On March 21, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed an important motion that instructed the Director of the Office of Child Protection, Michael Nash, former presiding judge of Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Court, to find out why so many of LA County’s foster children were crossing into the county’s delinquency system, what could be done to prevent that crossing, and how these so-called crossover kids could be helped if and when and if they found themselves in the clutches of both county systems.
“Preventing youth in the dependency system from being arrested or
having contact with the Probation Department is imperative,” the motion read. The sense of urgency was understandable, given the research on how poorly crossover kids tend to do, statistically, when they reach adulthood.
The motion, authored by Supervisor’s Mark Ridley-Thomas and Hilda Solis, directed Nash, and all the relevant county agencies, to come back in six months with a report that answers a list of questions about the dilemma of crossover kids. And then the same group was to put together a plan to keep keep foster children from becoming “dual status” kids, and to enable those kids who do wind up in both systems to get what they need to heal and thrive.
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