Bshs 442 - Population and Advocacy

Population and Advocacy

BSHS 442 Advocacy and Mediation

Instructor, Nicole Fogel

November 20, 2010

Population and Advocacy

Advocacy is a very important aspect in the human services field. There is a wide range of human service jobs that can not be successfully carried out without the role of advocacy. In this paper I have chose to discuss the role of advocacy and it's much needed presence for the population of disadvantage youth.

First I would like to define the word disadvantage which means to be deprived of some of the basic necessities or advantages of life, such as adequate housing, medical care, or educational facilities (freedictionary.com). Now that we have a clearer definition of disadvantage we could have a better understanding of what the term "disadvantage youth" mean. Within the population of disadvantage youth there are a variety of populations. The specific population that I have gained a personal passion for is foster youth and former foster youth who are transitioning out of the system into adulthood.

For many years foster youth have been deprived and overlooked especially in the educational system. Statistics have shown that only 50%-63% of foster youth graduate from high school and only 2% receive a Bachelors degree (fostercarealumni.org). With that being said advocacy has made such a huge difference in the lives of our current foster youth, that without it advocacy it would be impossible for them to succeed successfully educational wise. For instance in 2003 the state of California passed an assemble bill know as the AB 490 bill, due to the strategic advocacy efforts of the California Foster Youth Education Task Force, which is a coalition of 20 organization who work together to implement and change educational policy of behalf of foster youth. This bill covers youth who are dependents and wards of the juvenile court and who cases are supervised by child welfare and probation agencies (edsource.org). It was extremely important to include probation youth because it was known that many youth who were residing in probation residential group home facilities were being discriminated against when it came to school enrollment. Due to the efforts of advocacy now the school enrollment process has become easier for probation youth, foster youth and foster parents. Another important issue that that the AB 490 bill addresses is the issue of foster youth losing school credits because they have to move more often than regular students. Now schools are required to provide partial credit even if the student was in the school as little as 1 week to half a semester. Along with many other rights for foster youth the bill also mandates the school districts provides foster youth liaisons throughout the district to advocate for foster youth and insure that the schools are in compliance and foster youth are getting their educational needs meet.

Currently another issue regarding foster youth that has come to the attention of advocates for foster/probation youth population, is that the rate of homelessness of foster youth who emancipate from the system have gone up. Once a foster/probation youth is