Breaking the Intergenerational Cycle of Foster Care

Support for foster and systems-impacted youth

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Foster youth are at a significant risk of experiencing system involvement with their own children, especially if they are still in care when they begin to parent. In California, over 50% of children born to mothers in foster care are reported to child welfare by age 3, compared to 10% of their non-system involved peers. While risk factors vary, several remain consistent. Studies indicate that parents maltreated as children are more likely to have child welfare involvement with their own children; a maternal history of maltreatment is the single strongest predictor of allegations of offspring maltreatment by age 5. This elevated vulnerability is compounded by a foster youth’s increased likelihood to parent a child at a young age (among girls in foster care at age 17, over 25% gave birth by age 19). This intergenerational cycle is devastating to everyone involved: the parent is retraumatized while the child now faces lifelong challenges including chronic poverty and housing instability.

The Young Parents Support & Advocacy Center (YPSAC) provides targeted, early intervention support to ensure our expectant and parenting foster youth (EPY) clients have the tools necessary to successfully parent their young children. This prevention model is designed to create a support network tailored for each client. Staff provide comprehensive advocacy that includes connecting important figures in the client’s life to facilitate a collaborative ‘it takes a village’ approach (e.g., creating a birth plan and coordinating who will assist the client at the hospital). Staff also act as a bridge between our clients and service providers including prenatal programs, hospital staff, therapists, and others.
YPSAC staff proactively engage with each client’s Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) social worker and advise our EPY clients on their rights as parents and how the complicated child welfare system works from the parent’s perspective. We strive to ensure that every one of our EPY clients can assert their own voice in processes that too often fail to hear them. A smaller than typical caseload ensures that the team has the time and ability to attend prenatal visits and other important appointments with clients; help youth procure needed baby items so they are ready for the baby to come home; explain legal documents such as leases or family law orders; and create detailed safety plans in the event there is an investigation or the possibility of Court involvement.

The long-term impact of supporting vulnerable families and diverting them from system involvement cannot be overstated. Interrupting the cycle of trauma and increased likelihood of poor outcomes – from incarceration to housing instability to poverty - will provide the opportunity for more Los Angelenos to thrive and contribute to the larger community. Each case that does not enter child welfare saves our county thousands of dollars that may then be utilized to support other families in need of preventative services. This upstream, root-cause strategy has the potential to make a significant dent in the overall foster care/child welfare population in our county, allowing struggling young families to access the same opportunities as their non-system impacted peers. As the success of this model builds, so will momentum toward expanding front-end services, yielding positive benefits for children and families served as well as our communities at large.