In the past three weeks I have been on at least 15 webinars, attended countless forums and visited a billion websites and yet I still do not understand what I should be doing to get stimulus money to homeless youth and the programs that serve them.

I have read guides and blogs and reviewed power-points and have studied the statute and guidance on Homeless Prevention and Re-housing Program as well as material on green jobs and energy efficiency.

Just two Saturdays ago I listened to 3 elected officials and 17 panelists espouse the wonders of the Stimulus Package and the wonders it will do for our State.

Everything looks great, on paper. What I cannot figure out is how to translate that promise into actual services and supports, jobs and opportunities for homeless youth. Once again homeless youth have to compete for recognition within the myriad needy populations competing for jobs, training and services. And once again, we are an afterthought at best, totally ignored at worst.

Once again local services are at the mercy of planning commissions and government bureaucracies that include youth or not at their whim. For example, I know many programs work hard with their HUD Continuum of Care planning groups in their communities, and homeless youth have been recognized and received funding through those efforts, but it is a constant struggle to maintain the effort.

I don t want much. I want green jobs for homeless youth, I want services, supports and permanent housing for homeless youth. I want education and service opportunities for homeless youth. I want homeless youth recognized as a discrete population within the larger community of need.

Is that too much to ask of a $732 Billion dollar program?

Last week there was an article in The Northwest Youth Networker about confidentiality and its limits. This week there was an explanation given to that article after a number of readers wrote to Jerry Fest, the editor of the newsletter, telling him he got the law wrong.

First, let me admit that I did not see the television program in question, "America", produced by Rosie O'Donnell, and, quite frankly, I have no intention of viewing it. The mere fact that I admittedly know nothing will not stop me from commenting.

The facts as I have come to know them (pure hearsay). America, the protagonist, a young man in foster care, admits to his counselor that he murdered his abuser. His counselor had a prior conversation with America where she told him about her mandate to report disclosures of harm to self or others. After revealing his role in the murder of his abuser, his counselor tells him she is not going to disclose the information. The way I read Jerry Fest's point is that it is never good practice to say one thing and do another.

Good practice and confidentiality may conflict at times, but the law of confidentiality must take precedence.

Confidentiality laws vary state to state, profession to profession, so it is incumbent upon every individual to know the law they are obligated to operating under. In most cases, the mandate to report child abuse/neglect applies only to immediate or ongoing risk and/or imminent events as does a social worker, therapist or other professional's mandate to report threatened harm to others. There is often no obligation to report criminal activity, even the most heinous of crimes, but I cannot speak for every state in the nation on this. Laws vary.

Good practice must begin with a full understanding of the law impacting confidentiality. It is never a good idea to ume the law says something because laws are sometimes reactions to public opinion and therefore logic and rational thinking do not always prevail. Once you understand the law, you can accurately explain to the next young person who enters your door what the limits are of confidentiality giving over the power of disclosure to the one person who should have that power, the young person, laying the foundation for work you will do together.

(with apologies to all those in recovery)

No doubt we are all facing huge funding challenges. New York, like many other states, is facing unheard of deficits, and despite the promise that the budget will not be balanced on the backs of the poor, guess what - New York is cutting programs for the poor between 25% and 100% because, the alternative - raising taxes on those earning over $250,000 per year, would harm New York's economy. What economy?

In 1894, Anatole France, writing in his novel The Red Lily said it best:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Governors in New York and elsewhere have updated this idea by insuring that neither the rich nor the poor will be burdened by tax increase on their earnings over one-quarter of a million each year.

Which leads me to the conclusion that I need to find a 12 step program that will wean me off money. After all, if I stopped my addiction to spending at my small not-for profit, wouldn't we all be better off. So here are my 12 Steps, which due to budget constraints I have had to cut to four.

Step One - Admit I am powerless over my addiction to money.

Oh funding - you have made my life unmanageable; a simplified life, one without housing or food will bring me closer to finding true happiness.

Step Two - Come to believe in a power greater than one's self.
; ; ; ; ; Obama?

Step Three - Make a list of persons I have harmed and make amends.

One giant apology goes out to the thousands of homeless and street-involved children and the programs that serve them for my mistaken beliefs that I should advocate for additional resources and enhanced services through increased appropriations and a commitment on the part of our elected officials to serve those with the least, first.

Step Four - Continue to take my personal inventory and admit when I am wrong.

Let me start this all important step by admitting I am wrong about Steps One and Three, it remains to be seen how step two turns out.

2009 is a time of promise tinged with practicality. I am hopeful that we can get through this mess and emerge better for it. I wish you all a hope filled and hope fulfilled year.

Growing up I was taught that the job of an elected official was to work on behalf of their constituents. Long after I gave up on Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, I still believed in the myth that the job of those we placed in office was to try and fulfill the promises made that got them elected in the first place.

For as long as I can remember, NY has had a fractured, cantankerous and dysfunctional legislative body. In the end decisions were made by three old men (the governor, and the majority leadership of our senate and assembly) behind closed doors and seemingly without input. Eliot Spitzer was supposed to change that...

This November, for the first time in decades, New York State?s governor, and a majority in the assembly and senate are from the same party, and while that does not mean there will be across the board agreement on every issue, it should at least mean that some promises can be kept.

It turns out; Santa Claus is a better bet than our elected officials.

New York?s Democratic leadership pledged that if they got control of both houses and the Governorship they would pass legislation allowing same sex couples to marry and granting them equal protection under the law, a right guaranteed by our constitution. Now the leadership is reneging on that promise ? why? ? because they want to wait until after the next election in 2011 in the hope that they will gain more seats and more power.

More power to do what exactly?

I want my taxpayer money spent on people who will actually do the job they were elected to do, I do not want to pay for someone whose job is only to get reelected. (Do they really believe that doing their job is the same as keeping their job.)

If our elected officials are not paid to try and put the policies in place that go them elected in the first place, then what is their job exactly.

I first met Nancy Fastenau and was introduced to the work of Western States Youth Services Network (WSYSN) over 20 year ago. The loss of that great institution saddens me greatly and it should sadden all of us.

In this age of funding diversification which too often leads to mission drift, WSYSN was an organization that was crystal clear about their goals. WSYSN existed to enhance services for homeless, runaway and street-involved youth in federal region IX and to insure that young people were full and equal partners in all decisions made about them.

WSYSN believed in the power of relationships - that working with a program meant truly getting to know that program, its community, its culture, its staff, its young people. ndividualized services for unique agencies.

In all the years I have known WSYSN and the work they did, I could always count on the purity of their vision. And I knew I could always call Nancy Fastenau for assistance and guidance and I further knew that she would assist in a way that never demeaned nor judged, she simply offered her years of experience.

Programs in the old region IX especially programs in Hawaii, Guam and American Samoa will fell the loss most acutely, but every program will feel the impact of the loss of this long time advocate for runaway and homeless youth and the programs that served them.

As we move towards a more "cost effective" homogenized approach to training and technical assistance, I hope we can each carry with us a piece of WSYSN and their vision of what services for young people can and should be and to continue to "Inspire promising practices and enhancing youth services..." throughout the nation and the world.

Thank you to WSYSN, Nancy and Vicky for all your years of selfless service on behalf of our nation's most vulnerable population.

"It's been a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come"

Sam Cooke sang those words over 40 years ago. Yet, these words speak for today.

No matter what your political beliefs are, there is no denying that the events of this past week have been historic. On the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech" Barack Obama was nominated for the highest office in the land. One day later, Sarah Palin was chosen as the presumptive nominee for the second highest office in the land, just three days past the anniversary of the ratification of the 19^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the amendment which gave women the right to vote, August 26, 1920.

Whether the Democrats or the Republicans win in November, this country will have made a giant step towards equality at least symbolically. It is up to us to insure that the change is not merely symbolic.

One step we all need to take is to make sure that eligible young people are registered and informed. The National Network for Youth is asking its member agencies to find creative ways to engage young people in the election and to share those ideas. We are used to sharing ideas and learning from each other this is no exception.

Even those not eligible to vote, due to age, alienage, incarceration, or any other reason, should be encouraged to get behind this historic election. We have before us a classic "teachable moment" - the power in this nation was designed to belong to The People we have voluntarily handed over that power to the politicians and small interests groups because we have long had low voter turn out and an uninformed, disconnected populous. The greater the turnout, the more involved we are, the better informed we are - the more responsive the elected officials will have to be.

Let's show the world that young people are a force to be reckoned with. Yes, CHANGE IS GONNA COME lets make sure it is the change we want.

Angie Zapata was just 18 when she was brutally murdered because of her gender identity. According to the New York Times ("Death of Transgender Woman is Called a Hate Crime", Saturday, August 28, 2008) there has been a 24 percent increase in the number of violent incidents against gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people. Angie's story is all too familiar to anyone working with homeless or disenfranchised youth.

While it is impossible to know the percentage of transgender people in the general population, many believe it to be less than 1. A survey of homeless youth in New York City found that nearly 6 of youth interviewed self-identified as transgender (an additional 17 declined to answer that question). Our runaway and homeless youth programs, and maybe especially our street-outreach programs, must be the first line of defense for young people whose gender identity results in their being harassed, bullied and beaten out of their homes, schools and communities and find themselves homeless and on the streets.

We are beginning to make progress in civil equality for gay and lesbian persons. California's statute allowing same sex couples to marry is a great victory. New York State now recognizes same sex marriages of couples wed in the only two states that allow it. And Massachusetts has not self-destructed, as predicted, when it became the first state in the nation to recognize that same sex couples have the same right to marry as their heterosexual counterparts.

Strides made in accepting sexual orientation have not translated into the acceptance of transgender people. Of course we are far from full equality for gay, lesbian and bisexual people, there are only two states that allow same-sex marriage and the courts have not yet overturned DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), the insulting and dangerous policy of "don't ask - don't tell" is still the military's rule, and getting fired for being gay or lesbian is not uncommon. Transgender youth face all that and more.

Our own runaway and homeless youth programs are often uncomfortable with transgender young people. Sleeping accommodations, bathroom facilities and clothing distribution are some of the topics discussed by programs struggling to find ways to make young people who are transgender feel comfortable and safe. Even when programs get it right, they are then faced with government regulations that do not comport with well considered program policies.

Angie's death is a clarion call to all youth programs across the nation. The time to end the stigma against transgender youth is now. All young people have the right to grow up safe, healthy and prepared for the future. All young people, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. All young people, which should have including 18 year old Angie.

Would it shock you to learn that your program is listed on a website that features young people stripping? Even if ostensibly there was a good cause behind the campaign? Virgin Mobile, in an effort to raise awareness about homeless youth and to provide homeless youth with donated clothing, has initiated a new website, strip2clothe.com that invites young people to submit videos of themselves stripping. American Eagle, Virgin Mobile's clothing arm, will donate new apparel to homeless youth based on the number of hits the site gets.

Virgin Mobile and American Apparel tried in the past with a "txt2clothe" campaign but it did not get enough of a buzz to continue. So they went the "sex sells" route. For every video, a piece of clothing is donated and for every five hits, another piece of clothing is donated.

When you go to the site, you can click on a state and get a listing of all the programs that are part of the campaign. There we were: Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services an organization that has worked for over 30 years to protect young people from exploitation and harm. No one from Virgin Mobile ever called and asked our permission to be listed. Chances are, your agency is listed. We contacted Virgin Mobile and asked that they immediately remove our organization from the site.

What's the harm - to start with, we know that homeless, runaway and street-involved youth are far more vulnerable to sexual exploitation than youth from stable families. Street outreach workers have reported that up to 90 of youth involved in commercial sex work have histories of past sexual abuse. Commercial sex work includes trading sex for money, food, a place to sleep, and/or drugs. Young people take off their clothes in bars and at private parties for basic necessities. In exchange they get beat-up, raped, humiliated, and robbed. There is plenty of harm.

I do not want to discourage Virgin Mobile in their sincere effort to help young people who are homeless and in need of all our attention. I just want them to be a responsible partner. Their current campaign is exploitive and hurtful but we can join together and design a campaign that is both edgy and appropriate.

How about:

• JokesForJeans.com
• RapForWraps.com
• DanceForDoRags.com

We have started a petition campaign to remove organizations from the site. If you are interested go to:

http://www.petitiononline.com/082008/petition.html

Let's give Virgin Mobile a graceful way out. Your ideas will be far more creative than the ones listed above. Join me in getting the message out to Virgin Mobile that they can and must do better.

Programs serving homeless, runaway and street-involved youth have always worked with young people whose backgrounds are less than stellar. In many cases we do not even become aware of past problems until the youth is established in our program. This is certainly more true for crisis services and drop-in centers, but even youth accepted into transitional living programs may have incidents in their past that are not known to the agency.

In the past we have relied on appropriate supervision and trained staff to guard against problems in our programs. Even so there were times when serious problems occurred and hopefully we learned some lesson on how to do a better job.

Has something changed?

For the past year or so there has been sporadic buzz about the need to do background checks on youth before they enter a program. This chatter has not been limited to one geographic area, one program model or even a small group of programs. These discussions have been at the table of groups around the country.

The concerns expressed by program are very real:

• Serious mental health issues
• Sexual predators
• Criminal backgrounds

Are these new concerns or have we just gotten better at diagnostics? What is the role of the media in heightening our concerns? How much pressure is the insurance industry putting on programs? Where is the line between perception and reality are we guarding against problems that rarely occur?

I see these questions are directly related to the diminishing resources available to run programs. Costs are rising daily, program budgets remain flat or are being cut. The cost of insurance is skyrocketing. Experienced staff can not afford to work at our programs ; they have to pay rent and eat too.

Is the only solution to reduce risk by screening out young people in need of our services in an effort to control (insurance and specialized staff)? That answer is a derogation of everything the runaway and homeless youth field is built upon.

Let's get serious about funding for our programs. And let's get serious about funding resources in our communities that we can partner with, such as appropriate mental health services for adolescents.

Our collective mission has always been to be there for young people who have no where else to turn, let's not become just one more system that shuts the door on them.

The Federal Runaway and Homeless Youth Act is up for Reauthorization again and while this 34 year old Act has served us well, the appropriation remains woefully inadequate to meet even a fraction of the need. Programs must put a patchwork of grants and contracts together to fund just the basic services. This patchwork often results in conflicting requirements around age, length of stay, and more.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was one statute and set of regulations that could be applied to all RHY services....

In June 2008 the American Bar Association and the National Network for Youth will be joining forces to develop model laws in myriad areas that affect homeless youth. One model to be developed is State RHY statutes.

I want to know what you have to say about what should be in a model law.

• Should there be separate legislation for runaway youth and homeless youth - in other words two laws instead of one?
• What is the ideal length of stay for crisis? For transitional?
• Should confidentiality have limits? If so, what should those exceptions be?
• What rights should parents have? The right to be informed, or the larger right to consent?
• What are the ages of the youth who need services? Is cutting off the age at 21 still good enough?
• Should states insolate programs from liability as long as the program is in compliance with appropriate regulations?
• What else should be in a model law?

We all will be looking at hard times in the very near future. (Harder still than the times we are in.) The Federal Government is broke and States are struggling with huge deficits. Now may be the best time to put together a strong set of statutes that will protect the young people, families and communities that are traditionally the hardest hit when the budget ax falls.

Last night while you were home in your bed over 3,800 young people were homeless in New York City. Over 1,600 of those young people spent the night outside, in an abandoned building, at a transportation site or in a car, bus, train or some other vehicle and 150 of our children spent the night with a sex work client. We know because we asked.

Do you know how many homeless young people there are in your community?

I work on behalf of homeless youth in New York and even I am stunned by our failure to recognize the number of young people who are homeless each and every day. In July of 2007 Empire State Coalition surveyed over 1,000 youth who were either homeless or at-risk for homelessness. The surveys were done at youth programs, at runaway shelters and transitional living programs, at adult homeless programs, on the street, and at other miscellaneous sites.What we found was that there are some populations of youth that are grossly overrepresented in the homeless youth populations. These groups include: gay, lesbian and bisexual youth; youth who are transgender; minority youth; youth with some history of foster care; and youth who have been through either the juvenile justice or criminal justice systems.

The vast majority of the youth we interviewed were undereducated and unprepared for self sufficiency. A full 50% did not have a High School diploma or an equivalency. And while an additional 23% stated they were in school or a GED program, it is unknown how many of those will be able to complete even that minimal education. Youth who are connected to a program specifically designed for homeless youth are much better able to access needed supports and services, sadly, less than one-quarter of the youth surveyed utilized these services.The average age of the youth we interviewed was 20.

The average age of when these youth first left home was 16. Almost all of the youth we met struggled in and out of homelessness for that entire four years. We learned that we do a really poor job of identifying the younger population before they become street-involved. Some of that is because the younger population are still able to "couch surf" and therefore hard to find - but no one is asking 14, 15, 16 or 17 year olds where they are spending their nights.

The lessons learned from this project must not be ignored. We need to do a much better job locating and working with youth when they first become homeless. We need to examine why certain populations are overrepresented in the population and develop responses. For examples, churches, schools and communities must work together to insure that youth who are gay, lesbian or bi-sexual are not been forced to flee from abuse and harassment and that these youth have safe and supportive places to socialize. The same is true for youth who are transgender. We need to support families in their communities so that a crisis does not lead to a young person becoming homeless. We need to educate and support employers so that they will be able to hire homeless youth and work with them through their period of transition. Finally, we need permanent housing that is appropriate for adolescents and that includes supportive services that include education, employment and social skills that will help them succeed in the future.

Is you community doing a better job at identifying and serving homeless youth? Please share your experience so we may all learn.

Not much shocks me, but the news about New York's now former Governor, Eliot Spitzer, left me speechless.

It's not about the sex. New York's brand new Governor, David Paterson, has already admitted to a series of affairs. It is about a betrayal of trust - the trust inherent in an elected official's obligation to protect all the people - especially the most vulnerable among us.

There are many who see the Eliot Spitzer scandal and just another sex scandal. In fact the University of Chicago Law School's distinguished professor, Martha Nussbaum quoted in the current issue of The New Yorker states "[a] man who did what Spitzer did would have a lot to discuss with his wife and family [but] ... it would be laughable to accuse him of a betrayal of the public trust."

Exactly what 'public' is she talking about? The public comprised of latte sipping law professors. Certainly not the public comprised of young people who, like the young woman in this case, find themselves homeless at age 17.

Prostitution is not a victimless crime. Most young people involved in the commercial sex industry have long histories of abuse. Eliot Spitzer knows this. Eliot Spitzer signed into law New York's first and only legislation protecting victims of human trafficking by going after traffickers and johns. New York's laws include domestic and international victims of trafficking. Eliot Spitzer signed the law because he understood the nature of the problem and how young people get caught in the web or traffickers, including pimps and high end "escort services".

Every one of our young people, runaway, homeless, street-involved, vulnerable, has been betrayed by the Mr. Spitzer and those who continue to see no wrong in what he did.

What a thrill - being part of a launch of a national blog devoted entirely to young people who are homeless, runaway, and/or street-involved and the programs and individuals that work with them.

We often refer to runaway/homeless/street-involved or at-risk youth as disenfranchised. That moniker takes on new meaning at this time since we are embroiled in a number of political contests that will determine what life is like for every child in our nation.

The young and old are the two groups most effected by government policies. Issues of war, education, job development, social services, health care, access to higher education, and much more, have implications for the daily lives of young people. How we spend out tax dollars today, the economy and the growing deficit will impact the future for every child and senior in our nation.

Senior citizens vote. Maybe its time to give youth the right to vote. After all its their future we are mortgaging. What makes the age of 18 the right age? Why not 16, why not 14?

If young people could vote, would their safety net be that much stronger? What do you think?