Preventing Poverty While We Are Ending Poverty

Bill Wilson Center’s long-range vision is to prevent poverty.   Yesterday I was part of a discussion with other homeless housing providers on how we can end poverty in Santa Clara County.   Catholic Charities is launching an effort to reduce poverty in Santa Clara County by 50% by the year 2020.  Bill Wilson Center is part of this movement.  City of San Jose officials through the Destination: Home Program have committed to end chronic homelessness by funneling more resources to that population.  Both have joined forces to help end one of the more vexing problems in San Jose and Santa Clara County: getting the chronic homeless population into housing.

Bill Wilson Center provides supportive and housing services to homeless youth and youth aging out of foster care and other institutions.  By federal definition, this population does not fit the “chronic homeless” category.  Neither do seniors living on a fixed income at the poverty level, or women who are victims of domestic violence living in emergency shelters.  While nonprofit agencies serving these groups applaud the effort to end chronic homelessness they are concerned that limited resources may be redirected away from their services.  How do we assure that we prevent poverty by serving youth, seniors, and victims of domestic violence and at the same time end poverty by housing the chronic homeless?

I believe we can do both, however, we need representation from various groups to be at the leadership level on Destination: Home when funding and policy decisions are being made.  Up to now, the Blue Ribbon Commission to End Chronic Homelessness and Destination: Home have only representation from public officials, foundations, United Way, and private corporations.   The nonprofit representation has been only at the coalition level.

The argument for not including individual nonprofit representation on the leadership groups has been that one nonprofit cannot represent another.  This is the same argument that occurs throughout the United States from the city to the state level.   If one city can represent all cities on the leadership or executive level why can’t the same occur for a nonprofit agency?  If we are to end poverty we need to start including the agencies that are on the ground floor doing the work.  In the nonprofit field we have been choosing leaders to represent our issues on numerous collaborations for many years.

A second common argument for not including nonprofit representation is that funding decisions may be made by the leadership group and an agency may steer funds their way.  Policies and procedures can be put in place to assure no “self-dealing” takes place.

Housing providers serving the chronic homeless and nonprofits working with homeless youth, victims of domestic violence, or other “non-chronic homeless” populations need to be represented at all decision-making levels  to prevent poverty while we are ending it.    Bill Wilson Center will continue advocating for connecting all young people to the community with the necessary resources to prevent poverty.  That includes speaking out for more inclusive public policy.

A Kid Shouldn’t Need a Mental Health Diagnosis to Get Help

It seems like we spend a lot of time these days diagnosing our kids. We know teenagers can be frustrating and difficult, but does every rowdy boy really have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)? If a young person is in foster care or juvenile hall the system scrutinizes them for a variety of disorders such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bi-Polar, Depression, and on and on. I would be depressed, too, if I were locked up in juvenile hall! And, unfortunately, funding for mental health services often adds to the problem – if you want counseling and have Medi-Cal you need a mental health diagnosis.

In the 1970s, many kids ended up in mental hospitals or secure facilities because they were out of their parents’ control and the parents paid for a mental illness diagnosis. As a young advocate, I joined others in changing the federal and state laws so that kids were not placed in detention solely for being a runaway or truant. However, parents often skirted the law by getting their kid diagnosed with a mental illness and having them committed to a mental institution where a young person under 18 had no rights to a fitness or competency hearing like adults had. The parents were often desperate but the kids were powerless. As a different, more “kinder” approach, runaway youth centers such as Bill Wilson House sprang up across the nation and the Federal Runaway and Homeless Youth Act became the law in 1974. These programs brought kids and parents together to work out their problems and teach them the skills to prevent future crises.  This is an example of Bill Wilson Center’s “lease restrictive environment” guiding principle.

Today the funding limit from the Federal Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (maximum grant of $200,000) is a fraction of the needed funding to operate runaway centers. Shelters must pull in private funding as well as local government funds to keep the doors open. Medi-Cal was always an option for runaways with mental health problems but most centers shied away from the funding due to its bureaucratic paperwork and stigma it placed on kids. On the other hand, there were many homeless kids with serious mental illness not getting treated. After much debate, Bill Wilson Center joined the ranks of other runaway programs and began accepting Medi-Cal in 2007. I will be blogging off and on about the impact of Medi-Cal and its implications on our services.

Extending Foster Care to Age 21 — Erasing the Reagan Years

Yesterday California legislators vowed to extend foster care to age 21 by introducing Assembly Bill 12 that would match federal funding, thus enabling foster parents to receive financial support for youth beyond age 18.  Everyone was celebrating after a report from universities of Washington and Chicago proved what was a no-brainer to most of us, that young people do better if they can stay home and attend college until age 21.

Forcing foster kids to leave home at age 18 is actually the result of the Reagan years when welfare was limited and foster care greatly reduced.  In the mid 70s kids could stay in foster care until age 20 if they were enrolled in college.  Many foster kids stayed home and attended community college until the benefits ran out.  That all changed with one of many reorganizations of the federal welfare system.  Foster care changed and the payments ended at age 18.

One of the many problems with foster care funding is that is has always been tied to Welfare programs.  While the general public supports funding foster care they often do not support general welfare programs for adults.   The unfortunate joining of the two programs has brought down the safety net for foster care over the past two decades.   One example is the increase of foster home payment to foster parents which has remained extremely low in California.  The first budget increase eliminated every year is to welfare recipients which includes foster parents.

The government is beginning to address the problems of foster youth by introducing programs to support kids aging out of foster care.  AB 12 would take an additional step by increasing foster care coverage to age 21.  As the recent study by Chapin Hall on foster youth in California college programs points out, kids still struggle with graduating from college even with support.   Most worry about housing after college and financial support when the aid runs out.   There is no home for these young adults to return to after leaving school.  Many of them report a sense of deep isolation.   We have a long way to go before we build lasting connections to the community for these high risk young people.  With the community’s support, Bill Wilson Center will continue to work hard at building connections to our community for youth leaving foster care.

Our Best Practice — No Fail Philosophy When Serving Kids

Sorry, but I am really getting a bit tired of folks using terms such as “best practices” or “promising practices” or “evidence based” to be describing how we should be serving kids at our runaway shelter or counseling center.   Don’t get me wrong, I am all for studying what works and what doesn’t in youth services.

We all can give examples of tons of money going to programs that just don’t work — remember “Scared Straight“?  The government poured millions into a program that took kids to prisons to talk to prisoners to scare them into staying away from a life of crime.   There were all kinds of testimonials from kids after leaving the prisons about how they were never going to end up there.  The media loved the program.  Only problem was after studying the program the research showed that it did not have any long term affect with keeping kids out of jail.   Of course, sometimes we just like to keep funding programs for other reasons — like D.A.R.E. My son went through this program when he was in 5th Grade.  the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program usually taught by Community Relations Specialists with Police Departments has shown to have no long term impact on whether kids use drugs later in life.  Here is one of many studies debunking the program.   However, the research did show that kids felt better about police officers after the training.

At Bill Wilson Center, we have been using many of the current “best practices” but we just call them by different names.  For example, when serving chronic runaway and homeless youth in our shelter we have a “no fail” philosophy.  I often like to say that programs fail, not kids.   Anyone who has been around teenagers know that they need to test limits and break rules.  Youth who have been living on the street for a long time are used to people turning them away for breaking rules.  Sometimes a “no fail” rule is tough on staff — they have to be trained and learn how to use other consequences to work with difficult kids.  However, our research shows that kids rank our staff very high because we make them feel like part of a family.  This best practice seems pretty obvious — if you keep trying sooner or later you and the kid will get it right!

Teenager is a Negative Word

Young people, that is what Glynis Shea, Communications Coordinator for the Division of Adolescent Health at the University of Minnesota suggested to a group of nonprofit CEOs that we call teenagers if we want to appeal to the vast majority of Americans.  I recently attended an all day workshop on public relations for youth serving agencies.  Her presentation was  great although I was totally surprised by some of her research on kids (not such a negative word).  Apparently, there have been numerous studies and focus groups with ordinary citizens on how they feel when they hear certain words relating to young people.  When groups were asked how they felt about the word “teenager” many stated they equated the word with juvenile delinquents, kids out of control, troubled kids, and on and on.   Add terms like “at-risk,” “abused,” or “street” and the negative feelings were even stronger.   It seems like it was either the kids’ or the parents’ fault for their problems or situation.  So, instead of using the word “teenager” we should try more neutral words such as kids and youth in our brochures and newsletters.   Gosh, just when my 13-year-old son was so proud that he could now be called a teenager!  Below is a link to her interesting work on adolescents at the University of Minnesota and selling youth development.

http://www.moappp.org/Documents/events/2006/framenotes2.pdf