Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Human Services, to which was referred S.B. No. 41 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to authorize the Department of Human Services to establish a youth transition care program for former foster care children and other children not younger than eighteen years and not older than twenty-two, and to make an appropriation.

Your Committee finds that despite an increase in the number of foster care children statewide, these individuals and their foster parents remain largely "invisible" in the community and often lack the necessary resources and social services to assist these children and their caregivers.

When foster children attain the age of eighteen, most lack adequate housing options. This situation is a microcosm of the larger homelessness problem confronting the State where it is estimated that the number of homeless persons has doubled since 1999. On any given day there are more than six thousand homeless persons in Hawaii, of which more than fourteen per cent are children under the age of eighteen. Further, only twenty-two per cent of Hawaii's homeless are able to sleep in shelters. It is estimated that approximately two hundred youth up to age twenty-one are in need of transitional living services each year. This population includes one hundred youth exiting foster care and one hundred youth who have run away from home or have been thrown out of homes. As such, it is critical that short-term housing options be offered for these youths as they make the transition to adulthood.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Human Services that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 41 and recommends that it pass Second Reading and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.