Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson and Sacramento State President Alexander Gonzalez signed a memorandum of understanding that will broaden services to emancipated foster youths.

According to the agreement signed Friday, Sac State will partner with the county to provide more services, such as housing, emergency funds, academic support, case management, internship opportunities, scholarships and counseling, to emancipated foster youths residing in Sacramento.

The county and the university will establish more organized lines of communication, so foster youths who have aged out of foster care can be properly referred to the university, Dickinson said.

“It’s an opportunity to make college a possibility for them,” said Joy Salvetti, director of Sac State’s Guardian Scholars, a program for former foster youths. “In dire budget times, it makes sense to leverage our resources.”

The county and the university will also seek joint-funding opportunities to increase services to former foster youths.

Dickinson said the county will provide state and federal funds to help the university with the costs of providing foster youth services.

Dickinson said the county spends more than $80 million a year to support foster children. This year, 348 children aged out of foster care, and only 149 completed high school or its equivalent.

Dickinson said the memorandum of understanding aims to change these statistics.

Gonzalez said once foster youths age out of foster care, they either work or end up in worse situations.

“That’s really an important crossroad. We’ll provide an opportunity for them to attend Sac State,” Gonzalez said. “They could be doing something else.”

Freshman kinesiology major and former foster youth Brittany Chamalbide said the agreement will immensely help people like her.

“It will give us the chance to really receive the help we didn’t receive when we were younger,” Chamalbide said. “When we were younger, we didn’t have people to support us.”

Chamalbide is one of 52 students in the Guardian Scholars program. Salvetti said Guardian Scholars has already identified 100 Sac State students who can potentially be in the program.

The program, which started in 2006, provides financial and emotional counseling, academic assistance, scholarships, food allowance and job opportunities to emancipated foster youths admitted to Sac State.

Freshman business major Mark Hamlet said the Guardian Scholars is his “home away from home.”

“When you want an advice, you seek out to someone who comes out to help you, and that’s what Joy (Salvetti) is to me,” he said.

Kristine Guerra can be reached at [email protected].