SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) It is the intent of the Legislature to increase stability of children and youth in foster care, and in adoptive, kinship, and guardianship families by increasing the supports provided to these children and youth.
(b) While the number of children and youth in foster care have significantly decreased in recent decades, grim data continues to demonstrate the need for additional supports for children and youth in foster care and those seeking to achieve permanency, including the following data:
(1) Less than one-half of all foster youth in California
graduate high school.
(2) Seventy-five percent of young women in foster care report at least one pregnancy by age 21.
(3) Every year approximately 4,000 youth age out of care in California with no place to call home.
(4) One-half of youth who have aged out of foster care end up homeless or incarcerated.
(c) California policymakers have worked diligently to improve and strengthen the state’s foster care services for those in care, in permanent placements, in reunification, and within the juvenile justice system. However, children in foster care and former foster youth outcomes often continue the cycle of poverty, abuse, lack of education, substance abuse, incarceration, and homelessness.
(d) Foster children and youth would benefit from one-to-one mentoring models that provide appropriately screened, trained, and matched adult mentors that bring an approach to building positive relationships, positive experiences, and improved goals and outcomes. While a limited commitment is often required, mentor and mentee relationships often last several years or even a lifetime.
(e) One-to-one mentoring programs have become an increasingly popular strategy for early intervention with at-risk youth. An analysis of 70 mentoring outcome studies conducted between 1975 and 2017, with a sample size of 25,286 youth with average age of 12 years of age, yielded a statistically significant effect of mentoring programs across all youth outcomes.
(f) Researchers examining mentored youth in comparison to unmentored youth after 18 months found that mentored youth were less
likely to engage in a variety of risky and unhealthy behaviors, such as using illegal drugs or alcohol, skipping school, and hitting others.
(g) A 2014 report for MENTOR: the National Mentoring Partnership conducted by Civic Enterprising in association with Hart Research Associates stated that youth facing risks with mentors were more likely to aspire to attend and to enroll in college, more likely to report participating in sports and other extracurricular activities, and more likely to report taking on leadership roles in school and extracurricular activities and to regularly volunteer in their communities.
(h) Individuals engaged in assisting children through the child welfare system, including biological parents, foster parents and guardians, adoptive or permanent families, social workers, and the courts, are required to work together to improve outcomes for children in
foster care. An individualized plan is established for a foster child and is submitted to the court with recommendations based upon the needs of each foster child.
(i) A social worker’s written court report and a case plan provided to the court under Section 16501.1 of the Welfare and Institutions Code is integral to the court’s oversight of a dependent child and a nonminor dependent. The report informs the court about a multitude of issues regarding the child or nonminor dependent and serves as the basis of the court’s findings and orders, helping the court make informed decisions regarding a child’s or nonminor dependent’s safety, permanency, well-being, and successful transition to living independently as an adult.