Giving Compass' Take:

• Taylor Swaak reports on the debate over Los Angeles schools combining counseling services for foster care and other vulnerable student populations.

• How can the integrity of the foster counselor program be retained as this streamline occurs? How can communities raise support for one of the most vulnerable student populations?

• Read more about supporting foster care student education.

The Foster Youth Achievement Program which focuses on foster youth school attendance, educational achievement and social-emotional well-being, is being restructured, despite vigorous opposition from foster youth advocates. The district is combining five specialized student programs together — including the Foster Youth Achievement Program and the Homeless Education Program — which officials say will streamline counseling services for L.A. Unified’s highest-need pupils by placing counselors at specific school sites.

The planned consolidation has sparked concerns among several advocacy groups, whose leaders have told school board members that the new model would bloat counselor caseloads, “dilute” services and upend current relationships between foster youth and their counselors.

There will be 150 masters-level counselors “out in the field” serving 29,056 students as of July 25, according to district counts. There are 8,668 students in the Foster Youth Achievement Program, 19,526 in the Homeless Education Program, 811 in the Group Home Scholars Program and 1,048 in the Juvenile Hall/Camp Returnee Program, which serves students who have been released from juvenile detention centers and are on probation.

A few goals of the restructuring, Escudero said, are to “reduce duplication of services” — which can happen when a student is enrolled in various programs that all have different counselors — and to “maximize the staff relationship with students in schools.”

Advocates have sounded the alarm about the size of counselor caseloads under the new model.

Estimates of the Foster Youth Achievement Program’s average caseload before the restructuring vary; advocates cited a roughly 70-student caseload in 2018-19, while a May report in The Chronicle of Social Change, citing L.A. Unified staff, put the number at 60 foster students per counselor at the high school level and 100 at the middle school level.

Read the full article about Los Angeles schools combining counseling services by Taylor Swaak at The 74.