In this season where so many of us try to go “home for the holidays”, an often-invisible but increasingly large group of young adults literally has no home to go home to.
A report released this year by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative says that the number of children “aging out” of foster care (turning 18 before being adopted or safely reunited with family members) has increased by 41% in the last ten years.
Picture a teen-ager you care about—a son or daughter, nephew or niece, neighbor, supermarket clerk, whomever. Now imagine that on his or her eighteenth birthday, she will be handed a garbage bag with all of her belongings and, if lucky, a small amount of money. How will he or she pay first month’s rent on an apartment? (How many apartments would think he or she’s a good credit risk for a tenant, for that matter?) Will he or she be able to find a job that will allow him or her to finish high school, much less finish school, support him/herself, apply for college, write essays, apply for financial aid, obtain health care, and in the midst of this remember to pay utility bills promptly?
And if he or she does go to college, where will he or she spend holidays? Alone in the dorm? On the couch of a different sympathetic friend every year?
This situation is the reality for foster care children who “age out” of the system. They stop receiving state foster care subsidies at age 18 (a few states have supplementary services until age 21) and are usually completely on their own.
Now, I’m all for independence. I saved for my college education, obtained merit scholarships and a student loan, and worked. But even so, I borrowed from my parents and took years to pay them back. But I had the security of knowing I wouldn’t go without a meal. I had encouragement and love, advice, the use of my parents’ old car to get to my summer jobs, and the ability to focus my high school years on my studies without working more than 15 hours a week and without the stress of paying bills and looking for an apartment.
Realistically, many experts now say that in this economy, with higher housing prices and living-wage jobs requiring higher and higher levels of education, many young people cannot expect to be fully independent of their parents until their mid-twenties.
This may be a situation where some well-targeted interventions can save a lot of financial and quality-of-life costs for society as well. An organization in St. Louis, Missouri estimated that half of the teens who age out of the system in that area become homeless at some point, and 80% of the girls become pregnant between the ages of 18 and 21.
So what is to be done, and more specifically what might you do? See my next blog.
And enjoy being home for the holidays.
Please see these related blogs:
A Week at Royal Family Kids’ Camps Part Two
Click here to read a Families.com blogger’s review of a movie where four people, including foster kids and a troubled teen, are stranded together for a summer and must learn to care for each other.