Travel For Change
This little story came out in the December issue of GO Magazine, Airtran’s Inflight. Small as it might be, Lao-tzu said it best: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Social Worker Tuition and California Prisons
In this blog on the Huffington Post, I question how wise it is to increase fees for students of social work when they are already paid very little for the extremely important job they do. Unfortunately students of social work at both UC Berkeley and UCLA will have to pay increased tuitions – one bad fiscal choice among many cropping up in this time of prolonged budgetary stress.
Just this week I visited L.A. County’s Department of Children and Family Services, where the Independent Living Division (ILP) has seen the $1.4 million it used to receive from the State for a stipend for emancipated foster youth completely cut from their budget. Rhelda Shabazz, DCFS’ Emancipation Division Chief, was livid about what the cut would mean. She held out a sheet with the entire ILP budget of $13 million and pointed out how her department would make up the 10% loss. DCFS was being forced to cut stipends for former foster youth’s: tuition, books & supplies, exams, clothing, scholastic and vocational administrative fees, apartment and dorm security deposits and transportation. All the small, huge things that can make the difference between a motivated young person making it and that same young person not having a fair chance to.
And when young people don’t make it, it is not only them who pay with time spent in prison, on the streets or under a pervasive malaise; it us as a society who pays the monetary bill of that failure and the moral toll of knowing that we let it happen.
Abominable Educational Expectations
In this, my latest blog on the Huffington Post, I explore what we as a society have deemed as acceptable in terms of educational standards for not only foster kids but all kids. In the piece I mention a program to help foster youth in college.
There is also a very promising program going on in the Montebello and Pomona Unified School Districts in which social workers are placed in high schools to help foster youth better prepare for graduation and potentially college (only 2-3 percent of former foster youth ever graduate from a four year institution). The project, dubbed the First District Education Pilot Program, helped 18 youth graduate. Without the pilot 67% would not have been on track to graduate and 83% plan to enroll in a 2- or 4-year college, compared to 20% who enroll nationwide.
It is only a handful of young people. But a promising start.
Save $80 Million for CA Foster Youth
In this impassioned Op-Ed that ran last month in the San Francisco Chronicle, Amy Lemley of the John Burton Foundation clearly illustrates what an $80 milion cut to California’s Foster Care Budget would mean:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/02/ED0N19GU13.DTL
Fostering Media Connections in California’s most and least populous Counties
On Sunday the Los Angeles Daily News ran an Op-Ed I wrote on the proliferation on Foster Family Agencies (FFAs), which I had come across while researching for a longer piece that appeared in the Siskiyou Daily News. While the piece may seem to come down hard on FFAs that is not the intent; moreover I believe it is important to describe the systems that are in place to see what can be done to make them better. In California it can be argued that FFAs – on average – do a better job than public foster care, but are they doing the best job they can?
Please read the following: http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_13536157
On Tuesday, the Siskiyou Daily News ran an Op-Ed I wrote about the importance of implementing Fostering Connections for the sake of the tiny county’s foster children. Despite having written a controversial article on FFAs the week before, Siskiyou County Human and Health Services director Michael Noda was very happy to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of public foster care in his county.
I was particularly impressed with his detailed plans to use money freed up by Fostering Connections to improve outcomes for Siskiyou Foster youth. Noda also went on to lament rigorous California confidentiality laws that inhibit a more rigorous debate about the benefits and deficits of foster care up and down the state.
Please read the following: http://www.siskiyoudaily.com/opinions/columnists/x576551731/Helping-them-is-helping-ourselves
Again, I urge you to support editors like Mariel Garza of the LA Daily News and Mike Slizewski of the Siskiyou Daily News in their decision to use scant print space for foster care. You can do this by passing on the pieces, writing comments or by sending letters directly to the editors.
The Privatization of Foster Care in the Los Angeles Daily News
The Los Angeles Daily News ran my Op-Ed on the privatization of foster care. Please read, comment and pass around. Thanks to Mariel Garza of the Daily News for offering space in the editorial pages for this topic.
http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_13536157
The Privatization of Our Children
The question of how we should take care of foster children is a tough one. In this blog, which appears on the Huffingtonpost today, I ask whether or not profit can come into the equation when caring for children. I simply ask a question. I leave it up to the reader to decide how that question makes them feel.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-heimpel/the-privatization-of-our_b_312578.html
A Tale of Two Approaches
A Tale of Two Approaches
Fostering new Media Connections from San Jose to Siskiyou County
This week, I tried to two approaches to placing stories about foster care in the press. The first was conventional. I contacted editorial page editors until Barbara Marshman of the San Jose Mercury News — with whom I’ve never worked — took an Op-Ed I had written on the Fostering Connections and Increased Adoptions act of 2008 ( the largest reform to foster care in more than a decade) oversight hearing that took place last month in D.C.
Here is that Op-Ed entitled: “Extending Foster Care Would Pay Big Dividends”
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_13465232?nclick_check=1
The second approach was more avant-garde. I was in Siskiyou County, CA — the second least populous county in the state – where I go every year to visit with my father. I wanted to see what the local HHS head thought of implementing Fostering Connections and how well plugged in rural counties are to what was happening on the federal level. In conversations with Siskiyou County HHS Director Michael Noda, it became clear that he had very detailed plans of how he would used freed up funds to help the 123 foster children in the county.
In the course of my study of the area I came across news clips about the August death of a toddler. I quickly found out that the two-year-old had been entrusted to the care of a private, non-profit foster care agency. I knew I had a story so I went to downtown Yreka, the county seat, and walked into the offices of the Siskiyou Daily News. I told the editor-and-chief, Mike Slizewski, that I wanted to write a story about the proliferation of Foster Family Agencies in rural CA counties.
Here that is that story entitled:”The Bottom line and a Baby’s Death”
http://www.siskiyoudaily.com/news/x366038331/The-bottom-line-and-a-baby-s-death
When I agreed to write the story I made sure that Slizewski would allow me to also write a later Op-Ed about how Fostering Connections would help Siskiyou County. He agreed. So stay tuned for that. It is great to be out there Fostering new Media Connections.
All the best,
Daniel Heimpel
P.S.
Please feel free to comment on the links provided. Editors tend to closely read and track the number of comments a story generates. By commenting, those editors feel validated in their tough decision to make foster care a news item over a war in the Middle East, health care reform or a buckling economy.
More on Marijuana
It is amazing how far gone Los Angeles is in regulating Medical Marijuana. From producers, store-front dealers, the magazines that carry their ads and journalists like myself, the city’s inability to control how Marijuana is distributed has been a windfall. Read my story Potshots Over Los Angeles Pot Shops that ran in the LA Weekly today.
