0925 North Bay Bohemain

Page 9

news for Sonoma, Marin & Napa Counties

“Official Newspaper of 56 Facial Star Tattoos�

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B054CH =4C Foster kids who turn 18 suddenly lose support services—a situation the expanding VOICES program remedies with youth-on-youth help.

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Pioneering Napa program for former foster youth finds a second home in Santa Rosa By Bruce Robinson

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ost kids look forward to their 18th birthday, when they finally, legally, become adults. But for foster kids, it can be a nightmare. At the stroke of midnight, they are abruptly no longer eligible for youth-based home and support systems and must instead navigate a dense patchwork of overburdened bureaucracies administering adult services from locations scattered across the county. Little wonder that a third of California’s “aged out� foster youth wind up homeless within months, or that many develop substance-abuse problems and/or a rap sheet. Into that void comes VOICES (Voice Our Independent Choices for Emancipation

Support), an innovative one-stop, drop-in service model run by and for foster youth. The concept was championed by Leslie Medine, executive director of On the Move, an umbrella nonprofit for VOICES and other youth-leadership development projects. Four years ago, in a summit meeting with the heads of Napa County’s Probation, Child Welfare, Child Social Services and other agencies, she posed the key question: “Could we get the agencies to co-locate staff under our roof, so the kids won’t have to wander all over the place? And people said yes.� VOICES opened in a funky, refurbished Victorian near downtown Napa in late 2005. “Nobody knew who we were,� recalls Mitch Findley, one of the program’s youth founders. “Nobody was understanding where we were coming from or what we were trying to do.

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“That all changed as soon as we started serving the youth, because the youth were coming in, they were enjoying being there, they were getting their needs met, they were talking it up among other youth. So the word spread that we were doing good things.� Now VOICES itself has spread, opening its second location near downtown Santa Rosa. In a tidy duplex just off College Avenue, the new center is staffed almost entirely by former foster youth and offers visitors a kitchen, laundry facilities, meeting rooms, computers and a growing array of informational resources, all at no charge. “It really does make a difference when they come in and see young people,� Medine affirms. There are other significant differences, too. Instead of being asked to sit down and fill out an application, “we give them a tour and say, ‘Here are all & '

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THE BOHEMIAN

—P. Joseph Potocki

06.24.09-06.30.09

09

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