Schwarzenegger Signs Bills Supporting Youth in Foster Care and Strengthening Child Welfare
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a package of legislation focused on expanding and promoting adoption opportunities and increasing services for children in California’s foster care system, reports California Newswire.
The bills signed into law will create a food stamp program to assist youth transitioning out of the foster care system and help provide housing for former foster youth working toward a higher education degree. The legislation also ensures that California’s foster care system will continue to have the resources necessary to provide the valuable services these children depend on and helps older foster children secure a safe and stable living environment.Â
Schwarzenegger also signed a number of other bills addressing foster care, adoption, and child welfare, including bills that:
- create a 12-month transitional food stamp demonstration project that grants federally funded food stamps to foster youth for one year after their eighteenth birthday, when they age-out of the foster care system and no longer qualify for state aid.
- require the University of California, the California State University and California Community Colleges to give priority for on-campus housing to emancipated foster youth.
- extend the Older Youth Adoption pilot project for six months until June 30, 2010 to provide participating pilot counties with sufficient time to demonstrate the effectiveness of pre-adoption and post-adoption services for older youth who have been in the system over 18 months and are living in group homes or non-related foster families.
- establish the development of a plan for the ongoing oversight and coordination of health care services for foster youth and the development of a personalized transition plan for a foster youth in the 90-day period before he or she ages out of foster care.
- specify that any savings in state funds attained from an increase in federal funding for adoption services be reinvested in the foster care and adoption service system. The bill also requires adoption agencies to inform prospective adoptive parents of their potential eligibility for federal and state adoption tax credits.
- tighten requirements for approving criminal background checks for foster care family homes licensing in an effort to prohibit persons convicted of specific offenses from becoming foster or adoptive parents.
- broaden the use of the federal adoption incentive awards that are received by the state as a result of increased adoptions of older children to include other legal permanency options available to older foster youth in order to increase the opportunities for these youth to be placed in stable homes.
Feminists for Choice Reviews Bills Restricting Women's Rights in Arizona and Oklahoma
Laws passed recently in two states, Arizona and Oklahoma, have many things in common, says Serena at Feminists for Choice. Both restrict access to abortion care and both contain legislation previously put forth and vetoed or defeated but now repackaged. And...
Arizona and Oklahoma are not unique. This could happen in your state. That’s why it’s absolutely critical that pro-choice advocates stay on top of what’s happening in their legislatures, because abortion bills don’t always make it onto the ballot. Feminists For Choice will keep you up to date about the proposed legislation in Colorado, Montana, and Florida, and we’ll do our best to keep you in the loop about the challenges to the Arizona and Oklahoma statutes. But we need your help! If you have information about ways our readers can get involved to challenge these assaults on choice, leave us a comment or send us an e-mail so that we can help get the word out.
October 13th, 2009
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California NewsWire: Gov. Schwarzenegger Signs Legislation to Provide Services and Resources to California’s Foster Children
TimesRecordNews: Churches influence abortion debate
Feminists for Choice: Restrictive Abortion Laws: Parallels Between Arizona and Oklahoma
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Momento 24: Rosario: A young woman died after an illegal abortion
