Somerset Home for Temporarily Displaced Children
Jeffrey Fetzko, ACSW, LSW, CFRE
Vol. 6, No. 14, July 10, 2008
The Executive Director's News is published every two weeks, and is specifically written for the employees, board of trustees and friends of the Somerset Home. This issue and past issues are available on our web site at http://www.somersethome.org/main/pages/employee_newsletter.htm.
Staff changes...
Alison Mathewson has been promoted to Residential Services Coordinator at Brahma House. She will start her new job when she returns from vacation on Monday.
Effective today, Melissa Klotzbach is moving from Brahma House Residential Services Coordinator to Acting Residential Services Coordinator at the Transitional Living Programs (until Lisa Wolff returns from leave).
Danielle Sutton has announced that she will be leaving her position August 1 as Senior Case Manager at Passages to focus her energies on Graduate School.
Christina Mercado is leaving the Day RA position at Passages on July 18th.
Best of luck to all staff who are going through these transitions! We wish you the very best.
Homeless Youth and the Law
The University of Washington Law School
I had the privilege to attend a national meeting of youth advocates last month for the purpose of writing a "model state law" for runaway and homeless youth. In 1999, I was one of a core group of youth advocates who successfully helped New Jersey become the 21st state to adopt a "Homeless Youth Act". Each state law is slightly different, for example, the New York law makes it a right for youth to seek shelter from abuse, which has been used as leverage to gain funding to support these programs. Our New Jersey law is not as generous, although it does allow youth to seek shelter from abuse without a court order.
The American Bar Association Commission on Homelessness & Poverty, ABA Commission on Youth at Risk, and the National Network for Youth sponsored the meeting which took place June 19-20, 2008 at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle, Washington.
Experts in youth and family law, state public policy making, and homeless youth service delivery explored a host of issues in which the law specifically impacts runaway and homeless youth. Among the topics addressed were: discharge from foster care and juvenile justice systems; access to child welfare services; education, health care, housing, and income support services; status offenses; and state regulation and financing of runaway and homeless youth services.
Currently, nearly half the states have a "homeless youth law" and many other states are actively working on developing one. A blueprint for the perfect law (if there is such a thing) will now be available for those remaining states to use as a guide and for those states with existing laws to make improvements as they come up for review.
As always, thank you all for your continued hard work on behalf of our youth.
