Governor Jerry Brown approved AB 403 - Mark Stone, The Continuum of Care Reform Act on October 11, 2015.  “The act is designed to improve California’s child welfare system and its outcomes by using comprehensive initial child assessments, increase the use of home-based family care and the provision of services and supports to home-based family care.  "AB-403 Public Social Services: Foster Care Placement: Funding." California Legislative Information. N.p., n.d. Web.  

In January of this year, California will begin shifting services back to the community.   Ryan Eisenberg, Ed D., Division Director of Education at Hillsides in Pasadena, CA,  and a member of the CAPSES Board of Directors takes a closer look at the legislation designed to end “institutionalization” of youth and the challenge of overcoming the lack of coordination between policy and practice.  

AB 403 and Education Allignment, by Ryan Eisenberg, Ed. D. 

Background:

In January 2016, California begins the process of reforming the continuum of care for foster youth.  Intended to target the youth in the most restrictive foster settings, residential care, this reform act looks to shift services back to the community and move children to stable living environments in a more naturalized setting.  Foster youth who had historically grown up in residential settings will now go to Short Term Residential Treatment Centers (STRTCs) for about six months for stabilization, and then be moved to intensive foster homes with community support.

Understanding the Problem:

Foster youth as a sub-group has overwhelming poor outcomes.  This relates to both school outcomes, as well as post-secondary and life outcomes.  California has worked at understanding this problem and is looking to create supports to increase positive outcomes.  The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) is an example of education policy designed to collect data on foster youth and target money for support and enhancement of services for foster youth (among other subgroups).  AB 403, The Continuum of Care Reform Act is legislation that looks to end "institutionalization" of youth.  Both are targeted at increasing positive outcomes for youth.  The difficulty is that the world is a complex place, and this is a complex problem, and legislation rarely crosses professional fields.  If child services, mental health, physical health, and education all continue to act independently, it will be difficult to address accurately the needs of young people who deserve the attention of communities.  This lack of coordination can also lead to unintended roadblocks between systems, often resulting in blaming and inefficient practices.  In the professional field, we see this as the gap between policy and practice.

Who are we talking about:

Approximately 30% of foster youth have lived in congregate care settings for five or more years.  It is said that over 2/3 of foster youth have lived in group home placements for longer than two years.  Children in these settings tend to have a high percentage of qualification for special education.  Also, those qualifying for services under special education also tend to qualify for higher levels of services.  Overwhelming, these youth have high rates of trauma and toxic stress within their lives.  Research tells us that exposure to significant incidents of trauma and repeated or extended exposure to toxic stress can affect learning, as well as emotion regulation, often resulting in impulsive and reactive behavior, low self-esteem, difficulty learning, and difficulty making and maintaining relationships.  This can lead to rapid living placement changes, poor outcomes in schools, and rapid school changes.  All these things add to the trauma that a youth experiences, and can reinforce poor feelings about ones-self, as well as create anxiety and fear for a youth.

Historically many of these youth moved to residential care.  Like most institutions, there are excellent care facilities and bad ones.  Regardless of the care facility, outcomes remained overwhelming poor.  Even though youth may stabilize in a residential treatment facility, and have a positive experience, feeling a sense of safety, these kids often became institutionalized and exited without the skills to live independently.  Foster youth who grew up in such places are more at risk for incarceration, hospitalization, homelessness, and early death.  These same outcomes are associated to students with mental health needs.

What is the problem with well-intended laws?

The philosophy behind the new legislation, whether the LCFF or AB 403, is something most everyone will agree with.  They are designed to improve outcomes for foster youth.  The difficulty is that often policy and practice do not align.  Also, these different systems are held accountable to different standards, which creates a misalignment in values and priorities for children.  When all is said and done, two core challenges rise to the surface.  The first is school stability, which research show is a key contributor a foster youth's success or struggles within school.  The second is coordination of services.  Having different policies in different fields answering to different accountability standards provides a structure of misalignment, leading to systems not collaborating or measuring like outcomes and increasing the risk for rapid school changes.  This leads to the direct difficulties and outcomes our current laws are trying to prevent.

The Economics of It:

If we just think economics, we have to question our current approach.  We spend a large amount of money within our schools, through the department of mental health, and through child protective services, and our outcomes have been disastrous.  These outcomes become high-cost adult situations as well, with increased risk of incarceration, a strain on health care with increased hospitalization and associated physical health conditions, and increased homelessness.  This is not an efficient way to coordinate services, and despite reforms measures throughout the years, we continue to see the same devastating results.  If we draw back to the two core needs and issues, rapid cycling and coordination of services, it speaks to systems working in isolation, and when those systems talk, conflicting over different accountability systems and measures/expectations.  That often leads to finger pointing and blaming, and more often continued inefficiency within meeting the needs of children.

A Call for Action:

A buzz word I hear often is "silos", and breaking down those silos.  So what does that mean?  In my experience, people perceive it as collaboration and building team across fields, and that is part of it, but it is so much more.  Systems, organizations, and people do want to collaborate and help children meet their potential, but each exists in a different set of rules and accountability.  We know what we know, and often feel that our system or set of rules is the priority, as it is what we are familiar, and what we are accountable.  To truly break down silos, we must enter into the discussion of system and organizational collaboration, and problem-solving with the willingness to challenge the barriers that lie within and between our systems.  It is important for education groups, such as school districts, to be considered into new Child Care Reform laws, and we must begin to define the outcomes of foster youth under an umbrella that considers child welfare, mental health, physical health, and education, so that our systems have the infrastructure to meet the needs of children.

The fact remains that overwhelmingly foster youth are failing within our schools, they are failing within our communities, and they are struggling significantly when they enter adult life.  This is not the fault of the school systems, nor is child welfare to blame.  We should not point the finger at our mental health system, and we need to be cautious with simple, quick solutions, as this is a complex system.  This is a problem that affects us all in all of our communities, and we must begin to align our systems so that we can have a common goal and common language to help develop our young people for our communities.  Let us take this opportunity and begin work to design a system that enables outcomes for young people that we would want for our own children.