April 2008 No. 15 Table of Contents Changes afoot for youth Homeless youth speak up

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Changes afoot for youth

Foster care. Indianapolis, Tampa FL, and Oakland CA got sizeable grants to help older youth in foster care to successfully transition to independent adult living. A consortium of some 40 local groups devised the capitol city plan that got $750,000 from a national alliance to work with the Indiana Dept of Child Services to assist 200+ youth to “age out” of foster care over the next 3 years.

Project SEARCH/Indiana. Based on a model developed at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in the 1990s, Indiana launched an initiative to place individuals with significant disabilities into internships to aid their chances for securing jobs. The state, schools, and nonprofits are working to help employers increase workforce diversity and reduce recruitment and training costs by prepping students to be competitive in today’s job market. Five students have started, with statewide expansion starting soon.

Child welfare. A week ago, the Indiana Dept of Child Services (IDCS) hired its 800th staff person for “protecting children and helping families.” This doubles the number of workers in the state child welfare system, a goal set when the new IDCS was created in 2005. The program now meets recommended national standards of caseload-per-worker ratios with each worker supervising 20 children on average.

IDCS also reported that between 2006 and 2007 child fatalities due to abuse or neglect dropped by a third below IN’s 1995-2005 average.

Child-care rating system. Check out the malls. You’ll see stroller after stroller of toddlers born to the kids of Baby Boomers. Most of 30-somethings are working, and they want their children to grow up smarter than they are.

Indiana’s Family & Social Services Administration (FSSA) responded to this growing demand for high-quality child care by adopting a new rating system for licensed child-care services. It will have four levels of quality:

• Level 1 – minimum health and safety standards
• Level 2 – 25% of staff have child development credentials or minimum training leading to a degree; children are read to daily; plentiful play materials and outdoor/large-motor equipment
• Level 3 – written curriculum for children’s physical, cognitive, language, literacy and social-emotional development; math experiences; music and creative movement activities
• Level 4 – national accreditation approved by Indiana.

Thus far, 14 states have such a rating system, and Paths to Quality is now offered in 17 IN counties. It will expand to all counties by 2009. It is not a mandate, but FSSA hopes 50% of child-care centers will opt in this year. See www.in.gov/fssa/carefinder.

New “drop-out” measures. The US Education Secretary announced a new national method of calculating school graduation rates, to replace the potpourri of state methods that make grading performance almost impossible. Indiana saw its graduation rates drop when it began using the latest alteration. Today, Indianapolis follows only Detroit with the largest percentage of high school students failing to graduate in the normal 4-year period. Some 1.2 million students drop out annually in the USA; that means that only 30% of 9th graders will graduate. That’s got to change, said Secretary Spellings. She intends that it will.

Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction said the state is improving its AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) results, with 84% of school corporations making AYP last year compared to a year ago. AYP reflects that all income, race/ethnicity, English proficiency, and special education groups must improve.

National studies find Hispanic and black parents are more concerned with “dropouts” than white parents. But Public Agenda found that black parents are also more skeptical that getting a diploma means their kids learned the basics for success.

And Indiana educators worry that the new property tax reforms will result in smaller budgets for the basics. Urban districts have done the math and see their revenue dropping by millions of dollars. Marion County schools expect losses of $25M. School funding will likely be a big 2008 election issue.

Global. And it’s not just Indiana or the USA that’s focused on youth. A new United Nations report says “today’s young people are overall the best educated generation of youth in history.” Yet “the transition to adulthood is slowed down by poverty and their inability to find decent work,” especially for girls. See both the worldwide progress and challenges at www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/wyr07.htm.

Homeless youth speak up

From 1.8 to 2.1 million young people are homeless, a new study states, and the number is growing. A new Indiana law permits food and shelter services to homeless youth ages 16 to 18, even if parental approval can’t be obtained, and requires the Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority to help homeless children access local resources. Indiana will also collect data to estimate the number of homeless Hoosier kids; the estimate is now 4,400.

The California Research Bureau interviewed current and formerly homeless youth, using peer outreach to talk with kids missed by traditional methods. While only 18% had spent the night before in a shelter or transitional housing, most slept on the streets, in cars, squatting in abandoned buildings, or moving from house to house with periods on the street and no permanent address—“couch-surfing.” Other findings:

• 25% said their housing was unstable for 5+ years, and 40% for one-to-four years
• 40% said they were safer since leaving home, but nearly half felt even less safe on the streets
• the sense of victimization and vulnerability was pervasive; 90% were trying to change their situation
• homeless kids perceive other’s view of them as overwhelmingly negative—lazy, troublemaker, bum, lowlife, scumbag, junkie, etc.
• 20% had regular employment; 18% did odd jobs; 20% panhandled; 20% got Food Stamps or other public assistance; 15% got money from friends or family; 8% were stealing; 7% selling drugs; 5% were prostitutes
• 20% had $100-$500/wk; 10% had $20 or less/wk
• 75% had regular and negative contacts with police
• 20% were high school dropouts; 90% had a specific career goal; 40% believed they would be employed in 5 years, and 35% thought they’d have a home/apartment of their own
• 2% said they’d be dead in 5 years
• two-thirds considered themselves mentally healthy; 60% had gotten some mental health service
• 45% looked to friends for support, 28% to family
• homeless youth used meal programs (44%), shelters (33%), drop-in programs (32%), counseling (20%), medical care (17%), and housing (13%)
• half reported an experience with services that made them not want to return for help; 25% said they were treated badly or rudely, patronized, or made to feel helpless by shelter staff or others
• 2% had actually gotten job training, and only 1% found a job through employment services
• 19% said the “most useful help” came from drop-in programs.

What policy changes do these youth propose?

• 24% want homelessness de-criminalized, dropping laws against outdoor sleeping and squatting
• 20% want laws that require housing or shelter for homeless youth; 10% specified accommodations for gay and lesbian youth, with policies that make them feel “at home” in these facilities.

“Voices from the Street” is worth a read. Download it at www.library.ca.gov/crb/08/08-004.pdf.

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