Young adults find it tough going

Thursday, June 3, 2004 | 11:31 a.m.

Clark County and state officials say they are taking steps to address the needs of young adults who are not in school, not working and have no college degree.

These so-called "disconnected kids," including those who have aged out of the foster-care system, spent time in juvenile detention or are mothers younger than 20, are becoming a rising concern, says the national Kids Count survey.

The 15th annual Kids Count report, released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, says 3.8 million young Americans -- one in six of those between the ages of 18 and 24, including 31,000 Nevadans -- fall into that category.

The survey, using data from 2001, also found that Nevada ranks 32nd in the nation for the well-being of all youths, the same rank as in 2003 when data from 2000 was used. Nevada ranked 35th in the 2002 survey, which used data from 1999, and was ranked 40th in the inaugural 1990 Kids Count survey.

Kids Count said that in 2001, Nevada had 187,297 young adults ages 18-24 (9 percent of the state's population) and 572,590 children under age 18 (26 percent). Of them, 6,915 were mothers younger than 20, 901 were detained or incarcerated that year and 313 were in foster care.

Nevada has improved in seven of the organization's 10 indicators of child well-being since 1996. The state, however, remains weak in addressing the needs of teens, the survey says.

The state's weaknesses include a teen dropout rate of 14 percent, which has Nevada ranked 49th in the nation in that category; a teen birth rate of 30 per 1,000 females ages 15-17 that has Nevada ranked 38th; and a 10-percent rate of 16 to 19 year olds not in school and not working, placing Nevada 32nd in that category.

However, the survey says, Nevada does well in some areas.

For instance, Kids Count ranks Nevada ninth in the nation with an infant mortality rate of 5.7 deaths per 1,000 live births and 13th in the nation with only 21 percent of children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment.

"With our transient population I'm surprised we do as well as we do in many of the indicators," said Keith Schwer director of the Kids Count Project for Nevada and head of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Business and Economic Research.

"But I do not feel too comfortable with us being on or near the bottom of the list regarding the indicators that deal with teens."

The statistics measured by those categories contribute to the potential for teens to become disconnected, which Kids Count calls a "stark picture ... of kids who have been failed by our public system."

Kids Count found that 17 percent of Nevada's 18-to-24-year-old young adults fell under its disconnected category, compared to 15 percent of young adults nationwide.

"Over the next decade a new generation of children will likely be born to (disconnected young adult) parents whose ability to financially provide for them is severely compromised," said Douglas Nelson, president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private charity that addresses children and family issues.

"A sizeable portion of our potential labor market will be untapped and, with it, a loss of billions of dollars in lost earnings and tax revenues."

Schwer said by using resources to address the needs of disconnected youths, "we will be focusing on where our state's numbers show up the weakest."

"Disconnected youths do not always have the benefits of family or community," Schwer said. "Assisting them is money well spent because it will make them more productive."

To that end, the Nevada Legislature in 2001 passed a bill to assist youths who aged out of the foster care system when they turned 18, providing money for housing and other needs. But that measure has for two years been tied up in bureaucratic red tape.

Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, one of the sponsors of the 2001 bill that created more than $1.3 million in funding, said in recent weeks that those problems have been settled and now the program is expected to do its job.

"The legislators who worked on this measure were frustrated by the length of time it took implementing the program -- delay after delay," said Buckley, vice chairwoman of the Legislative Committee on Children, Youth and Families.

"Now it is in place. The state decided to pass the money along to Clark County, which negotiated a contract with the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth. They have already started giving out money for rent, schooling, car insurance and security deposits on apartments."

Buckley said the legislative committee plans to make further improvements for youths transitioning from foster care into adulthood. Among the improvements are plans to compare performance standards for foster care programs in other states and adopt the policies that will best assist Nevada youths in that transition.

Joy Salmon, assistant director of Clark County Family Services, said surveys conducted on youths who have left the foster care system have found that lack of housing, lack of funds and multiple placements in foster care "contributed to them having more challenges upon leaving the foster care system."

By the same token, she said, those who received job training and other services had "a likelihood of (a) more successful outcome."

"People often say they were not ready to fly solo on the very day they turned 18," Salmon said. "They say that the support they got helped them get a good start into adulthood. Such support is needed for foster-care children exiting the system."

On Oct. 1, the state and county are scheduled to integrate their now-separate child welfare services. Buckley said such a change should eliminate a layer of bureaucracy and reduce child case loads from 40 per caseworker to 28.

"In the not-too-distant future we will be better able to focus on reducing the number of moves a child has in foster care and do better at meeting time lines in achieving permanent homes for children," Salmon said.

"The groundwork has been laid in recent years. I'm optimistic for improvement. But changes will be incremental and will take some time."

As for future Kids Count surveys, Schwer and Buckley say Nevada is sure to make progress in some areas, such as foster care, but it is doubtful that changes will be significant enough to improve the state's middle-of-the-pack ranking.

"In 2001 we had a recession and in 2002 we had a weak recovery," Schwer said. "The economic indicators are not good there. Also, nothing has changed in our transiency situation. We continue to grow.

"If you look back over the years, as changes occurred in our economy we did not move a lot on the Kids Count indicators. The transitory nature instead acted as a drag on those indicators. Based on that, I don't see any big sweeping changes coming."

Buckley said for children in Nevada's foster care system, "things will improve because of our reforms."

"But for general, across-the-board situations for teens, I've not see anything in the last couple of years that will cause those numbers to improve greatly.

"We need to come up with innovative ideas to break through to teens and improve those statistics."

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