Help for foster teens examined

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 | 11:26 a.m.

State lawmakers were frustrated Thursday to hear that funds to help teens who leave state foster care programs aren't being spent as fast or efficiently as a 2001 bill intended.

The legislators, members of a committee on children and families, expected the Nevada Division of Children, Youth and Families to give a progress report on efforts to use about $2.1 million meant to help teens with needs such as housing, health care and education.

The division revealed in a December meeting that more than 90 percent of those funds were unspent and asked for some action. On Thursday materials from the agency showed that $86,000 of the funds had been spent statewide in December and January, and more teens were identified as being possible recipients of the funds.

Jone Bosworth, division administrator, also said that she still had "some confusion as to which kids we can serve with this money," and that a future bill might be needed to clear things up. She said an example of the questions her agency has is if teens can get help before they turn 18.

But Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, a committee member and original sponsor of the legislation that authorized the funding, said the division's report "sounded like bureaucratic gobbledygook."

"I think we're at the same place we were two months ago," she said.

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, who also serves on the legislative committee, said she was "disappointed they haven't made more progress.

"I wouldn't call the money they've spent in the last two months significant," she said.

As for the state agency's concern about the law, she said she "didn't know if these are complaints or excuses."

The 2001 bill was created to help teens who leave foster care and often wind up homeless or in trouble with the law. The funds come from filing and copying fees levied by recorders throughout the state. The state agency is charged with overseeing the funds and disburses them to different counties that in turn disburse them to nonprofit groups working with teens.

The committee learned in December that only $209,000 of about $1.8 million was spent in fiscal year 2003 and $153,000 in fiscal year 2004, which began July 1.

Theresa Anderson, deputy administrator of the family programs office in the division, said Thursday that $273,070 has now been given to the counties in this fiscal year. "There's been a dramatic increase in the money spent," she said.

She also said that finding teens who needed help has been difficult. As well, she said, the counties and nonprofit groups need to get the word out about the money.

"The money is there -- now it's all about marketing the services," she said.

As for Bosworth's comments on the bill's intent, she said her agency had done nothing she was aware of to seek clarification from the state attorney general or the Legislative Counsel Bureau.

She said that Buckley had asked such questions of the bureau before Bosworth took over late last year and thought the next step would be to ask for a new bill.

But Kathleen Boutin, executive director of the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, the nonprofit group that contracts with the county to help teens with the money, said, "Tying this up in another legislative session isn't in the best interests of the kids we're trying to serve."

Susan Klein-Rothschild, director of the Clark County Department of Family Services, the agency that disburses the money to Boutin, said the partnership had spent $224,976 since April 2003 in helping 111 teens.

According to state figures supplied in Thursday's meeting, at least 260 foster youth statewide will leave the foster system in the next two years.