LEGAL ISSUES
Kristine was a victim of the worst of the foster care system. Placed in
foster care at the age of eight Kristine survived sexual and physical
abuse at the hands of a group home staff and foster parents. At the age
of 16, Kristina ran away from foster care and lived on and off the
streets, staying with friends and in homeless shelters. Though she was
a runaway from foster care Kristina was discharged from care at 18 while
she was living on the street. By the age of 18, Kristina was homeless,
without a high school diploma and was relying predominately on
prostitution to survive. She found herself in and out of the criminal
justice system for committing a variety of survival crimes. Within a
few years Kristina had a child who was immediately taken away from her
and placed into the foster care system; the very system that had failed
Kristina. Homeless, undereducated and without support, Kristina was
left to face the child welfare system to fight for the return of her
child.
Kristina continues to struggle to find work, housing and to finish
school, for both herself and her child.
STATEMENT OF
THE PROBLEM
Young people who are on the streets are often there because of a
long series of failures by those whose job it is to intervene and
protect them. To make matters worse, the foster care system was set up
to take infants and young children from neglectful and abusive homes and
is not equipped to deal with the complex demands of adolescence.
Although the child welfare and education systems are the greatest source
of those failures, the legal system too is implicated in its failure to
effectively advocate for the needs of adolescents and teenagers.
Kristina faced a myriad of emotional, legal and survival
challenges to address in order to gain the return of her child and to be
able to provide a safe and stable environment in which to raise her
infant:
-
Foster care placement; Could she re-enter foster care herself or gain
the return of her infant and live independently of the system?
-
Abuse and neglect; Could she heal the emotional wounds of the wrongs
that were done to her while from her time in care?
-
Institutional abuse; Could she help others who experience abuse and
neglect while in foster care by testifying about her experiences and
achieving system-wide reforms?
In order for Kristina to have her child returned to her she would need
to attempt to assert the educational rights she was denied while in
care, possibly establish emancipated status and prove that she was
capable of parenting by obtaining needed entitlements such as rent
assistance, food aid, and housekeeping and childcare assistance. If she
could not prove she was able to parent, Kristina could potentially lose
her parental rights.
Kristina’s situation is not unique. A disproportionate number of
homeless youth have been through the foster care and criminal and
juvenile justice system at some point. Many of the crimes youth become
involved in are directly related to their survival, such as turnstile
jumping, “spanging” (begging), theft, “squatting” (sleeping in abandoned
buildings), and prostitution. Once released from foster care and
detention facilities, young persons are not provided a continuum of
services and often return to the streets with a criminal record that now
may be a barrier to certain public benefits.
Most of the legal service agencies working with homeless and
runaway youth direct a great bulk of their services to entitlement work.
Most homeless youth at different points in their lives will rely on
public benefits in order to survive, and most of these young people will
be denied or temporarily cut off from the benefits to which they are
entitled, including cash benefits, Medicaid, food stamps, social
security and emergency housing. They invariably face difficulty
applying for and establishing eligibility for benefits. Because of lack
of stable housing these youth often fail to respond to required
documentation requests or appear at appointments and benefits are often
revoked even after painstaking efforts to establish eligibility.
Depending on the age of the young person, they may also need assistance
in establishing emancipated status from their parents in order to
collect the benefits to which they are legally entitled.
There are specific legal issues that youth in foster care face. For
those youth that have survived the foster care system, many find
themselves aging out of the system into homelessness. Many are often
not told of or are unable to access the benefits that they are legally
entitled to upon discharge, such as Section 8 housing and financial aid
to continue their education. It becomes even more difficult for a young
adult at the age of 17 to even enter the foster care system and to
access some of these benefits. The Administration for Children’s
Services (ACS) is institutionally resistant to acknowledging the need of
an older teen for placement and has insufficient and inadequate options
for older teens in care. ACS has been reluctant to accept these young
adults into care because they are so close to aging out. (At age 18 a
youth becomes ineligible to enter the foster care system but a youth in
the system can remain until age 21.)
Even if foster care was easy to access, the current foster care system
remains an unsafe space for many young people. Youth who identify with
social groups who are characteristically discriminated against suffer
extreme difficulty in foster care. Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT) youth face abuse and harassment within care and
despite recent efforts, there continues to be insufficient placements
for LGBT youth.
Youth on the streets live with the constant fear that their
children will be taken away from them because of their lack of stable
living situation. Many of the young women in this population, who have
been in the foster care system themselves, find themselves caught up in
legal battles to keep their children. With inadequate and inaccessible
economic support many find themselves dependent on abusive partners for
money and housing.
Despite the long list of legal issues facing someone like
Kristina, one issue she does not face is fighting to get legal
immigration status. Increasingly legal services organizations are seeing
adolescents who came to the U.S. as young children with or without their
undocumented parents. These young people have gone through school in
this country and have all their social and emotional ties here. Yet, due
to a parent’s decision, they are left in legal limbo. (See “Immigration
Issues” Chapter)
CURRENT STATE
Most homeless youth shelters do not have their own legal department.
There are some social service agencies that provide free legal services
to poor and marginally housed youth in New York City and some legal
organizations will offer a staff person to visit a few hours during a
week to run a drop-in legal clinic to address the civil legal issues of
their low-income and homeless youth clients. Multi- service and shelter
programs try to provide a broad range of counseling and advocacy
services including advocacy around entitlements and other civil matters.
In addition, all youth in foster care receive legal representation
around issues related to their foster care placement, and all youth
involved in the criminal system are entitled to free criminal
representation. Non-profit legal organizations also take referrals from
other agencies and some create impact litigation to address the unmet
needs of underserved populations, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender youth.
GAPS IN
SERVICES
There are simply no dedicated legal services that address all the needs
of homeless, runaway and street-involved youth. A young person facing
criminal, immigration and parental rights issues may have to find three
different legal services providers. For many homeless youth that is too
great and confusing a burden. Additionally, attorneys working on behalf
of youth in family court have heavy caseloads and because of limited
contact with the young person, the young person may not seek out
assistance with issues like inadequate foster care placement because
they don't perceive the relationship between appearances in court and
their everyday struggles. Young people seeking legal advocacy through
local public interest law firms also compete with other low income
persons in need of legal assistance to obtain a remedy and as a result
often go unserved.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LEGAL SERVICES
·
Creation of a legal service program designed to meet the needs of
homeless youth. Staffing for the services would include lawyers with
expertise in criminal and family law as well as civil and immigration
law. There may not be a need for full time attorneys with expertise in
each of these areas, but there should be access when it is needed.
·
Provision of legal rights seminars for youth at service sites. Education
seminars on site at programs around the city are needed to teach youth
what their rights are, how to access legal services, and how to advocate
for themselves. Seminars are also needed to provide technical assistance
to social work and other staff at shelters seeking vocational,
educational and housing assistance for youth.
·
Development of legislative watchdog services to monitor federal, state
and city legislation for its impact on homeless youth.
·
Strengthen relationships
with Department of Motor Vehicles and the Office of Child and Family
Services securing a sensitive policy to help homeless youth obtain
identification.
