Pete Stark: “I support 3525 and urge my colleagues to support it. The work we are doing here today... reminds me of much of the…”

“I support 3525 and urge my colleagues to support it. The work we are doing here today... reminds me of much of the bipartisan improvements that have been brought to the support systems for disadvantaged people and children. There is a lot more to do. There are 800,000 kids who spend time in foster care each year, and the people who provided case work support are understaffed, underpaid, overworked. This bill will go a good ways toward helping them. In the last report that we had from GAO, we found that in 1999, of the children who aged out, turned 19, out of foster care, that 40 percent of them became dependent on public assistance and Medicaid. Fifty-one percent were unemployed. Twenty-five percent had spent some time homeless. Twenty-seven percent of the males had been incarcerated at least once. In the next 15 years we are going to have 300,000 or more foster kids age out, without any transition support.”