by
Narr: The waiting areas are cramped at the Bronx family courthouse. There is no privacy anywhere. Outside of Legal Aid's office police officers, lawyers, social workers and other court administrators walk the hallway alongside families engaged in emotional conversations. Dale Margolin is a lawyer at the juvenile rights division and works with ACS caseworkers. Many of her young clients are children who age out of foster care, yet never get adopted. Margolin says communication with ACS caseworkers can be frustrating.
TAPE (Dale M.)(:12): Two days before their 21st b-day- like, oh Johnny's turning 21st- even though he has been in foster care for 15 years- you knew he was turning 21 on February 21st and yet you have no plan for him.
Narr: Teenagers are allowed to sign themselves out of foster care when they are 18 but state law allows them to stay until they are 21. The problems for young people leaving foster care increases when they have children of their own.
Legal Aid represents hundreds of teen parents who are in foster care. Margolin represents about 50 of these clients. She says that when the child welfare system overlooks adolescent parents they are ignoring the root problem and missing out on an opportunity to make sweeping changes in the lives of thousands of young people.
TAPE (Dale M.) (:15): "This is a chance- they are in the system- this is a chance to really help them and really help them be good parents and provide services to them and not release them into homelessness and provide stable lives for them and that we are just squandering that and making it worse."
Narr: The recent media attention surrounding the child fatalities of the past few months in New York City has caused some changes in priorities for ACS. Commissioner John Mattingly has ordered all agencies working with foster care families to immediately conduct reviews of their current foster care cases. This even though all of the recent deaths occurred when the child was with one of their birth parents- not in foster care.
Lynne Echenberg is the director at a community center for foster teens in the Bronx called Hope Academy. She says that sometimes people don't ask what happens to children after they have entered the foster care system. And more importantly: what happens when they
leave.
TAPE (Lynne E.) (:13) : "We are sort of are sending these kids out to lives of vulnerability and victimizations and homelessness and destitution and joblessness and under education."
Narr: This problem is compounded by the fact that the city agencies are not coordinating their efforts. One of the main problems is finding young adults places to live when they leave care. ACS caseworkers have limited resources in assisting them with housing and there is no legal recourse to make this coordination happen.
TAPE (Lynne E.) (:12): "It's just a challenge and at the end of the day if those things don't happen- there are no consequences- you are not going to be held in contempt of court- no one is going to be held accountable if those things don't happen."
Narr: Both ACS and Child advocates have been working on policy reforms that were finally starting to shift the focus of services to adolescents in foster care. Now these priorities are being set aside.
TAPE (Lynne E.)(:19): The momentum started before all of these fatalities around reforming services so that there is more of an emphasis on adolescents in foster care- they are the majority of kids in foster care. Little babies are not the majority. The majority are kids 14 and up.
Narr: Child advocates who are pushing for more supportive programs for young adults leaving the foster care system will have to work to gain that momentum again. Until then the priority for caseworkers is still on the hundreds of children who have just entered the system in the past few months.
I'm Gabrielle Galanek, Columbia Radio News.