Texas politics leave transgender foster youth isolated — during and after life in state care
San Antonio Current -

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. It was near midnight just a couple days before Thanksgiving 2020 when 17-year-old Kayden Asher arrived at yet another temporary home during his yearslong tumble through Texas’ chaotic foster care system. His caseworker had given him just two hours to pack his bags before they drove into the night from a short-term shelter in South Texas to a nondescript building in...

In related news

  • Nearly all states take foster kids' federal benefits and use them to offset cost of foster care: Report

    A disturbing report from the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law indicates that nearly all states routinely take federal benefits from children in the foster system and use those benefits to offset the cost of foster care.Like their counterparts who are not in the foster care system, some foster kids are entitled to receive federal money, including disability benefits associated with Social Security as well as survivor benefits associated with the Veterans'...
  • Life and Life Only

    A good memoir should be more than an autobiography and less than a confessional but contain elements of both. As a reader, I am less interested in being overwhelmed with family trauma and pathos except when it informs the greater tale being told. Quite often, it is the memoirs that feature an excess of pathos More
  • 4 more L.A. County probation officers put on leave in connection with 'youth-on-youth violence'

    Four L.A. County probation officers have been placed on leave in connection with “youth-on-youth violence” inside a Downey detention facility, officials announced Friday. The discipline comes after eight officers working at Los Padrinos juvenile hall were placed on leave for allowing a group of youths to beat up a teen in December. The involvement of four more sworn peace officers may indicate that troubling incidents of guards being present while youths assault each other are more widespread...