Special Home Proposed for Foster ‘Graduates’ : Social services: Many youths have no shelter and no one to turn to once they leave county supervision.

A partnership of former foster youth, business leaders and county officials has proposed a transition home for “graduating” foster children.

Retiring Supervisor Pete Schabarum said he will ask the Board of Supervisors Tuesday to approve use of federal housing funds for a $1.2-million shelter near Pico Rivera for foster youth 18 or older.

If approved, the center--which would be the first facility of its kind in the county--could open as early as 1992 on a vacant, 2.5-acre county tract just west of the 605 Freeway. The county would lease the property for $1 a year to the Foster Youth Connection, a foster-youth support group that would manage the 36-bed facility.

The group also is negotiating with Mayor Tom Bradley’s office for a city-owned house in South-Central Los Angeles that would provide short-term shelter for six more graduates of the foster-care system.

Every year, about 1,200 foster youths leave the supervision of the county Children’s Services Department. At least 800 have an acute need for housing, job training and education, according to Emery Bontrager, a department spokesman.

The department’s Independent Living Skills Program, run through 13 area community colleges, teaches the youths such skills as balancing checkbooks, finding apartments and cleaning house. The department also contracts for job-training programs, but these services do not address the 18-year-olds’ needs for roofs over their heads, officials said.

“I have no question in my mind that the minute those doors open it’s going to be full,” Bontrager said of the transition home. “It’s not going to meet the demand, but at least it’s a start.”

An architect’s rendition of the proposed home was unveiled Thursday night at Schabarum’s retirement party in the Museum of Natural History.

Former foster child Aida Berduo, 18, said the transition home would serve a desperate need. “Not having parents or a family, you always felt alone and insecure,” she said. “You never felt you were going to get very far.”

In 1989 in Los Angeles County, caseworkers reported that 35% of foster youths who turned 18 had no known family, friends or other resources they could rely on for shelter, said Walter Furman and Gloria Waldinger, researchers for UCLA’s Center for Child and Family Policy Studies.

Berduo solved her housing problem by winning a scholarship to Cal State Dominguez Hills. But foster children often do poorly in school, Furman said, as they confront other problems in their lives. Berduo cited the case of a friend who had been sexually abused by her parents, was forced to smoke crack with her mother at age 7 and became pregnant at 15.

Peer and adult counseling will be among the benefits of the transition home, said William Samuel, 19, one of several former foster youths who started the Foster Youth Connection.

The foster youths who lobbied for the shelter will be on its governing board.

Douglas Besharov, a child-welfare expert with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, praised the project. But it “also shows how the government system has failed the kids,” he said. “They are filling in the gap.”