CLC’s Director of Policy and Training shares with NPR the financial challenges many youth face exiting foster care experience in Los Angeles County.
In Los Angeles, the County Board of Supervisors has taken a step to make sure foster youth who receive Social Security benefits are actually able to use that money — a move that is exceedingly rare nationwide.
The board unanimously passed a motion this week requiring the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services to make sure foster youth who receive Social Security benefits have access to those checks when they age out of the system. The vast majority of state and county child welfare agencies across the country routinely take these benefits for themselves, often without notifying the youth or a family member, a recent investigation by NPR and The Marshall Project found.