SLO County budget cuts slash funding for CASA foster youth mentor program

Yahoo

5 days ago

Even after local high school student and former foster youth Shekhinah Braly was adopted, she still considers Kirsti Tcherkoyan her family.
Tcherkoyan was Braly's mentor through San Luis Obispo Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), a program that connects foster youth with adult allies.
'Growing up, I never had a supportive family,' Braly wrote in a letter to Tcherkoyan that she read at the Board of Supervisors budget hearing on May 20. ' ... Over time, you became that person for me. You became my family and one of my closest friends.'
So when she heard the organization's foster youth mentor program was at risk of being defunded by San Luis Obispo County, she was shocked.
'It's necessary,' Braly, now 18 and a senior at Paso Robles High School, said of the mentor program she was involved in all of high school. 'CASA workers give kids a chance that they didn't know that they could have.'
SLO CASA's youth mentor program pairs foster teens like Braly with a volunteer mentor to provide support as they navigate young adulthood, helping them to avoid high risk scenarios for foster youth like homelessness, human trafficking and joblessness.
With the support of her CASA mentor, Braly will be the first in her birth family to attend a four-year college next year.
'It gives kids something to believe in,' Braly told The Tribune. 'Especially being in this system, it's so hard to find a connection with someone, to find someone who understands you and can just see you for you.'
Now, CASA's foster youth mentor program is slated to lose practically all of its funding as a result of county budget cuts.
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'These kids, they deserve a chance,' Tcherkoyan said during public comment at the Board of Supervisors budget hearing on May 20. 'They deserve to have one of me standing next to them, walking with them, getting them into college.'
SLO CASA's mentor program serves children who were removed from their homes due to severe abuse and neglect and helps them navigate the child welfare system.
The organization currently serves about 80% of kids in the SLO County child welfare system, which is about 160 children, CASA Executive Director Marina Bernheimer told The Tribune.
CASA's mentor program, specifically, supported approximately 28 foster youth teens, according to SLO County's fiscal year 2025-26 recommended budget, which recommends to defund the program.
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'CASA volunteers just really make sure that kids don't fall through the cracks during this really traumatic chapter in their lives,' Bernheimer said. 'They make sure that all of their needs are met, educational needs, social needs, medical needs, mental health needs. They're really the one caring, consistent person in a child's life while they're in foster care.'
These volunteers stay with a child from the time they're detained from their home until they achieve permanency, either by returning to their homes of origin or by being adopted by another family, Bernheimer said.
Every year for over a decade, CASA has received $80,000 from the county, which pays for all the expenses that go into the mentor program, including one full-time staffer who trains volunteer mentors, Bernheimer said.
Under proposed budget cuts for the upcoming year, that entire grant would be eliminated.
Braly is one of the many foster youth who has benefited from the program.
She had been in and out of the foster care system since second grade, and Braly's CASA mentor, Tcherkoyan, was consistently one of the most active people in her life during high school, always checking in on her, showing up to important life events and making memories of their own — going to Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw concerts together.
'She's always there to support me no matter what, and even when I felt like I had no one else around to help me,' Braly said. 'That's just a really great blessing.'
Bernheimer said that within the foster youth population, toddlers up to 5 years old and teenagers are especially vulnerable subsets. The mentor program serves foster teens and young adults who age out of foster care who 'face really grim statistics,' she said.
'They're very likely, in general, to become homeless, not to attend college, to engage in real high-risk behavior unless they have a CASA (mentor),' Bernheimer said.
Teenagers in the mentor program, by comparison, are far more likely to attend college, far more likely to find permanent housing and far more likely to say that they have hope for their future, she said.
Bernheimer said the program isn't just about foster youth, but the broader SLO County community, too.
'In addition to being a vital support for teenagers, the mentor program is a vital component of public safety and community safety, because these are the adults that are going to be community members of San Luis Obispo, and they're far more likely to be healthy and contributing members of our community If they have a CASA volunteer,' she said.
In Braly's case, Tcherkoyan supported her through her college applications, helping to find her a college counselor and navigate a complicated and unfamiliar system. Now, Braly will be attending Sonoma State University in the fall.
'It's kind of always been something that I wanted to do, but I wasn't exactly sure that I was able to do it,' Braly told The Tribune. 'I wasn't sure if I was going to actually be able to get into a four-year, but she made sure that I got the support that I needed to be able to get where I am now.'
CASA's county grant is not the only financial loss the organization is facing. The proposed county cuts come in the context of funding losses at every other level, too — individual, state and federal.
'We rely heavily on federal, state and county dollars, and they're threatened at every level, in addition to the threats that we face from individual donors ... who are facing their own economic uncertainty,' Bernheimer said. 'So this is a very hard time for our organization and for all of our partners in the community doing really important work.'
Around 40% of CASA's current fiscal year budget of $1.5 million comes from state, county and federal sources, with county funds making up the smallest portion, according to CASA development director Katrina Cathcart. The rest comes from private donors.
Roughly 15% of CASA's current year budget comes from federal dollars and roughly 19% from state, Cathcart said. Only about 6% is county-funded, she said.
Similar to others local nonprofits that have been losing federal funding under Trump administration cuts, that is money that CASA stands to lose at the end of its fiscal year on June 30. That is also the time when county budget cuts would kick in.
At the state level, California must close a $12 billion budget deficit, which California Gov. Gavin Newsom blamed on economic uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump's policies, tariffs and potential cuts to Medicaid.
According to youth and family news publication The Imprint, the most recent revision of California Gov. Gavin Newsom's state budget cuts $90.5 million from foster care, child protection services, maltreatment prevention and other child welfare programs — funding sources that feed into CASA.
CASA is one of many local nonprofits hit with potential budget cuts as the county attempts to close its $38 million funding gap.
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On May 20, the Board of Supervisors proposed establishing a $1 million transition fund for nonprofits that were facing cuts focusing on 'those most in need,' but there was no direct discussion of a specific funding mechanism or commitment to continue funding CASA. Any funding changes would go into effect July 1.
The county will make its final budget decisions during its June 9-11 budget hearing. But no matter what happens to their funding, Bernheimer is dedicated to continuing serving foster kids in the same capacity.
'At this moment, we are not planning on cutting services,' she said. 'We also don't know the full extent of all the cuts that we're facing as an organization, but we are really determined to figure out a way to continue services, even though we're not sure exactly what that's going to look like.'
As of right now, she said the organization is 'trying to get creative and seek alternative funding streams.'
Part of that includes individual donations.
'If anyone has ever considered supporting our organization, this is a great time to step up and provide us with support so that we can make sure that foster youth and vulnerable kids in our community can weather this really rocky storm that we're all traversing,' Bernheimer said.
Donations can be made online at slocasa.org or people can find more information about how to become a business donor or volunteer.