A California organization serving pregnant and parenting foster youth is asking the state to collect more information on that population. That’s part of a push for more resources.
California has about 60,000 foster youth. It’s not clear how many are pregnant.
Jill Dominguez is the executive director of Mary’s Path — a short-term residential facility that supports the mental health of pregnant and parenting foster youth from around the state. It recently released a report saying the state should do more to track that information.
“It matters because we’re literally handing the foster care agency the next generation over and over and over again,” she said.
She said state resources for this work don’t correspond with the need, and better data could help that.
“When you take a child from their family, place them in the foster system, you’re telling them ‘We are now your parents. We’re your legal guardians,”’ she said. ‘“If you get pregnant and have a baby, we’re just not going to take care of that baby. We’re not going to track it. You’re completely on your own.’ And that’s not the kind of grandparents that we need to be.”
Dominguez added this population — estimated at about 1,000 young people at a given time — has different needs from other foster youth, and few facilities are prepared to meet them. The lack of firm data translates to a dearth of funding to specialized programs from the state.
Foster youth experience homelessness, mental health challenges and commercial sexual exploitation at higher rates. Dominguez said becoming a teen parent adds to that stress.
Unlike their parents, children of foster youth aren’t dependents of the state.
Simone Tureck Lee is director of housing and economic mobility at John Burton Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that works with foster youth. She said the state is currently making changes to resources for foster youth and families that highlights the need for more expansive information.
“It’s a complete overhaul of our current approach to funding foster care placements and currently, the framework is silent on parenting youth, meaning no changes to how we approach this population,” she said.
Right now, she said the only publicly available data on parenting foster youth is vague — it does not breakdown ages or placement types, which makes it difficult for the state or organizations to be strategic with resources.
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