By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
During this year’s legislative session, State Rep. Tana Senn spearheaded an effort to address the needs of homeless children and make a conscious effort to tackle the issue of homelessness in the Puget Sound area.
After years of hearing people just talk about the issues of homeless children, Senn pulled together about 30 advocates, lobbyist and non-profit leaders who work with adolescents and urged all of them to stop talking and put their ideas into action. From their efforts came HB 1905, introduced by Senn, that provide more services and resources to help ensure young people have access to housing when they’re leaving a publicly funded system of care, such as foster care, behavioral health treatment or juvenile rehabilitation.
According to Senn, without proper resources youth and young adults discharged from such places are at increased risk of homelessness and face traumatic events at a higher rate than their peers who have stable housing.
“We’ve been talking about not having homeless youth,” says Senn. “We’ve been doing a lot of talking and a lot of reports and a lot of studies and we have taken very little action. So, we pulled together five recent reports and studies, we prioritize the impacts and we put together an action plan and this legislation, this plan, came from the community, people on the ground, people who provide the services, so this is very actionable, and we think it will move the needle.”
The bill, signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee last week, also addresses the long-term impacts that homelessness can have on brain development and a person’s overall well-being, in addition to the barriers it can create towards education and employment. The bill establishes a goal that any unaccompanied youth discharged from a publicly funded system of care in our state will be discharged into safe and stable housing.
“The bill provides optional tools to local communities to help ensure that youth do not become homeless when they leave foster care and inpatient behavioral health treatments and juvenile rehabilitation,” says Senn. “The legislature made a commitment to do that, to not release youth into homelessness, in 2018. But we never gave communities the tools to actually make that happen and so with this legislation we have now provided critical tools to ensure kids can actually find stable and safe housing when they leave publicly funded systems of care.”
Proponents say the measures in this bill are important because many children released from foster homes or treatment centers do not have the options of going back home or living with relatives, and this legislation provides a sensible pathway that will lend support to individuals who are left without a stable support system.
The legislation authorizes the office of homeless youth prevention and protection programs, in coordination with the department of social and health services, and the health care authority to develop and implement a rapid response team that is prepared to respond appropriately to support youth and young adults exiting a publicly funded system of care. As part of the development and implementation of the rapid response team, the department shall develop and implement a system for identifying youth and young adults that should be served by the rapid response team; initiating use of the rapid response team in a timely manner that will allow for the best possible transition planning; and locating services and connecting youth and young adults with those services to establish stability.
“Some of these youth go back to their homes, if they were in treatment, they got their needed treatment and go home, if they were incarcerated, they may go back to their homes, but for a lot of youth that is not an option or they don’t have a stable home to go to,” says Senn. “So, this legislation ensures that if a youth is getting ready to leave a state funded facility and they don’t have somewhere specific to go, a rapid response team that’s made up of the Department of Children and Families, includes the Office of Homeless Youth, includes the Healthcare Authority will come together to find a place for that youth.”
“That could be a group home, that could be an independent housing provider, that could be a relative or a friend,” Senn explains.
Some of the other tools available to address the issue will come in the form of what Senn calls “flexible dollars”. The flexible dollars provision provides grants to organizations to help youth. Some of the flexible dollars that go directly to the youth, for like first month’s rent, helping with maybe fixing their car or new tires so they can get to work to ensure they have money to pay for their apartment.
“I wanted to let our youth know that they are seen and heard,” says Senn. “It might have been delayed that they’ve been seen and heard by the legislature. But we are figuring it out and we want to hear from them about ways that are going to help them and not just our ideas, but actually what they want and need and they may have shared it with before but we are finally ready to hear it.”
