Georgia Senate Committee offers recommendations to support youth aging out of foster care

The Senate Study Committee on Additional Services and Resources for Transition Age Youth in Foster Care held its final meeting on Friday and presented recommendations to improve how children transition out of the foster care system into adulthood.

Around 700 young people age out of Georgia’s foster care system every year, and they lose access to resources, which can make the transition difficult.

The committee was designed to examine the transition process and make recommendations based on their findings.

The committee’s findings come at a time when Georgia’s foster care system is particularly strained. The Georgia Department of Human Services reported it has suspended or permanently eliminated programs, including those aimed at preventing children from living outside their homes and parent education and training programs, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, who chairs the committee and represents District 32, convened the meeting and presented their recommendations.

“Most of it is not legislation. We need to work with our agencies and our other partners on making progress for these kids,” she said.

Education and complex-needs population

The recommendations for education and complex-needs population were the only categories that had recommendations that could result in legislation. 

The committee included three recommendations for education-related issues. 

1. Ensure school districts are in compliance with enrollment requirements and consider legislation to address noncompliance.
2. Appropriate necessary funding for Senate Bill 85, the Georgia Foster Care Scholarship. The bill has passed, but it has not been funded. Kirkpatrick said the committee will work with appropriators to ensure the program is funded.
3. Encourage statewide involvement in transitioning youth from foster care into higher education, including technical schools and college.

When addressing complex-needs populations, Kirkpatrick said issues are not always directly related to youth aging out of the foster care system, but it relates to children who are not diagnosed or treated in a timely manner. The recommendations the committee gave specifically related to autism.

1. Review reimbursement rates, delivery options, and supervision requirements for Advanced Behavioral Analysis (ABA) treatment for autism spectrum disorder.
2. Continue and extend the current pilot programs to screen foster youth for autism spectrum disorder.
3. Prepare for broad implementation for autism screening to all youth in foster care.

“We think there are some issues with the way the rate structure is set up, and we want to be sure that those incentives are aligned and that the people that have these medical diagnoses are handled in a quality way,” Kirkpatrick said.

Housing and the workforce

When discussing housing and workforce improvements, Kirkpatrick said they need to convene a meeting with interested parties to further explore solutions for these areas. For housing, Kirkpatrick said the federal government shutdown impeded scheduling meetings with some of the interested parties, and they hope to reschedule it for early January. 

For the workforce, Kirkpatrick said the committee suggests having a meeting with technical schools and employers to find ways to get foster youth skills for employment. They hope to have the meeting during the next legislative session.

“We think we can do more with that with our workforce needs and our status as the number one state to do business,” she said.

The committee also recommended future initiatives, including increasing the use and awareness of tax credits, streamlining online resources for exit planning and taking advantage of President Donald Trump’s “Fostering the Future for American Children and Families” and executive order.

“There are more recommendations that we could have made, but we’ve always worked towards trying to make this actionable,” Kirkpatrick said. “There are several things on here that we can definitely make progress on, and again a lot of it is not necessarily legislative, but we’ve got enough time between now and the beginning of the legislative session to nail down any bills that we need to do.”

The Georgia Department of Human Services serves more than 11,000 children in foster care. To learn more about foster care in Georgia, visit fostergeorgia.com.