LA County has thousands of foster care children. Advocates say the state’s budget hasn’t kept pace with need, when it comes to funding for providers and legal counsel. The state budget deadline is June 15th and advocates are pushing for $22 million more in funding for dependency counseling.

State government, in a way, is paying more attention to the foster care system than ever by signing mandates and protections for foster kids into law. But it’s ignored the other side of the equation: funding to make it all happen. In the meantime, caseloads for the attorneys who act as a last line of defense for foster kids are staggering, and children suffer as a result.

When Governor Brown signs this year’s budget, it must correct maybe the worst injustice in our state – depriving California’s 50,000 abused and neglected foster children a champion inside the bureaucracy that is responsible for raising them. Just $22 million of the state’s $170 billion budget is needed to reduce the case loads of lawyers who advocate for these children to something south of preposterous; something minimally worthy of our unique moral obligation to these children who by force of law have been rendered parentless.

The process of making California’s state budget requires legislators to make many compromises. Unfortunately, one group whose needs have too often been compromised by the budget process are foster children. That can’t be allowed to happen this year. Foster children’s advocacy groups are pleading with Sacramento to increase state funding for dependency attorneys.