Ensuring and Advancing Access to Mental Health Services for Youth Impacted by Foster Care, Juvenile Justice and/or Homelessness

The Youth Law Center advocates to ensure and advance access to critical  mental and behavioral health services that allow youth in foster care and juvenile justice systems to heal, engage, and thrive in the community. As part of this advocacy, we connect legal aid programs, which have substantive legal expertise in health access and Medicaid advocacy, with dependency and public defender organizations, which directly work with and represent youth in the foster care and juvenile justice systems but who do not generally undertake this work. We aim to increase access to speciality mental health services for these youth, who in California, are presumptively eligible as of January 2022 and who disproportionately have mental health related needs, including those caused by experiencing four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES).

The challenges in accessing specialty mental health services and appropriate remedies were identified by youth, families and county stakeholders through the Quality Parenting Initiative. The need for this additional legal support was brought to YLC by attorneys in a number of counties across the state who were requesting assistance in accessing mental health supports for their clients after they faced waitlists, service denials, and more.