We know that, statistically speaking, kids who spend time in Los Angeles County’s foster care system — or any foster care system, for that matter — have worse outcomes when they reach adulthood than youth who’ve never wound up in the child dependency system at all.

Over the past few years, new California state laws that are sensitive to this problem, along with community-based programs and dedicated child advocates, have helped to ameliorate those bad stats to some degree.

Yet there is another youth population with challenges and outcomes that are far worse than the statistically stacked deck our foster care children often face. And that group is Los Angeles County’s dual-status youth, also known as “crossover youth.”

[For more on this story by Celeste Fremon, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...venile-systems/30273]