Thanks to more than a decade of FYA and other advocates raising our voices and bringing the stories of foster youth to the media and policy makers, foster care is no longer the “quiet crisis” it was not so long ago. In fact, foster care has received more media attention in recent years than ever before, and here you’ll find a frequently updated library of news and editorials of note.
February 01, 2012 - Our friends at Fostering Media Connections and California Youth Connection are starting a media internship program in February. This is a fantastic opportunity for a current or former foster youth, ages 14-24, to learn journalism skills and write stories about the foster care system. They are looking for one more intern to join the program every Monday and Wednesday from 3:30 to 6:30 in San Francisco. The deadline...Read more »
January 18, 2012 - This past week saw the publication of great op-eds by two longtime friends of FYA. An excellent op-ed from Dr. Jill Duerr-Berrick, prominent UC Berkeley child welfare researcher and co-Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Child and Youth Policy, calls on California to treat child poverty as the disaster it is. Sokhom Mao, former Alameda County foster youth and currently of CalSWEC and the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Commission, published
January 11, 2012 - Two very nice stories this week on the rollout of AB12, which provides an unprecedented level of support to foster and probation youth in Alameda County. The San Francisco Examiner published a brief piece on AB12, featuring the reflections of Timajae Evans, who spent many years in foster careand has been making it on his own, but who is glad that AB12 will help those coming up behind him. The Orange...Read more »
January 11, 2012 - As we reported last year, Fresno Assemblymember Henry Perea Jr. responded to a tragedy in his district by calling for an audit of Child Protective Services in four California counties. Alameda County was audited in April of 2011, and the resulting report identified several areas for improvement. Assemblymember Perea has recently introduced a bill that would mandate that all deaths of children in foster care be vigorously investigated. In similar news,...Read more »
January 04, 2012 - Lots of foster care news and notes over the past few weeks. Covering the launch of AB12, which took effect January 1st, the LA Times (1/2/12, Byrne) calls it a "change long overdue (that) will help place the 5,000 foster youth who age out of care each year in California on more equal footing with their peers." Capital Weekly profiled John Burton, who along with Amy Lemley of...Read more »
December 14, 2011 - An AP story carried by the HuffingtonPost (Crary, 12/12/11) reports on new US data which indicates that rates of child abuse and maltreatment have dropped in the past couple of years despite predictions that child abuse would increase during the recession. However, as we noted in a previous post, a recent BBC documentary examines the US child death epidemic and finds the US has "the worst child abuse record...Read more »
December 13, 2011 - The Huffington Post (Rodriguez, 12/9/11) continues to examine the intersection of immigration and foster care. (See FYA's earlier coverage of this issue HERE.) Between January and June 2011, the U.S. deported more than 46,000 parents of U.S. citizen children. As a result, more than 5,000 children are in foster care around the country. According to the Post, children whose parents are at risk of deportation recently sent...Read more »
December 06, 2011 - An AP story (run by the San Francisco Chronicle 12/6/11) reports that U.S. District Court Judge A. Howard Matz "has approved a settlement that will provide mental health services to foster children and at-risk children under Medi-Cal." The article notes that the state must now provide "two types of Medi-Cal covered mental health services, intensive home-based services and intensive care coordination to certain children under Medicaid. The settlement also requires...Read more »
November 30, 2011 - Recent local media coverage includes reports on the alarming rise in the number of homeless families in San Francisco and Oakland, the need for additional investment in foster youth education reform, and a little good news as AB12 is poised to go into effect January 1.
November 30, 2011 - KALW's Your Call Radio (Aguilar, 11/28/11) addressed the staggering U.S. child death rate caused by child abuse, following up on a new BBC documentary and a related article in The Guardian. The Guardian (Jilani, 10/24/11) reported that "more than 20,000 American children have been killed their own family members" over the past decade. This number is "nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan." The Guardian also...Read more »
Alameda County Foster Youth Alliance (FYA) | 675 Hegenberger Rd., Oakland, CA, 94621 | 510-387-7518 | info@fosteryouthalliance.org
