Jim Beall

Thousands of young adults in the California foster care system will receive additional financial support and housing help as they struggle to survive the recession and the coronavirus pandemic, under a budget deal this week between lawmakers and Democratic Gov.

Just weeks before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered schools and businesses and isolated millions of people in their homes, a California senator introduced groundbreaking legislation to reimagine how the state supports some of its most vulnerable, yet hopeful, residents: Young adults raised in foster care. 

With dozens of foster youth reaching their 21st birthday each week and job prospects still bleak, state legislators in New York and California advocates have introduced bills that would preserve young people’s access to essential support throughout the public health and economic crisis.

California legislation that would have permanently extended foster care payments and housing benefits to young adults through age 25 has now been scaled back to a short-term support plan triggered by a state of emergency such as the current coronavirus pandemic.

A California senator introduced groundbreaking legislation this week to extend the state’s foster care system through age 25 – a bill that acknowledges the continued failure to prepare young people severed from families for life on their own.

California advocates and policymakers are guardedly hopeful that the new governor will walk the walk when it comes to responding to child trauma and mental health challenges for children in the state.

A California legislator is looking to amend the state’s college aid program for foster youth so it covers more students and loses fewer of them to academic problems. The Chafee Education and Training Voucher (ETV) is a federal-state match program that provides up to $5,000 per year to current or former foster youth to help with the costs of college.

Xavier Mountain remembers the last look his adoptive mother gave him before leaving him at a foster youth shelter. It was a look of relief. Mountain first entered the foster care system at age 2 because his father was an undocumented immigrant and his mother had substance use issues.

When Ms. Z handed out the results of our eighth-grade algebra exam, I was so proud of myself. I had the highest score in the school. As was routine, everyone was supposed to bring the test home to show to their parents and have it signed.