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Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Project
The Catalyst Center (the Center) and California Alliance of Child and Family Services (the CA Alliance) are excited to be in the 2nd year of the Thriving into Adulthood project. Through a Conrad N. Hilton Foundation grant, the Center and the CA Alliance have been working to expand access to MediCal mental health and substance use disorder services with intentional focus on transition-aged foster youth (TAY). The goals are to improve the quality of behavioral health services and provide technical assistance to transitional housing programs – geared towards reducing youth homelessness in Los Angeles County. Thriving Into Adulthood combines advocacy efforts, policy analysis, and implementation to support the outlined goals by partnering with providers, youth advocates, and collaborating with local government to better serve the TAY population.
As part of our Conrad N. Hilton Foundation grant, we are exploring two initiatives that can offer opportunities to support transition aged youth (TAY) who have been impacted by the foster care or juvenile justice systems.
- AB 592: (Friedman, Chapter 702, Statutes of 2021) Foster youth: transitional housing. The bill authorizes a county to allow alicensed transitional housing placement provider to provide supportive servicesto assist a nonminor dependent in their supervised independent livingsetting. However, an implementation planand rate is needed to allow providers to effectively implement this bill.
- Adaptation of SB 468 Self-Determination: (Emmerson/Beall/Mitchell/Chesbro) currently supporting adults withdisabilities for TAYThis statewide initiative offersflexible and personalized crafting of services to meet individual needs in acost neutral way. By offering “right time, right service” options for TAY wecould not only eliminate inefficiencies, we could potentially serve more youngpeople without requiring advocacy for additional funds. In a time of Statedeficit, flexibility in funding vs. additional funding can be a solution.
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