We’re publishing a series of op-ed articles from students in The Writing Program at USC. Every student in the class taught by Stephanie Bower and Dr. John Murray was required to make a short documentary about education by profiling a local school and/or program. Following the film project, the students wrote op-ed articles in response to their experiences and tackled some of the issues they discovered while making the shorts. We will be posting a new op-ed daily for the next two weeks.

by Lydia Green

“What? NO!”

I was standing in the hallway of St. Anne’s Bogen Family Transitional Housing Center with my classmate and two of the women living there, one pregnant and holding another woman’s baby daughter in her arms. I had brought up AB-12, California’s proposed legislation allowing more federal and state funding to go towards foster youth between the ages of 18 and 21.

As a supporter of AB-12, I had not been expecting that reaction. My classmates and I had been going to St. Anne’s, which provides up to two years of stable housing for the mothers and children who live there, every week since February to collaborate with the women on a documentary about their situation. In the process, we have been researching what happens to children who age out of foster care. Currently, foster youth who hit age 18 are sent out on their own, regardless if they are ready for it. Many of them are not, and the transition from foster care to independent living is fraught with difficulties. As was the case with all of the women living at St. Anne’s, 60 percent of women who age out of foster care are pregnant within four years.

So why would she react negatively to legislation that would make it easier for women in her situation to make the transition into adulthood? AB-12 is grounded in solid research showing that children who have the option of staying in foster until the age of 21 are significantly less likely to experience unplanned pregnancies–in addition to being less likely to end up homeless, jobless, or in trouble with the law. Currently, the only major opposition to AB-12 comes from taxpayers who dislike the thought of supporting children for an extra three years using government funding, but for those concerned with economics, the state actually saves money by investing in its foster youth, with a return of $2.40 for every dollar spent. In hard economic times, this is a no-brainer.

However, while every news article out there clearly lays out the overwhelming reasons why California should pass AB-12 and join the ranks of states like Vermont and Illinois–where youth are 38 percent less likely to become pregnant than in states such as Iowa and Wisconsin where they are booted out at age 18–the strong reaction this particular woman had when I brought up the bill shows that there’s more to the picture. When I asked her why she so vehemently opposed it, she explained to me that for her, foster care had been a nightmare. She was placed in a group home, where there were already a number of other youth straining the home’s limited resources. With such a burden, it was anything but supportive and caring, and for her, aging out of the system on her 18th birthday was one of the best things to happen to her.

I assured her that the new bill would make staying in foster care beyond age 18 completely optional, and she seemed to find that more agreeable, but her reaction had struck me. She had definitely hit on an important topic: the lack of adequate foster care for our state’s youth.

AB-12 is a wonderful bill, and it meets a dire need in California, but for the youth affected by it, it’s simply an extension of a wounded limb. The state has seen a 28 percent drop in foster care placements over the last seven years, and the fewer foster homes there are, the more likely it is that foster youth will end up in group homes, where the cost per child can be up to eight times higher and the attention available per child severely limited. This is a significant issue and hopefully the excitement about AB-12 will inspire more loving families to become licensed foster parents. Our state’s children need it.

For more information about becoming a foster parent please call 1-800-KIDS-4-US or visit the California Department of Social Services website.