Crossing the Aisle:
Foster Youth Success Effort Gets
Bi-Partisan Finance Committee Support

Dear Neighbors,

         This week the future for many of Alaska’s 2,000 foster youth became brighter, as a number of reform efforts passed the House Finance Committee with unanimous, bi-partisan support.  On Tuesday the committee passed the State Operating Budget (more on that to come), which contained amendments on a number of important efforts.  According to Amanda Metivier, founder of facing Foster Care Alaska, and who we’ve worked closely with in crafting these reform efforts, “This is the kind of effort that can change a lot of lives for the better.”  Amanda impressed a lot of folks this session when she came down here to educate policymakers on these issues.

         The Committee members who voted for these amendments and joined with me as co-sponsors were Mike Hawker, Bill Stolze, Bill Thomas, Reggie Joule, Mike Doogan, Woodie Salmon, Neal Foster, Anna Fairclough, Mike Kelly and Alan Austerman.   I hope you might write to thank them for joining across party lines to approve these efforts. 

         In truth, there’s a lot of support for this effort beyond even these folks.  Senator Bettye Davis has been a champion for our youth, and has been working on these issues longer than I have.  And we’ve received a lot of strong support from many others, Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate. 

         OK, back to the Finance Committee, and budget we passed this week.  All eleven Finance Committee members, if we ran the world, would have written a different budget.  But instead of sniping, we found areas like this: a domestic violence plan Rep. Fairclough took the lead in crafting, rural economic opportunity efforts led by Reps. Joule and Foster, and many others to join on.  Don’t worry.  We found room for disagreement.  But politics doesn’t have to be a blood sport.  We didn’t let disagreement stop us from seeking common ground.

         Because folks on both sides of the aisle worked to put aside our differences in as many areas as we could, opportunity and stability for our youth will be improved in a number of ways.  Here’s a quick summary of what the amendments will do to improve Alaska’s foster care system.

Protect Youth from Mid-term School Transfers

         How would you like your child to move between two or three schools during one school term?  If that child had no parent, how do you think they’d fare in school?  Studies answer that question.  They’d fare poorly.

         Today too many foster youth bounce between schools during a school term, as they bounce between family placements.  Solving this problem is a priority of national children’s advocates, and leaving it as is leads to unacceptable levels of school failure.  Alaska schools have said they will work with OCS to prevent damaging school transfers when youth are moved within a community, but want OCS to ensure the family will arrange transportation to the original school for the term remainder.  OCS can improve its efforts on this front, and we approved transportation funding to move the educational opportunity of our foster youth forward. 

Mentoring Success

         Every child needs an adult to look up to and to lean on.  But when foster youth leave care, they often have no responsible adult in their lives, to help them get job skills, continue with school, or find a way to put food in their stomach.  We passed an amendment for competitive grants to groups that will run mentoring efforts and find matches for youth aging out of foster care.  Providing agency help to recruit and train volunteers, and coordinate with OCS, would leverage thousands of hours of needed help.

College, Vocational Aid

         Whether you go to college or get job training, financial aid shouldn’t depend on where you stand in line.

         OCS currently works with the University of Alaska to provide 10 new university tuition scholarships per year for youth to continue their education.  The University provides both college degree programs, and a variety of job training classes.  We added an additional 10 scholarships for $5,500 in tuition and fees to help more youth set education and job training as a goal. 

         The state also currently offers up to $5,000 to youth to obtain job training through the ETV program.  But the state only provides $115,000 in pass through federal funding which covers a small portion of the demand.  We added an additional $85,000 to allow all youth who qualify to obtain these job training and education benefits.

Help so More Youth Coming Out of Care Succeed 

         The Independent Living Program (ILP) is OCS’ effort to assist youth after they leave care with work, school, job training and life skills. Steering youth towards a career is the right thing to do and saves the state money in the long run.  Work is cheaper than homelessness, jail, and public assistance.

         After-care outcomes, from homelessness to criminal involvement, and lack of success, are troubling.  The ILP cannot possibly work with only four statewide staff.  When our 2,000 youth come out of care, and need guidance on finding work; on maintaining housing; on continuing education; and on leveraging available benefits, there are only four people to help, and they say they are completely overwhelmed, and unable to help adequately in individual cases.  That leads to failure.  Two additional staff will effectively extend educational, work and life skill guidance to youth coming out of care.  

Housing Assistance to Avoid Homelessness

         Many youth—37% according to a recent UA study—transition from foster care to homelessness at some point in their lives.  Currently OCS offers partial rental help for roughly three months to youth.  Roughly 100 youth come out of care every year.  We added funds to offer to youth facing the prospect of homelessness additional rental help to give them more time to find stability and get on their feet.

 Foster Parent Recruitment; Discount Clothing Help

         Last year we added $30,000 to create and broadcast a public service announcement aimed at recruiting Native Alaskan foster parents.  We’ve don’t this again this year.  Including this funding will allow OCS to continue their efforts to affect the severe shortage of foster parents in Alaska, especially Native Alaskan foster parents.

         We also added $5,000 for mailings, to keep families informed of the discount clothing effort we worked to launch last year, Foster Wear. The mailings will let foster families know if new stores join the effort, and of the discounts provided at the stores.  Currently notice is provided only by e-mail.

         The bill next goes to the House floor for a vote on Thursday or Friday.  Then it’s off to the Senate, where Senators on both sides of the aisle have expressed their support.

Veteran’s Help:  House Bill 284 Heard in House Health and Social Services Committee

         This summer and fall, I, Rep. Nancy Dahlstrom and Sen. Bill Wielechowski worked with the Pioneers’ Home to fix a problem brought to us by one of our constituents.   Disabled Veterans are entitled to free/discount prescription drug benefits if they are disabled during their service to our country.  Because the VA won’t confirm a patient’s prescription drug regimen to staff at the Pioneers Homes, the Pioneers Homes was refusing to administer free and discount VA prescription drugs to those residents who could not administer their own prescriptions.  The Homes had a legitimate safety concern about residents bringing prescriptions in from outside sources.  Unfortunately, this meant that veterans who had earned discount or free medicine benefits, had to pay the Pioneers Homes full price for the same medicine at the Pioneer Home pharmacy.  This denied veterans an important benefit they had earned by serving their country.

         We have worked with the Pioneers Homes to devise the following solution.  The Homes now administer the discount prescriptions received from the VA when they can do so safely, and where the VA shares a patient’s prescription regimen with Pioneer Home staff.  If Pioneer Home staff have a safety concern, then the Homes will issue the prescription drugs in house, but for free, or at the same discount rate offered y the VA. 

         Our legislation will make this policy permanent both for veterans, and for native Alaskans who are entitled to free prescription medicines.  The Pioneers Homes can still refuse to administer prescriptions not issued by their own pharmacists.  But if they do this, they should do that at their cost, not at the cost of residents who have a right to discount medicine. 

         On Tuesday HB 284 was introduced in the House HSS committee.  We expect it will pass out of committee soon.  

         As always, please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

         My Best,