Committee for Children of New York, 2010).

7.
[>]
   
Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth:
The caucus is cochaired by Representative Karen Bass (D-CA), Representative Tom Marino (R-PA), Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA), and Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN). They went to Los Angeles on the first stop of their listening tour and were headed to south Florida and two cities in other states. From Karen Bass's Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth website:
http://fosteryouthcaucus-karenbass.house.gov/
.

So many kind, wise, and generous people contributed to this book; thank you, as Kecia would say, for rocking with me all the way.

My deepest gratitude goes to all the people on these pages: thank you for sharing these years of your lives, and for offering that most precious commodity—trust—even when it had been stolen before. Thank you, Fatimah, for the title. I hope you change your mind one day and write your book.

Many books helped me frame my thinking about foster care. Some of the most important were
The Lost Children of Wilder
by Nina Bernstein for its context and history of ACS, and Stephen O'Connor's
Orphan Trains
for an even earlier look at New York City's systemic removals of children. Jennifer Toth's
Orphans of the Living
was a helpful narrative exploration of the ways foster kids' rage and trauma compound over time.
Shattered Bonds
by Dorothy Roberts provided extra clarity on historical and current racism in the system, and Elizabeth Pleck's
Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy Against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present
provided exactly what its title promised.

Several people granted interviews or provided critical information for this book and yet weren't directly quoted in its pages. Thank you to Velma Roberts, who sat with me for many hours in her Bronx kitchen and in her kids' school, sharing her family's story—living proof that foster and biological parents can work together. Thank you to Mary Chancie, who also brought me home to meet her adult children and to share with me the importance of adopting the kids who have already aged out. Mary and Velma, you give us all faith. Thank you to Lieutenant Pat Montagano at Safe Horizon's Manhattan Advocacy Center, who explained to me the legal issues around child abuse and parent prosecution while we stood in a cell; and to Anna Owusu for talking extensively with me about preventive services. Thank you to Emily Banach for explaining hospital investigations. Thank you to Nora McCarthy at
Rise
magazine for your nuanced, humanitarian perspective on parents' needs, and thank you to Stephanie Schwartz for explaining some of the legal details of family court. Thank you to Susan Grundberg for your early explanations of child welfare and its troubles, and for your take on teenagers in care. Thank you, Fall Willeboordse and Rabiya Tuma. Thank you, Madeleine George, for connecting me with Bayview, and for being a friend. Thank you to the press offices at ACS and OCFS for responding to my endless queries, and to the librarians at Columbia University, especially Jennifer Wertkin at Columbia Law Library. Columbia University also provided me with a graduate student fellow, Kyle Valenta, whose research and thoughtful criticism were very helpful.