National Governor's Association Report on Foster Care, Transition to Adulthood

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices released a 2010 report on The Transition to Adulthood: How States Can Support Older Youth in Foster Care, which provides states with strategies for supporting foster youth as they age out of the foster care system and transition to adulthood.

The Table of Outcomes for Foster Youth Compared With Youth in General, on page 4, is a particularly helpful tool for advocacy.

Health Care Needs of Youth "Aging Out" of Foster Care

Did you know that:

• Each year 26,000 youth emancipate from foster care on their 18th birthday and often lose critical Medicaid health coverage?

• Former foster youth experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at six times the rate of their peers in the general population, and twice the rate of veterans returning from war?

• Only 57% of former foster youth have health coverage at ages 23 and 24 --- as compared to 78% percent of their same-age peers without a foster care history?

Beginning January 2014, Medicaid eligibility will be extended to cover children formerly in foster care who are under the age of 26.

States Can Achieve Better Outcomes, Lower Costs by Supporting Youth Transitioning From Foster Care to Adulthood

The NGA Center for Best Practices is the nation’s only dedicated consulting firm for governors and their key policy staff.

Their recently released report, The Transition to Adulthood: How States Can Support Older Youth in Foster Care (December 2010), explores the following strategies:

• Promoting educational attainment
• Connecting youth with employment and career training
• Enhancing access to safe and stable housing
• Helping youth access and manage health care
• Helping youth build stable, lifelong relationships

As NGA Director John Thomasian states, "Because states continue to face austere budget conditions, many of the strategies described in this report have little or no cost; involve getting existing systems, such as education and health, to work more collaboratively; and leverage available federal and private funding in new or different ways."

This report demonstrates that successful state supports not only improve the outcomes for foster youth, but reduce costs to states that result from negative outcomes such as criminality, low educational attainment, lack of medical insurance, homelessness and an increased need for public assistance like food stamps.

U.S. Government Sets Goal to End Youth Homelessness in 10 Years

On June 22, 2010, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness released the nation’s first comprehensive strategy to prevent and end homelessness: Opening Doors: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.

One of the objectives in the plan is to advance health and housing stability for youth exiting foster care and juvenile justice systems. 

The Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs’ Solutions Desk for Helping Youth Transition will continue to publish best practices for homelessness prevention, rapid re-housing, and service provision for homeless youth.

My So-Called Emancipation: From Foster Care to Homelessness for California Youth

Human Rights Watch has released a new report about California youth in foster care with some startling results: At least 20 percent of the 4,000 who are released from foster care each year end up homeless.

Through interviews with 63 young people who became homeless after leaving foster care, it was evident that factors leading to homelessness include "missed opportunities to learn skills, lack of ability to support themselves, a shortage of second chances, and the fact that no one cared what happened to them."

Economic Prospects for Young Adults During the Recession

Findings by the Economic Policy Institute, published in their May 2010 Briefing Paper:

• Since the start of the recession, an additional 1.2 million 16-24-year-olds have become disconnected from both formal schooling and work. 
• The class of 2010 will be entering a labor market with the highest rates of unemployment in at least a generation.
• Unemployment rates for both college graduates and non-graduates younger than 25 are nearly double their pre-recession levels.

Transitional Youth and Natural Consequences

The Transition to Independence Process is a strengths-based approach for encouraging youth and young adults (ages 14-29) in their future planning process.

Many of the core elements of TIP model affirm the advocacy work that the Ohio chapter of Foster Care Alumni of America is involved in, and the workshops we currently provide. This includes:

• The cost-benefit analysis of investing in transitional youth 
• Young adult "discovery" vs. adult "recovery
  
• Identifying the supportive connections in their lives
• Encouraging peer support networks and peer mentors
• One-stop shopping for resources whenever possible
• Balancing the roles in decision-making (Taylor Model)

One side-effect of being a child welfare trainer myself is that, when I attend a training, I automatically evaluate what worked, what didn't, and how the format might have worked better.

I believe that an effective way of teaching the Transition to Independence Process (TIP) content would have been via a one-day workshop, with breakout sessions of small groups. Each small group could receive a case-study and figure out how to apply the TIP model. After this hands-on experience with implementation, small groups would report out to the group-at-large.

As it was, I left the training with two important questions left unanswered...

1.) What is the balance between maximizing the likelihood of success for a young person, and allowing youth to face the natural consequences of their choices?

As someone who works with foster care youth and young adults, many times, a young person will come to me in crisis mode.

They had an initial problem, which could have been easily remedied. But they didn't get the help and resources when they needed it, so the problem evolved into a snowball, rolling downhill and getting bigger and bigger. Often, by the time the young person comes to me to ask for help, all the dominoes have fallen and the problem has become a tangled mess.

If my state allowed foster care youth to re-enter foster care between the ages of 18-21, in every county, that would allow for the type of learning experiences that a young adult from an intact, supportive family can often count on from their parents.

But without a cohesive safety net, there is a limit to how far I am willing to allow a young person to fall. Standing back and letting the chips fall can compound the chaos to such a degree that it can be difficult to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

2.) The presenter mentioned "rationale" as an alternative to nagging young people. Telling young people the possible benefit or risk of their actions. However, he offered no concrete examples of what this looks like, in practice...  What does this look like? / sound like?

When I queried the speaker, asking both questions above, I didn't get a straight answer. So I'm left to puzzle this out by myself. Possibly a teachable moment might ensue, during which I could guide the young person toward self-evaluation of the impact of their decisions...

I'd really like to think about this further. Lately, my brain has been gnawing on two videos I posted recently:

• How Sitcoms (and Foster Care) Don't Teach Patient Problem-Solving
• The Marshmellow Test: How the Ability to Delay Gratification Impacts Long-Term Life Outcomes

I'm going to delve into a website that he mentioned during the workshop, and see if I can track down some more concrete information.

The Real Research On Foster Care

As a former foster child and current youth advocate, the research I respect most comes from the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago.

Foster Care and Young Adulthood

Postcard from Foster Care Alumni of America

Historically, the age of 18 was thought of as a divider between childhood and adulthood.

Back in the early to mid-20th century, jobs were available to people with little or no education. Therefore, most young people could financial and social independence by their 18th birthday.

This is no longer the case. It has been estimated that nearly a quarter of the cost of raising children is now provided after the age of 17.

The average parent of 18-34 year olds provides over $2,000/year to support them.

Today, some people are over 30 before they:
- Complete their schooling
- Obtain steady work
- Move out of the family home
- Get married and have children

Higher education is becoming necessary, in order to earn a living wage:
- A bachelor's degree today is the equivalent of a high school degree in the 60s

- Two-thirds of all new jobs that will be created in the next 10 years will require post-secondary education

- Adults who have only a high school degree are twice as likely to be unemployed as those with a bachelor's degree

- A typical high school graduate, with no additional education, will earn over his/her lifetime half as much as a college graduate

Demands for increasing education have created a larger gap between childhood and adulthood. Therefore, developmental experts now recognize a transitional stage of Young Adulthood.

But what about young people aging out of foster care? (You knew I would come back to that, didn't you?) Published statistics outline dire outcomes for our lives - and these odds need to change.

This weekend, I created a wiki called Changing the Odds

Its purpose is to:
- Outline the scary statistics and troubling trends regarding foster care alumni
- Examine which policies are helping, and what systemic barriers need to be fixed
- Celebrate "Best Practices" in terms of successful programs throughout the nation

Sources:
Adolescence and the Transition to Adulthood: Rethinking Public Policy for a New Century
Business Roundtable
Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago
MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy
National Adolescent Health Information Center
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
U.S. Census Bureau

No help unless you are pregnant

Here's the scenario: A young woman ages out of foster care. She enters the adult world, totally on her own.

This young woman enters college, and pursues her education. She has chosen to postpone creating a family of her own until after she has finished school and has the financial and emotional resources to build a healthy marriage and family.

But when she hits a road bump, and needs temporary assistance to get back on her feet, this young lady applies for assistance, and is told she cannot receive help with housing unless she is pregnant.

Now, tell me: "How does this work towards pregnancy prevention? Why should young women be advised to bring unwanted children in the world in order to acquire housing assistance?"

TANF is what we used to refer to as "welfare." The acronym stands for "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families." It was created as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which replaced AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

AFDC was a federal assistance program administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services between 1935 - 1997. This program provided financial assistance to children whose families had low or no income.

My understanding is that the evolution from AFDC to TANF was part of an effort to provide temporary assistance to needy people, in order to get them back on their feet and provide for themselves.

One of the stated purposes of TANF is: "To prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies."

You can provide all sorts of classes and instruction about not getting pregnant -- but when you tell a young woman that she has to choose between getting pregnant or being homeless, getting pregnant becomes a method of survival.