"It's heartening to hear about inspirational stories like yours."
Academy Award Nominee Roger Weisberg
Out of the essence of AN AMERICAN CRIME and GOOD WILL HUNTING comes a true story, POINTS OF DEPARTURE. From the little known world of the foster-care-for-cash system, and its horrible abuses to aging out, the story follows a life that reaches deep into a soul, going beyond the pain to rise above a torn life and stand on top of the world. Points of Departure holds out hope for the thousands of tragic stories in the foster care system.
"Aging out" can be a life crisis for foster kids
By Alvin Powell Harvard University
Former foster children who've "aged out" of the child welfare system are an all-but forgotten population with few services and fewer statistics to show researchers how they're doing, according to speakers at an all-day Kennedy School forum on their plight Friday (Jan. 11).
The little data that is available is sobering, however, showing high rates of homelessness, unemployment, incarceration, and single parenthood. The shame, one researcher said, is that there are few troubled populations as easy to identify as children who've been in state care - often for years - before leaving the system.
"If you want to identify a population in need of intervention, here it is," said Mark Courtney, author of a study of Wisconsin children who left state care after turning 18. "As a field, we just don't have evidence to say we're doing a good job, and that's indefensible."
Courtney's study provides one of the few looks at this population of children who were taken into foster care, never adopted or reunited with biological parents and, at age 18, sent out on their own. The study doesn't paint a happy picture. Though none of the 141 foster children who entered the study at age 17 or 18 had problems with delinquency, 30 percent reported having been in jail in the first four years after leaving their foster placements, Courtney said.
In addition, nearly half were victim of a rape or other serious assault and 14 percent reported having been homeless. Unemployment rates were near 20 percent, corresponding to the 20 percent who, at age 21, did not have either a high school or equivalency diploma.
"There's successes, but a whole lot of these folks are struggling economically," Courtney said.
The daylong forum, "Aging Out: The Foster Care Crisis," was co-sponsored by the John F. Kennedy School of Government's Malcolm Weiner Center for Social Policy and the private, nonprofit human services organization Cambridge Family and Children's Services.
"Our mission is to prepare leaders for service to society and to contribute to the solution of important policy issues. And I can't think of anything more important than the future of our children, particularly this group of children that particularly needs our help," said Wiener Center director Julie Wilson.
Denise Maguire, executive director of Cambridge Family and Children's Services, said the organizers' intent was that the forum would just begin work on the subject. Three working groups - on housing, employment, and relationships - were formed at day's end to continue to look at the problem and work out solutions.
"We really want this to be the impetus for action," Maguire said.
The program was attended by more than 100 social workers, administrators, students, and service providers. Also in attendance were several people who know the foster system firsthand: former foster children.
In a morning panel discussion, five former foster children described their experiences, both inside and outside the system. They painted a picture of children moving from foster placement to foster placement, never able to feel secure or permanent in the family they lived with.
Jim, one of the panelists, entered the foster system at 4 years old and was placed with his grandmother, who couldn't care for him long. After that, he bounced five times between his biological mother and foster homes.
"I wasn't part of any family, I just drifted from home to home to home," Jim said. "Every time the social worker said 'This will be your family, it never was.'"
Though he was a teenager, Jim was eventually placed in an adoptive home at 16, but it took the family sticking by him during some serious troubles a year later for him to believe his placement was permanent.
As children get older, they become harder to place, and state welfare systems focus on giving the teens life skills so they'll be able to get a job, balance a checkbook, and keep an apartment. That approach, while practical, ignores the fact that many 18-year-olds out on their own - even with training - aren't ready for the world. The children, panelists said, still hunger for a family. Even if they go to college, they long for a place to go on Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks.
"We should concentrate on getting older children families. We shouldn't say they're 16 or 17 years old so let's just teach them life skills and send them on their way," Jim said.
Despite the call for action, panelists said that Massachusetts has some of the most progressive laws in the country concerning its former charges. Though they also said much more needs to be done, they praised a Massachusetts' law that provides state college tuition waivers for children who've spent time in the foster system. Recent federal legislation also provides more funding to help former foster children.
Still, reforms are needed, they said, to provide more services for young adults who've aged out of the system. Panelists also said it was important to ensure that the system runs on parallel tracks with teens so that preparation for independent life happens while - rather than instead of - continuing the search for a permanent family.
"Every year 500 leave those (foster care) settings with no plan of where to go," said Robert Gittens, Massachusetts secretary of Health and Human Services. "Those young people find themselves very often in very desperate situations. There are far too many young people who reach that point ... without housing, without employment, without the skills to do well."
Scholarships support program for foster-care youth
KALAMAZOO--The members of one of the nation's most underserved college-age populations will get help making their higher education dreams come true, thanks to a new scholarship and support initiative being launched at Western Michigan University this fall.
WMU's Foster Youth and Higher Education Initiative is an effort being launched in coordination with the Michigan Campus Compact and the Michigan Department of Human Services. The pilot program is designed to recruit and offer a support structure and financial aid for young people who have aged out of foster care and who qualify for admission or transfer to WMU. While the intent is to target Michigan's foster care youth, the program is open to qualified students from any state.
The initiative will create a community of scholars among WMU students who grew up in foster care and will attempt to fill the unique support needs that exist for the students who have no adult mentors and no permanent home outside their college residence and who have specialized legal, medical, counseling and financial needs. The goal will be to help foster youth, who age out of care between the ages of 18 and 20, make the transition to adulthood through higher education.
"We cannot, as a society, afford to lose the potential these young people represent," says WMU President John M. Dunn. "At Western Michigan University, we are passionate about insuring that no segment of our society is kept from having access to higher education. This University, with its broad range of programs, excellent faculty and strong support systems is well positioned to make success for these young people a reality."
Michigan Department of Human Services Director Ismael Ahmed applauds WMU's commitment to foster youths.
"Programs like this one are essential to improve outcomes," he said. "The University's leadership is the model for other institutions to provide the support and resources foster youths need to lead productive lives."
Chief among the tools WMU will use to support foster youth is the John Seita Scholarship, named for a three-time WMU alumnus who grew up in foster care and has become one of the nation's foremost experts on and advocates for foster youth. Seita, who has published extensively on the topics of foster care and youth development and whose background includes work with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, is being honored this month with the 2007 Ruth Massing Foster Care Alumni Award through Casey Family programs--an offshoot of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Only one foster care alumni a year is selected in the United States.
The Seita Scholarship will provide foster youth aging out of care with undergraduate tuition. Recipients will be required to live on campus, and year-round, on-campus housing will be available, thus providing students with the stability of knowing they have a roof over their heads even during semester breaks.
Seita, now an associate professor of social work at Michigan State University, says people unfamiliar with the plight of former foster youth, often underestimate the importance of housing stability for a student trying to pursue a college degree. Before he became a student at WMU, Seita briefly attended a small Michigan liberal arts college. When his fellow students went home for the holidays, he had no place to go. When college administrators could offer him no assistance, he spent his holiday recess sneaking in and out of a residence hall and scrambling to find a way to eat.
NEVER HOME
Nineteen-year-old Alex Fox, was in and out of different foster care families from the time he was a toddler until age 18. Like many former foster children, Fox got used to change. That's why he wasn't too worried when, at age 18, he left his last foster home with no definite plans.
"AGING OUT" By Director Roger Weisberg
I'm struck by how much support my two college-aged children continue to receive long after "aging out" of our home. They know that they can count on our continued financial and emotional support, and most importantly, they know that they're always welcome home. In contrast, most young people who age out of the foster care system at about the same age have no stable home or parents to whom they can turn. The very system that removed these abused and neglected children from their homes discharges them, usually at age 18, to fend for themselves with little or no support whatsoever.
It is not surprising that two to four years after being discharged from foster care, 25 percent of these veterans of foster care had been homeless, 40 percent were on public assistance, and 50 percent were unemployed. Twenty-five percent of the boys had been incarcerated and 60 percent of the girls had given birth to a child. Despite these grim statistics, I met some remarkable young people in the course of producing AGING OUT who developed enough resiliency during their troubled childhoods to beat the odds. It was genuinely inspiring to watch these extraordinary young people overcome the tremendous adversity in their lives.
I know that my kids will invariably face some tough times as they navigate the thorny transition from adolescence to independent living. AGING OUT helped me grasp how much tougher this transition is for young people who've been abused and neglected, shuttled between numerous foster care placements, and suddenly find themselves on their own. In making AGING OUT, I wanted take viewers inside the embattled world of teenagers in foster care to reveal the tremendous obstacles they face as they try to become self-sufficient adults.
I still don't fully understand how some young people can find the inner strength to cope with early childhood trauma, while others can't. But, AGING OUT made me realize something I should have known from the start. In order to make a successful transition to independence, teens aging out of foster care need many of the same things my own kids need -- some continued financial support until they can stand on their own two feet, a safe place they can call home, and most of all, adults who truly care about them.
"AGING OUT" By Co-Director Vanessa Roth
The day that most defined the direction my life has taken as a social worker and documentary filmmaker was the day my sister joined my family. She was eight months old and was flown along with fifty other Korean babies from foster homes and orphanages in Seoul to adoptive families in Los Angeles. I was eight years old at the time. When I held my sister that day at the airport, and she smiled at me, I wondered even then what led her biological mother to abandon her. I tried to imagine what this little person's short life had been like for the eight months she lived with temporary caregivers. As we left the airport with my new sister in my mom's arms, she was suddenly and forever part of my family. My sister was in foster care for a brief, though developmentally, emotionally and psychologically profound time in her life. Those initial life experiences have had a profound impact on who she is today. This mix of early independence with a longing for lasting support is just what I have found in the children I worked with as a social worker in the foster care arena in my first film, TAKEN IN: THE LIVES OF AMERICA'S FOSTER CHILDREN, and more recently in the courageous young adults I got to know while making AGING OUT. I met both Risa and David on the eve of their transition from living in foster to living "independently." What I found from the moment I first talked to them both was that these teens did not need to be introduced to independent living; independence had been forced on them from the time they were born. David had lived in over 20 foster homes before he turned 18, and Risa had gotten herself admitted to the University of California at Santa Barbara despite frequent moves and relentless family struggles. For their whole lives, these young people were forced to rely on their own instincts with no consistent source of support or stability to guide them. What they lacked most growing up and needed even more during their transition into adulthood were not programs to teach them how to be on their own, but relationships with people who passionately believed in them and could make them feel part of something. Long after production ended on AGING OUT, I am left grappling with complicated questions surrounding what young people like David need most to help them become successful adults. Obviously, there are no easy answers -- and no one target to blame for the tragedy that befell Risa. In the end, I hope that AGING OUT can challenge viewers and inspire new program ideas by putting a human face on the thousands of kids growing up and aging out of foster care.
Foster Club-- A national network for youth in foster care. It includes three mini-sites, serving children, teens and adults. Fosterclub.com includes articles, contests, message boards for youth.
www.FYI3.com -- FYI3 is primarily for teens and those aging out of foster care. FYI3 stands for youth who are Involved, Informed, and Independent. It's a comprehensive, youth-oriented site with information, advice, interactive features and a useful glossary of foster care terms.
FosterClub for adults -- This is a site for adults involved in the foster care system: those who care for children and caseworkers. Visitors to the site will find information and inspiration on how to work and communicate with foster youth.
www.YouthComm.org -- Youth Communication is the publisher of Represent, a monthly magazine for youth in care, written and edited by youth. Each issue covers issues that youth in care deal with all the time like mental health, money woes, jobs, and navigating the foster care system.
www.MockingbirdSociety.org -- The Mockingbird Society is an independent, non-profit organization that is dedicated to improving the safety, quality of life and future of the children and adolescents living in the foster care/group home system nationwide. They publish the newspaper The Mockingbird Times, which is written by youth in care.
National Foster Youth Advisory Council -- The National Foster Youth Advisory Council (NFYAC) is a diverse national group of current and former foster youth and adult supporters from several states who have had direct experience with the child welfare systems. The council's purpose is to provide a voice for and make a difference in the lives of youth currently in care and support their successful transitions into adulthood.
Chapin Hall Center for Children -- A public policy research organization that does extensive research on children and youth involved in the child welfare system. Its ongoing study of youth aging out of foster care in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa is the largest recent study on the experiences of these youth as they make the transition to adulthood.
PBS RESOURCES
Independent Lens: Why Can't We Be A Family Again? -- This film follows two brothers for three years as they struggle to reunite their family, torn apart by their mother's drug usage.
P.O.V.: Love & Diane -- Shot over 10 years, this P.O.V. episode tells the story of a mother and daughter. When mother Diane becomes addicted to crack cocaine, her daughter, Love, enters the foster care system. The film documents the vicious cycle of poverty and neglect as Love has a child of her own.
NOW: The Last Hope -- NOW's piece "The Last Hope" is filmed at the residential treatment center of Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, New York. The segment has stories of foster kids, former foster kids and those working with them.
FRONTLINE: Failure to Protect -- When should a parent lose the right to raise a child? FRONTLINE goes behind the scenes of the child welfare system.
A Brooklyn Family Tale -- A story about how familes cope with the allure and dangers of gang violence in poor neighborhoods. The story focuses on the Santiago family and the Center for Family Life, a center run by two nuns who hope to strengthen this troubled community by supporting its children and families.
