alliance for children’s rights

Photos by Logan Bik, Story by Danny Mendez

We had the pleasure of speaking with Vinny D’Averso, Director of the mentorship program at Alliance for Children’s Rights. Vinny has had this position since 2006 and has worked with foster youth for over 30 years. One of his goals is to help at-risk youth in South Central from ages 13-21 and work with those people living in federal promise zones. As a mentor director for Alliance for Children’s Rights, he contacts youth currently in foster care and matches them with others in similar situations to help them build relationships as they go through life’s hardships together. He mentioned it’s like a dating game, making sure personalities match and often has about 10-15 matches on a consistent basis. 

“a 19 or 20 or 21-year-old in a shelter with chronically homeless people is a serious issue. They're taken advantage of. They’re beaten up. There's a variety of things that go wrong that make it really difficult for that population to have a place to stay. A lot of them won’t go to shelters.”

D’Averso explained the importance of staying connected with at risk youth because besides their foster family, they’re all on their own. At 18, many have the choice of extending their stay with the foster care system or to begin adulthood. For those who decide to stay in the system, they have until the age of 24 until they’re booted out into the “real world”. At this point, a young person would try to get services from YCES (Youth Coordinated Entry System) which would make them take an extremely personal questionnaire which has shown to prevent youth from getting into the system. Many end up scoring low on this questionnaire because they’re afraid to explain the severity of their situations. On top of this, many begin to walk away from the system since it’s failed them and they don’t know better.

Interview with Vinny D’Averso, Mentoring Program Director, Alliance for Children’s Rights
Conducted by Prof. David Blumenkrantz as part of the One of Us Project

We're a nonprofit legal advocacy organization. One of the programs that we have with the alliance is a next step program which works for 16 to 24-year-old foster youth or probation youth. So we have a lot of youth to come in here who've are about to exit the system or have already exited who are homeless. One of our jobs is to be able to find resources to send them to…for food for them for jobs and for places.

When I when I hear that the thing that strikes me is like, OK kids are in foster care. They reach a certain age. I think it's 21 and that's it, there is no Plan B for them. They are on their own at that point if they haven't worked with their foster parents or with somebody to establish some sort of next step in their life. That's why they end up homeless?

 A lot of youth have people grow up in this country with the same need of a family. So the youth we were with to come out of foster care don't have that safety net. They don't necessarily have a mom or a dad that's available to them. They don't have a lot of relatives that have stepped up to help them some do some don't, but we were the ones who have don't have those resources. So at 21 years old if you're lucky enough to stay in the system that long they then have to begin to fend for themselves. If they're not prepared economically you know they end up on the streets because there is maybe a thousand foster youth that leave the system early and there is maybe 400 beds available for foster youth period in that age range 21 to 24. 

 And what services can your organization provide for these kids?

Well we provide legal assistance to help them remove legal barriers. Some youth a lot of youth to go to the foster care system have been a victim of identity theft because so many people have access to a Social Security number. We help them clear that. We help you seal their juvenile records. We have a lot of young people that age range who try to buy cars and end up in bad car deals so we help them with that. Any kind of legal and legal impediment they have that’s not criminal we can assist them with so that they hopefully can become more successful. We also have case managers that help youth who are homeless who have no place to go or who need a job. We have training programs that we try to refer them to. We have a collaborative in our organization called The Opportunity Youth Collaborative which is designed to help what they call disconnected youth and specifically for us as foster youth to find pathways to graduate from high school go to college and to get them employed. 

 What are some of the most daunting challenges that may be frustrating as far as systemic issues that are preventing you from succeeding in your work?

So every housing system has an entry points. They have what they call CES for the county and the mental health has what they call gatekeepers and those are the people that you have to contact to get youth into housing programs. Well it can be very difficult to get access to those systems. So if you have a homeless youth walk into your office or needs a place to stay that night it's hard to be able to find any resources available. It could take months to find them a bed. So a 19 or 20 or 21 year old in a shelter with chronically homeless people is a serious issue. They're taken advantage of. They were beat up. There's a variety of things that go wrong that make it really difficult for that population to have a place to stay. A lot of them won’t go to shelters. 

 When you say a “variety of things,” you’re talking about sexual abuse and things like that?

I've had young men who have been harassed by older men and beat up. They might have whatever little money they have on them somebody tries to steal from them. If a person wants to sleep in their bed there's been that have been you know kicked out of there. They're off they're caught they had to go sleep somewhere else. I think youth that a walk out of shelters because they just can't handle what's going on there. It's just not the environment that's good. 

 Apparently 40 percent of homeless youth in L.A. are supposedly part of the LGBT community; is this something that has become a major issue? 

I know it's an issue. A majority of the youth that come in here don't identify with us necessarily as part of the LGBT population. If they do we automatically refer them over to the Gay Lesbian Center in Hollywood. They seem to have services that help the youth whether it be doctors or counseling. They have a shelter there. And other homeless services. So yeah that is definitely I have definitely seen some use that have come in here though young people who are going through a transition. And for a young person to go through a transition of 20 21 is just so hard. There's no great support services for them if they're trying to get the hormones needed or whatever it is they need to go through the transition. It's so difficult for them financially to be able to access that.

 There's a city and there's also a county initiative; there are action plans. Taking a look at the preliminary budget, youth is factored in there. Are you working with that, and do you expect to have some sort of benefit from the funds they're going to be raised to those that issue those ballot initiatives?

We have had meetings our organization has been asked to participate in some factfinding meetings. Our hope is that this becomes more beds available. Obviously the number one issue would be to have beds and then number two would be the resources that are provided by the organization is up by the beds 19, 20, 21-year-old. They need a lot of services. It could be mental health if to have a mental health issue. It could be training to be employable. They could be youth who have never lived on their own before they have no idea what it is to live in an apartment or live anywhere is to be able to go shopping for themselves. Be able to understand how to clean their apartment to understand how to handle their bills. You know obviously money management issues for a 21-year-old who has never had a mom or dad to sit down and talk to them about bills they just don't have the concept. I've worked with youth who have never had a job interview and are 21 years old. They've never worked. Which makes it really difficult to prepare them for the work for the workforce. 

I've heard that from some of the kids I talked to who’ve had that experience. At the meeting I attended where we met initially you raised a point to the coalition there on issues related to youth homelessness about making the CES (Coordinated Entry System) the safety net. How does that work when someone gets out of foster care? Could you explain how that’s supposed to work and what's not being done to accommodate these kids?

So I know they're trying to make improvements to CBS so I'm going to speak to what exists now because by the time this becomes available people three months from now there could be enough improvements where someone to talk about could be rectified. But number one is each spire for each service dining area for the county of L.A. has an organization that’s responsible as the entry into homeless services. We've had a couple of different spot areas where we've not been able to contact the agency to even begin the process of getting the youth into the system so they can’t go to other agencies because they're not supposed to go into… they're not supposed to end the system and that's they goes with the main entry agency. We've asked that they make other agencies available so that you can call two three four or five or different places within a community to try to get a youth a bed rather than have to wait for one person to answer the phone and it never happens. That's probably the number one problem number two problem is always going to be the available beds in a particular area. You have youth that are homeless. If they make a phone call to a CES in the area that they're in when they make the phone call home. They were only allowing them to try to access services in that spas. We've asked also that they used to go to any of the seven spas where there was a bed. So, the youth just finds a place to stay for a night or 30 days or 60 days or whatever they can find.