Funds released for youths leaving foster care

By Timothy Pratt

Friday, March 5, 2004 | 8:50 a.m.

After months of growing controversy about a legislatively mandated program's management of the funds, the state announced Thursday that it will release nearly $1.3 million to help youths when they leave foster care. The money is part of $2.1 million in funds that were about 90 percent unused at the end of 2003, it was revealed in a December legislative committee meeting.

The Sun broke the story in January, with legislators and nonprofit advocates for youths describing several years of frustration with what they said was slow and inefficient handling of funds created by the 2001 Legislature.

Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas -- one of the original sponsors of the bill that created the funding and a member of the Legislative Committee on Children, Youth and Families -- applauded the news that the money is "at long last" trickling from the state to Clark County and an area nonprofit group.

"I'm pleased that the funds are now going to reach the children, who leave our care with nothing," Buckley said.

In 2000 and 2001, when he was associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Clark County Manager Thom Reilly studied youths that leave the state's foster care system, documenting that many of them wind up homeless and in trouble with the law.

That study helped drive the Legislature to pass the bill, but its implementation has been controversial ever since.

The announcement of the funds being released came from Jone Bosworth, administrator for the Nevada Division of Children, Youth and Families -- the state agency that oversees the funds. The funds come from filing and copying fees levied by recorders throughout the state. The state disburses them to different counties that in turn disburse them to nonprofit groups working with youths after they leave foster care.

Bosworth said part of the problem in making the funds available had been that the state had budgeted conservatively for the program but then received more than was expected in revenue. The state official said that a recent review of her division by the Department of Health and Human Services "praised Nevada for having these funds available.

"They weren't aware of any other state with a similar program," she said.

Now that additional funds from the program will be available to Clark County hundreds of youths could be helped with needs such as housing, health care and education, those who work them said.

Susan Klein-Rothschild, director of the Clark County Department of Family Services, the agency that disburses the money to the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, said the nonprofit group had spent $224,976 since April 2003 in helping 111 youths by early February.

A committee made of private and public agencies that work with youths locally will meet March 24 to make recommendations about how to spend the money, Klein-Rothschild said.

"This is exactly what we need to help these kids, and we will now help them in a more timely fashion," she said.

Among the issues the group will deal with are whether the funds can be used for youths before they turn 18 or after they turn 21, said Kathleen Boutin, executive director of the partnership.

Chris Brooks, now 22, spent most of his life in the foster care system and describes himself as "one of the few that actually made it."

Now a member of the committee that will meet later this month, he said the funds help achieve a balance that youths who leave foster care need between such day-to-day obligations as paying the rent and "developing who they are as people. With this, we have a lot better chance for survival and success," he said.