JULY 30, 2009—New York City shelters for homeless and runaway youth have turned away dozens of young people this summer because of lack of space, shelter operators and advocacy groups say. Advocates attribute the problem to the economic downturn, which they say has made it more difficult for older adolescents and young adults to find the jobs and housing necessary to become self-sufficient.
"Programs around the city are either totally full, or turning away people," says Margo Hirsch, executive director of Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services, an organization that advocates on behalf of runaway, homeless and street youth. "It's definitely related to the economy. Young people who could marginally hold on to a job and stay with relatives, maybe paying a little rent, can't do that anymore."
Streetwork, a program of the nonprofit organization Safe Horizon that serves homeless and runaway youth ages 16 to 21 in Manhattan, turned away 33 young people who requested shelter in April, 26 in May, and 40 in June, according to the agency's vice president David Nish. Last year, he adds, they turned away no people during those three months.
A group of 10 young people who were turned away one day this summer returned the following day, saying they'd spent the night in Central Park, says Nish. "Young people are coming to us looking for beds, and we don't have anywhere to refer them," he says.
Covenant House, which has an emergency shelter in Manhattan for young adults from ages 18 to 21, turned away 46 young people in June, according to Hirsch. "Normally we would accept anyone who came to the door, and we can't do that at this point," says Nancy Downing, Covenant House director of advocacy.
Covenant House reports a 40 percent increase in young people seeking shelter since October 2008. For a few months, the shelter tried to accommodate everyone by increasing the number of young people housed on each of the shelter's five floors from about 45 to about 75. However, in March, staff reduced the number on each floor back to 45. "We simply don't have the funds to increase our staff to be able to accommodate the larger numbers," says Downing. Because of a tight budget, Covenant House has been forced to close programs designed to help prevent homelessness among youth, Downing says.
"It's almost a moot point for us to do referrals at this point, because everyone is full," agrees Frances Wood, an administrator at Sylvia's Place, an emergency shelter in Manhattan for gay, lesbian and transgender youth under the age of 24 run by the Metropolitan Community Church of New York. "Everyone is overflowing and has a long waiting list. It's a really frustrating situation."
She says Sylvia's Place has seen an increase in teens seeking shelter and is housing about six more young people each month than usual. Wood says they have also turned some people away in recent months, although she didn't provide statistics. She adds that she has seen more young adults who don't identify as gay or lesbian asking if they could stay there, for lack of other options.
Legally, young people ages 18 to 21 are eligible to enter adult shelters, but in practice, the adult shelters frequently refer people in that age range to Covenant House, advocates say. Runaway youth under the age of 18 who were abused or neglected at home are potentially eligible for foster care, but in practice it is difficult to get older adolescents placed in the foster care system, says Hirsch. Indeed, 16- and 17-year-olds have a legal right to leave home on their own, without a parent's consent, for as long as 30 days if they enter a shelter for runaways.
Susan Haskell, assistant commissioner for the city's Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD), which funds services for runaway and homeless youth, says the crisis shelters for youth have been operating at 100 percent capacity for the past several years. She says the number of crisis shelter beds doubled from 60 in 2006 to 113 last year. When demand outstrips supply, the shelters give priority to 16- and 17-years old and often refer 18- to 20-year-olds to the city's adult shelter system, she says.
Covenant House receives funds from both private and public sources, and private donations have decreased recently, Downing adds. The City Council increased DYCD's budget for runaway and homeless youth from $4.6 million last year to about $5.9 million for the fiscal year that began July 1. City Councilman Lewis Fidler, D-Brooklyn, who has advocated for more money for homeless youth, says the funds were approved in June and should be distributed in August. He says the increase will help but will not solve the problem. "The pie here is not big enough," he says.
Before the current recession, more young people may have made the fragile transition to self-sufficiency by relying on the hospitality of relatives, friends, and parents, advocates say. But as adults lose their jobs and sometimes their homes, fewer families may be willing to support children after age 18, says Nish.
"Right now a lot of young people who would be able to enter self-sufficient adulthood are really being delayed in that process because competition is much fiercer, availability of jobs is much less," says Theresa Nolan, director of New York City programs for Green Chimneys, a nonprofit agency that runs a wide range of youth programs. Budget cuts at nonprofits, meanwhile, make it more difficult to serve young people in need. Green Chimneys has temporarily closed 10 beds in its 20-bed program for homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender young people because of city budget cuts. (Nolan hopes to be able to reopen those beds in August with new city funding.)
A 2007 survey by the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services estimated that there were 3,800 homeless people between the age of 16 and 24 in New York City on any given night. Of those, about 1,600 had spent the night sleeping outside, in an abandoned building, at a transportation hub, or in a car, bus, train, or another vehicle. Another 150 spent the night as a sex worker, according to the survey.
JULY 2, 2009—The city has delayed plans to move some 500 foster children from institutions to family settings after foster care agencies complained that the moves were poorly planned and rushed, according to foster care agencies, children's law guardians, and the city's Administration for Children's Services (ACS).
In the past two years, some children were sent to relatives who couldn't care for them, some were sent from one institution to another, and still others were discharged from care to live on their own before they were ready, foster care providers say. In addition, some children were sent to foster parents who had not yet been trained, the providers say and the city acknowledges.
"Some moves happened very quickly. Speed became important as opposed to accuracy," says Irwin Moss, director of social work at Leake and Watts' residential campus, which was the campus from which about 130 children moved over the last 18 months. "Some [kids] went to situations that weren't the best. Many went to independent living before they were ready." One young woman, Brandy Allen, 19, told Child Welfare Watch she was sent from Leake and Watts' campus to a group home while ACS was authorizing another home for her to live in. The group home did not have a bed for her to sleep on, Allen says. Instead of sleeping on a couch, she went to a friend's house, she says.
The Administration for Children's Services acknowledges there have been problems in the city's plan to move 1,000 children from institutions in the 21-month period that ended June 2009. ACS Deputy Commissioner Lorraine Stephens says about 500 children were moved by the end of June, but the agency delayed the timeline for moving the remaining 500 children after it received complaints from foster care providers. ACS now hopes to reach its goal by June 2010, a year later than anticipated, Stephens says. She says ACS is working more closely with foster care agencies and children's law guardians to make plans for which children will move and where. "I think how we included providers in the discussion has changed," she says.
The plan to move children out of institutions, including residential treatment centers and group homes, is part of a wider effort by the city to keep more children in family settings. A growing body of research suggests young people fare better living in families than in group care. Of the over 16,400 kids in foster care, about 2,100 now live in institutions. That's a reduction of 2,200 children in institutional care since 2003, when more than 4,300 New York City foster children lived in group care.
While almost all child welfare practitioners agree with efforts to keep children out of group care whenever possible, some say the plan was driven by ACS's desire to reduce the number of institutional foster care beds rather than by the individual needs of children.
Only six of 16 children who were moved from Green Chimneys, a foster care provider in Brewster, N.Y., found stable family placements, says Debbie MacCarry, compliance and risk manager for the agency. Two ended up in psychiatric hospitals. Two others went home, but ended up back at Green Chimney's campus after that did not work out, and eventually moved to another group living situation, she says. Many of the children had serious mental health issues.
Moving children to homes that are tenuous sets them up for the trauma that results from a failed placement, she says. "Failing for them is re-traumatizing them, sometimes causing a subsequent hospitalization," says MacCarry.
Lawyers representing children in foster care say more recent moves have been less chaotic. "They aren't closing placements with the same kind of blind urgency that seemed to drive the process when it first started," says Betsy Kramer, director of policy and special litigation at Lawyers for Children.
"They also seem to be concentrating on replacing smaller numbers of children at a time—which is a huge improvement on the massive wave of bed reductions that happened in the beginning—this smaller scale makes it much easier to really focus on the young people, what their options are, and where they should go. The process has not been without problems, but it has definitely improved."
April 30, 2009—The federal government has paved the way for the cities and states to move thousands of children off the foster care rolls and into long-term "subsidized guardianship" with relatives, but New York State isn't likely to come up with the necessary matching dollars any time soon.
State legislators, local officials and advocates are meeting this spring—with the first session slated for May 1—to develop new legislation that would establish the details of a New York guardianship program. There is no funding for such a program in the fiscal year 2010 budget, which means it will most likely be at least one more year before such a program begins.
Supporters argue that in other states, government-subsidized guardianship has relieved pressure on foster care systems and saved money, while allowing families more independence and greater control over their children's lives.
In New York City, nearly a third of the 16,500 children in foster care live with relatives in kinship foster homes. Subsidized guardianship would allow many children in long-term kinship care to leave the foster care system. They would remain with their relatives for as long as necessary, but without the same degree of intense oversight and costly monitoring by the government and nonprofit agencies—and without severing a child's legal ties to his or her parents.
"This is a win-win situation all around, for the children, for the family caregivers and the foster care system," says state Senator Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn). "Children will have a safe, permanent home with loved ones. Family members will get the help they need to properly care for their kin, and the foster care system saves money because it will administer fewer cases."
Then-President George Bush signed the federal Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 into law in October 2008. The law was modeled after the Kinship Caregiver Support Act, which former New York Senator Hillary Clinton long championed. New York is one of a handful of states which does not yet have a subsidized guardianship program.
The federal law provides support for caregivers looking after their nieces, nephews, grandchildren and other relatives outside of the foster care system. To receive federal dollars, the state legislature must establish a subsidized guardianship program and figure out how to cover 50 percent of the cost of the program.
Stakeholders will meet this spring to discuss program details, including who would be eligible. While advocates hope that New York will be able to pass legislation this session, no one knows how long it will take to hammer out the fine points, says a source in the legislature. Senator Montgomery and Assemblyman William Scarborough (D-Queens) are among the legislators backing the effort.
Currently, many relative caregivers in New York receive financial support either as foster parents or adoptive parents. Advocates of subsidized guardianship point out that both routes pose problems. Foster parents looking after their relatives for long periods of time often complain that constant monitoring by the child welfare system is invasive. Because foster care is considered a temporary placement, relative caregivers also face pressure by child welfare workers to adopt. But adopting a family member's child can fuel familial tensions, and older children may not want to sever ties with their parents.
In Chicago, a subsidized guardianship program freed up the city's Family Court system and saved money because guardians, unlike foster parents, do not receive ongoing supervision by caseworkers and judges, say observers of that foster care system. In New York, they say, subsidized guardianship could help reduce the number of cases in the city's backlogged Family Court.
However, John Mattingly, commissioner of the city's Administration for Children's Services, warns that a bill must be crafted carefully so as not to dissuade foster parents from adopting.
"Those of us who have been in the field long enough know that most times, relatives will adopt if reunification is not a live option, if the agency supports them in their decision, and if it will achieve permanence for the child," Mattingly wrote in an email. "In sum, kinship guardianship can be the best option for a small percentage of children, but the State of New York needs to be careful to craft regulations for its use that will continue the emphasis on adoption for most children who cannot return home." Moreover, Mattingly says, the state should not move forward with kinship guardianship until there is permanent funding for the program.
Advocates say one of the main challenges is determining how the program will be funded: federal money will cover only 50 percent of the costs, and the state and the city must negotiate how the remaining costs will be divided. There is also the question of whether the state's portion will come out of the foster care block grant—which is capped—or from a different source. Taking money out of the block grant would mean less money for foster care, but it would allow the program to begin sooner.
"This will be hardest the part, especially given the budget," says Stephanie Gendell, associate executive director for policy and public affairs at the advocacy organization Citizens' Committee for Children of New York. "There is so much support behind the concept that hopefully the money won't derail it from becoming a reality."
Complicating matters, no one has pinpointed how much the program will cost, or how many New York City children living with relatives would participate. Most likely, children living with relatives in kinship foster care will be eligible only if they are expected neither to return to their parents nor to be adopted. If the program provides these families with a stipend comparable to that which foster parents receive, it could cost about $7,500 per child, per year, one source in the legislature estimated. Adding services to help these families succeed—such as respite care or family therapy—would bring up the cost.
The cost of foster care is far higher, however, because of the substantial cost of case management, administrative oversight, support services and Family Court involvement.
"More news at 11 around guardianship," said William T. Gettman Jr., executive deputy commissioner of the state's Office of Children and Family Services, in a recent briefing about his agency's budget. "But I think there's a general consensus that we want to move forward."
