Group to quit running program for 18-year-olds

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Tuesday, May 31, 2005 | 9:35 a.m.

A nonprofit organization has pulled out of running a state-funded program helping youths who turn 18 in the state's care, leaving the program at a turning point.

Kathleen Boutin, executive director of the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, said the program's budget -- currently about $1.3 million -- and the job of managing it proved to be too large for her small organization.

Now the Clark County Department of Family Services must search for a new nonprofit organization to manage the program before the new fiscal year begins July 1.

Susan Klein-Rothschild, director of the county agency, said the program, which took nearly two years to get off the ground after the 2001 Legislature created it, will be tightened up a bit financially and administratively.

The program had only reached steady footing in the last year or so, even though the idea behind it, which is preventing youths from becoming homeless who are not adopted by the time they reach 18, and its source of funds -- copying fees levied by recorders throughout the state -- were both approved in 2001.

But in early 2004, the Sun revealed that more than 90 percent of about $2.1 million was sitting in a bank account untouched, despite the county having contracted with Boutin's organization to use the funds for helping youths in March 2003.

After a series of meetings by state lawmakers and a report from the Nevada Division of Children, Youth and Families, which oversees the funds and disburses them to the state's counties, the bureaucratic logjam was cleared up and money began flowing to the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.

Boutin said resolving the situation led her organization to help 218 youths in the last 11 months alone, but it also changed her organization from one with a $400,000 budget to one that was handling $1.8 million.

"It was a lot for us to manage," she said.

Klein-Rothschild said several changes may be in store for whoever picks up the program.

Those changes include handing out money in smaller increments to the youths in the program and changing the form in which it is given, using checks for the exact amount of goods to be purchased or a kind of credit card system that could be monitored by case managers.

Also, certain expectations -- like making money immediately available to youths -- may be lowered, Klein-Rothschild said.

The program currently offers up to $650 a month for rent, $5,000 a year for transportation and $2,000 a year for personal needs to each youth. Teens from 17 on who are in foster care can enroll in the program and, as long as they stay in school, they can stay in the program until they reach 21.

As of February 4, Klein-Rothschild said, there were 214 youths between 16 and 18 in foster care who may be eligible for the program soon.

She also said a new organization would be chosen in the coming weeks without going through an advertising and selection process. Next year, she said, a formal process would be followed.

"We want to move through this quickly because we don't want the kids to suffer."