Independent, Not Alone: Breaking the Poverty Cycle through Transition-Age Foster Care Reform

by Roselyn Miller

In recent years, the number of children entering the foster system has steadily increased due to multiple sociocultural and systemic issues, such as the opioid epidemic, mass incarceration, immigration separation, and poverty-based neglect. While there have been some necessary and long-overdue changes to the child welfare system that focus on primary prevention efforts and long-term poverty alleviation, steps need to be taken to mitigate negative outcomes for youth aging out of care immediately in order to ensure more secure and equitable futures for them and their families. In order to design inclusive and effective policy for young adults transitioning from foster care to independent living, we must work to reduce the stigma created by reductivist poverty narratives, center youth with lived experiences authentically as leaders in the design process of policy, reduce program participation requirements to catch more youth in need of services, and structure a guided route toward self-sufficiency as young adults learn to navigate adulthood. In order to do this, policymakers should change descriptive words and language when working with young adults formerly in the foster system, streamline application processes and extend supportive services at least until age 21, and invest in researching and evaluating cash assistance programs to provide youth aging out with more autonomy and flexibility in developing an individualized transition plan for adulthood.

Background

Not all young adults formerly in the foster system know about or have access to programs meant to support them:

“I don’t really have anyone. From age 18, I’ve been staying on my own, taking care of myself, feeding myself. I have to do what I have to do to make ends meet. My sister went straight from our foster home to college, and her school let her know all of the different opportunities she had being a foster youth. I went straight to work. They don’t keep track of that kind of stuff. I went into survival mode. I didn’t know those options were available to me.”
Daisha Walls, age 24, Detroit, Michigan. Aged out at 18.

Even with access to mentors and supportive services, many find difficulty maneuvering through independence as well as complicated eligibility and reporting requirements while in a difficult, stigmatized home environment:

“My friend’s family took me in unofficially as an adult at 21. It took me four years to take seriously that they were there for me. I went back to school, worked multiple jobs, I was homeless. But I realized it was my environment that played such a deep part in that. We’re required when we age out to become adults like that; we’re expected to finish school, to work, to know all of these things when they’re not a part of our foundation, at the same time being pushed and shoved everywhere like kids. You have all these negative outcomes just waiting for you, in health and in society.”
Tanisha Saunders, age 28, Compton, California. Aged out at 18.

Each year approximately 20,532 musicians, soccer players, videogame lovers, cooks, math prodigies, and creative problem-solvers emancipate, or age out, of the foster system.¹ Many more transition-age youth will be adopted, only to be abandoned at age 18, or run away before aging out because accepting financial, mental, and emotional insecurity is worth immediate independence from traumatic or difficult home environments.² Some youth enter care and have a positive experience, but many more do not, and the negative outcomes these young adults face almost immediately after leaving the system speak to the need for a stronger support network.

No two young adults who age out of the foster system share the exact same story, and, as a result, young adults with lived experience sometimes hold contradicting opinions about where to start and what to change, and how much agency youth should have during that process. However, after asking dozens of foster care professionals in policy, education, nonprofits, and social work, and young adults formerly in foster care if the foster system did enough to support transition-age youth, they agreed that while there are some supports for youth in care, and some additional supports for independent youth in college, more could be done to improve the consistency and quality of programs. Too many young adults fall through the cracks and do not qualify for, or ever hear about, supportive services. Young adults leaving care then end up receiving little to no services right as they exit the system and need them most. Early intervention mentorship and evidence-based streamlined services should be complemented with agile services like cash assistance programs in order to produce better outcomes for transition age youth. This combination will give young adults formerly in the foster care system maximum agency and a clear route toward stability.

Many more transition-age youth will be adopted, only to be abandoned at age 18, or run away before aging out because accepting financial, mental, and emotional insecurity is worth immediate independence from traumatic or difficult home environments.

The foster system was designed to take children out of abusive or neglectful homes and place them temporarily in the care of their state under the supervision of trained foster parents. However, the inconsistency of available programs within the system, the cyclical nature of poverty, and the disempowerment of young adults often generates more problems for the youth who were promised a better life and better outcomes.

In general, adults in their 20s face economic instability³ and many rely on parental support, with about 40 percent of young adults receiving an average of $3,000 in financial assistance from their parents up to ages 22 through 24.⁴ Independent young adults aging out of the foster system do not have parents to rely on in case of a financial emergency or for mentorship and coaching as they figure out housing, employment, higher education, and health care. The case for a cash assistance program for those formerly in the foster care system is strong. Since these youth experience worse financial instability than their peers due to lack of parental support, cash assistance programs would serve as a foundational route toward financial stability and independence. While inspiring stories from youth with experience in the foster system show their resilience and strength as individuals,⁵ no amount of positivism and individualist spirit overpowers the vastly unequal formative experiences and institutional oppression this population generally experiences. Soon after exiting the government’s supportive services, many are pushed back into it, with some studies showing one in five becoming homeless after age 18,⁶ more than half unemployed at age 26,⁷ and one in four experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder after exiting the system.⁸ In addition, almost one in four young adults leaving the foster care system ends up involved in the criminal justice system within two years of exiting care.⁹ Compared to the general population in nearly every outcome area, young adults aging out of care face more barriers to secure, stable, and independent lives. Cash assistance paired with mentorship, planning, and programmatic support would have a significant impact on closing the equity gap between youth formerly in foster care and their peers.

No amount of positivism and individualist spirit overpowers the vastly unequal formative experiences and institutional oppression this population generally experiences.

Aside from personal negative outcomes, each young adult that ages out of the foster system costs taxpayers and communities approximately $300,000 over that individual’s lifetime in public assistance needs, incarceration costs, and unemployment.¹⁰ Designing programs and policy that spend tax dollars more efficiently on evidence-based preventative services for individuals rather than reactionary and punitive measures would reduce the costs of aging out and improve each individual’s quality of life. The policy design process should include steps for adequate longitudinal evaluation, monitor program utilization rates, and train caseworkers to partner with youth formerly in care to determine a long-term plan for cash assistance as soon as they are identified as at-risk of aging out.

Because the foster care system does not currently provide enough robust support for housing, mental health, and independent-living skills for all independent young adults, people exiting the system often reenter poverty and inadvertently fall into a toxic environment that continues from one generation to the next. While little data exists documenting intergenerational entry into foster care, it is estimated that between 8 to 22 percent of children of foster care alumni spend time in the foster system as well.¹¹ The negative impacts of the foster system will continue if nothing more is done in both primary poverty-prevention efforts for families and poverty alleviation programs for transition-age adults. There is an urgent and imperative need to improve services for transition-age youth in order to give families caught in the systemic cycle of poverty a chance at equitable outcomes.

The quotes featured were collected from several interviews from young adults with lived experience in the foster system, and they have been condensed and edited for clarity. The research process for this paper included interviewing members of the Foster Care Alumni of America and the National Foster Youth Initiative, reaching out to United Friends of the Children, collecting background information from staff at Casey Family Programs as well as the Illinois’ Department of Children and Family Services, attending Child Welfare and Foster Care events at Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute, and speaking with members of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth. While all of these programs and organizations take different approaches to fixing the foster system, they all agree that the process should center children and families. Experts also generally agree reforming child welfare systems must begin with poverty alleviation efforts for families, especially for those experiencing generational poverty, in order to prevent initial entry into the foster system. In order to keep families together, after decades of inaction and underfunding child welfare with fewer families qualifying for help over time,¹² the federal government passed the Family First Prevention Services Act as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act in 2018, allowing states more flexibility with federal reimbursements to fund poverty-prevention services for at-risk families.¹³ While this legislation presented an important shift in focus to support families, it is a small, long-overdue step toward breaking the cycle of poverty.

The negative impacts of the foster system will continue if nothing more is done in both primary poverty-prevention efforts for families and poverty alleviation programs for transition-age adults.

With prevention efforts, institutional reform, and poverty alleviation as the long-term goal, governments, child welfare agencies, and members of the media should take steps in the short term to aid the thousands of young adults entering independence now. Young adults from different states and foster families might have vastly different experiences in the foster system. Policy-creation processes will serve this population best if they authentically engage, incorporate, and acknowledge insight from multiple alumni of foster care rather than base policy decisions on assumptions and stigmatized perceptions. By combatting the cultural stigma young adults formerly in care face and using that framework to design empowering and comprehensive policy, foster care will change from a system youth feel lucky to survive through to a structured support system that helps low-income youth thrive.

Identifying the Problem

Problem #1: Youth in foster care deal with stigma and unequal formative environments early in life, which results in negative outcomes as they transition out of care.

“There’s a stigma. Sometimes people think that because you’re a single parent out of foster care that you shouldn’t be given the same opportunities that someone who is “single” is given. But everyone wants opportunities; everyone wants to be able to try to improve their lives, not only for them, but especially for their children…
…When I entered the foster system, I ended up getting pregnant and entering a group home. I didn’t have any clothing, so my foster family got a stipend so I could get some clothes. But, when I got in, they disbursed the money among all the kids, even though it was for me. When kids get stipends, if there is any way to make sure that could go directly to the child that would be better.”
Yolonda Washburn, age 27, Providence, Rhode Island. Aged out at 18, received services until 21.

The current foster-care policy and research landscape prioritizes prevention efforts, which take a systemic approach to poverty alleviation by starting with early intervention for families in poverty with young children. The important goal of this work is to prevent entry into the foster system by ensuring families have basic needs met, such as food, health care, and housing. Experts looking for long-term solutions for decreasing the number of children that enter the child welfare system have identified several policy reforms that could make an impact over time. These include redefining how social workers measure abuse and neglect,¹⁴ providing additional support for community-based care and prevention efforts like housing vouchers and food benefits, and researching universal child cash assistance benefits¹⁵ or negative income taxes.¹⁶ These efforts and the continuous research and evaluation of them are vital to disrupting the overall cycle of poverty, particularly for achieving equitable outcomes for low-income marginalized communities. However, while experts debate one safety net program over another, each year approximately 273,539 youth enter care,¹⁷ a number that continues to grow due to the opioid epidemic,¹⁸ and only about half will meet the goal of the foster system and reunite with their original families.¹⁹ To provide the best possible outcomes for youth that transition out of the system, inclusive evidence-based supportive services that guide youth should be paired with flexible cash assistance programs that give youth agency as they transition out of foster care.

Problem #2: There are too many programs with different eligibility requirements, so young adults with non-traditional aging out stories fall through the cracks.

“I left the system when I was 14. I was adopted by my foster parents at the time. When I turned 18 they didn’t want anything to do with me anymore, and so I actually transitioned to college without a forever family. I felt like I was invisible, and I didn’t qualify for a lot of the funding and resources that could have helped me. My mental health took a huge hit. My sister ended up re-entering the foster system, so I stepped up and took care of her until she turned 18 while I was a full-time student.”
Angellica Cox, age 23, Lansing, Michigan. Adopted from care at 14.

The U.S. federal government controls funding streams for transitional services but allows states to ascertain what types of programs to offer and how to determine eligibility. Because the funds are often insufficient or the requirements to access funds are too limiting,²⁰ some states opt to pay into independent-living programs instead of or beyond the matching dollars available through the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program,²¹ which offers different levels of funding to youth likely to age out of care, youth who age out of care at 18, and youth who leave care for a kinship guardianship program or adoption.²²

The federal government identified several key services that link youth transitioning out of care with better outcomes as a direct result of implementing relatively new cohort analysis surveys. Opportunity areas to improve the experience of youth exiting care include:

• extending foster care to age 21,²³
• post-secondary education support,²⁴
• financial coaching,²⁵
• housing,²⁶
• health and mental health care,²⁷
• mentorship,²⁸ and
• direct youth engagement.²⁹

Even in states that have chosen to extend foster care to age 21, youth aging out of the system still often leave at age 18, and programs related to housing, health, and other safety net services are typically underutilized.³⁰ Programs are underutilized because a lot of youth aging out have difficulty collecting the necessary paperwork, miss an age requirement, move, are unaware of the available programs,³¹ or are eager to leave suffocating environments and bureaucratic hoops behind in search of independence.³²

Problem #3: Because of the complicated landscape of supportive services and their eligibility requirements, youth struggle without mentorship and guidance in developing a transition plan.

“The problem is we have so many different organizations lobbying for contracts and setting rules. Like in Tennessee, the public child welfare agency did not make a policy saying independent–living services could only be given to people who were not juvenile delinquents, but the group who they contracted with made it so juvenile delinquents couldn’t access the services. I was someone who was doing AP classes while I was in juvy, yet somehow I am supposed to be ineligible, even though the reason I went into juvy was because foster care was not intervening. Actually juvy was the best weeks of my life, because I had so much trauma and I was living such a toxic lifestyle. I got arrested so I could have more structure.”
David Hall, age 22, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Aged out at 18.

In 2010, states began collecting data for the National Youth in Transition Database, which collects demographic and outcome information and conducts cohort analysis for youth age 17 and 19 who age out of foster care.³³ This database was implemented to track the effects of programs on the outcomes experienced by youth immediately after exiting care and determine the areas in need of improvement. The federal government also requires caseworkers to establish youth-led transition plans, a personalized document listing goals and available support options like housing and health insurance,³⁴ when permanency plans, such as paths toward adoption or kinship guardianship, are not an option. However, the reporting requirements for this are unknown, and the level of detail expected from the transition plan varies by state.³⁵ States offer and develop programs differently, which adds another challenge to evaluating program effectiveness.

State-specific and cross-state comparative studies provide more insight into the youth who access and benefit from transitional supportive services. The state of Virginia became the twenty-fourth state to formally extend foster care services to age 21 in 2016 through Title IV-e funds.³⁶ Virginia created a wide breadth of new programs available for youth transitioning out of care, but the implementation and availability of these untested programs were inconsistent and varied within the state, with about half of the services, like housing, only available in certain geographic areas.³⁷ Cross-state and regional surveys, such as the Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study, show that evidence-based programs that incorporate feedback from youth with lived experiences and that prioritize developmentally appropriate and concrete transition plans lead to the best outcomes.³⁸

Problem #4: Transition-age youth require different supports at different times, and unlike cash assistance programs, inconsistent voucher-based programs are too slow and restrictive to meet individual needs.

“We find ourselves needing immediate support. When it comes to the requirements, no two programs have the same ones. It’s hard for us to have our information, such as birth certificates, proof of employment, proof of school; it is hard to coordinate these things each and every time we go in for help. It should already be understood that we need more support than what is given to us. We’re not out here trying to scam any systems; we’re out here fighting for our most basic needs.”
Tanisha Saunders, age 28, Compton, California. Aged out at 18.

The Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth report shows that for the transition-age adults in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, programs that addressed the main issue areas identified by the federal government—like housing, mentorship, educational training, and supportive services—were not enough.³⁹ They concluded that expecting youth formerly in care to succeed without the financial and emotional resources their peers receive from their parents, even after the age of 21, is unrealistic.⁴⁰ Forty percent of young people in the Midwest leaving foster care experienced homelessness and other unequal outcomes, with many young men experiencing incarceration and many young women raising children alone with limited resources.⁴¹

Within states and across regions, young adults receive inconsistent services, and the impact of these services on their outcomes is largely unknown. Different states incorporate feedback from young adults with lived experience to different degrees, but access to support and equitable opportunities should not depend on geographic luck. Although youth formerly in care have been identified to have similar needs, whether young adults have access to either very few programs or a wide array of programs, all of which have vastly different eligibility requirements related to work, education, time in care, and social standing, depends on the state in which one enters the child welfare system.⁴² While many young adults formerly in foster care rely on different types of voucher programs, there is a near-universal value in increasing access to a cash assistance program where benefits are delivered directly to them. Policies like cash assistance allow young adults exiting foster care to choose which additional services they need and acquire those services much more flexibly.

The Solutions: Addressing cultural stigma and implementing empowering policy

“Exiting foster care was a tough reality check because I had a relatively good time in care. My caseworker made sure I was advocating for myself, and he was also very transparent about what supports were available for me, he help set me up with an independent–living stipend. But I started to learn peers of mine didn’t share those experiences. We shouldn’t have to fight so hard. We should create a system that accommodates us, and meets us where we are when we need them, instead of us having to run around. It’s challenging, but I’m happy to be part of the advocacy for that.”
Scout Hartley, age 26, Jackson, New Jersey. Aged out at 21.

In order to better understand the experiences of young adults exiting care, efficiently meet individual needs through policy, and transparently incorporate feedback from those with lived experience, policymakers must work toward deconstructing the stigma associated with foster care and move toward centering qualitative narratives that show the nuanced needs of individuals with diverse experiences during the design and implementation of policy.

Foster care policy and advocacy workers who interact directly with young adults with lived experiences in care speak about the population very intentionally because words matter. The wrong phrases lead to stereotypes that have long-term effects on the way the public views these young adults and what policy supports gain traction. Rather than referring to the population as foster youth or former foster kids, it is important to think of the transition-age population as young adults or independent adults with experience in the foster system. This phrasing better aligns with the intended temporary nature of foster care and credits them for their subject-matter experience. In order to understand the impact of stigma, a study presented the same vignettes of a young child with the same neutral description and changed only one descriptive factor: in one case, the child was in his biological home and, in the other, he was fostered. The study found that participants held negative perceptions against youth with experience in foster care, connecting them with experiencing more negative emotions as children, creating unhealthy relationships and habits as teens, and experiencing poverty, mental health issues, drug abuse problems, and general social insecurity as adults.⁴³

The wrong phrases lead to stereotypes that have long-term effects on the way the public views these young adults and what policy supports gain traction.

Oversimplified poverty narratives lead to inaccurate and incomplete understandings of the needs of the population and label individuals in poverty as either: 1) deserving all of the blame for their situation, 2) having no agency as a helpless victim, or 3) displaying remarkable strength and individual will to achieve the American dream.⁴⁴ Youth with experience in foster care do not need to be fixed, nor should their experiences be erased in order to acknowledge their humanity and agency. When people believe poverty is a state of mind and success is just a product of motivation, governments pull back on much-needed assistance programs. And on the other end, when people believe young adults formerly in care are simply traumatized adult-children, the misinformed policy created invalidates the value of their experience, spreads mistrust of their intentions, and patronizes young adults, requiring them to jump through a maze of bureaucratic eligibility requirements to meet their basic needs.

In congruence with changing the cultural understanding of narratives about young adults exiting care, in order to improve outcomes for youth aging out of foster care, policymakers must:

• Collaborate on the federal level to develop best practices for consistent, inclusive, and minimal eligibility requirements for young adults aging out of, or adopted from, the foster system seeking public assistance.
• Increase the capacity of caseworkers to provide more individualized support and guidance to assist youth still in care with developing a transition and mentorship plan earlier in life.
• Provide cash assistance programs that create more autonomy and flexibility for young adults formerly in foster care, refining this intervention with a large-scale research and evaluation program.

The policy recommendations listed above all serve the purpose of creating structures that mentor, guide, and support the autonomy of young adults as they learn independent-living skills and determine structured goals as soon as aging out of the system becomes a possibility. Acknowledging that young adults exiting care seek independence and autonomy is essential to creating accessible programs that more young adults in need will want to utilize. A comprehensive policy agenda that pairs mentorship and early intervention planning with direct cash assistance will help young adults exiting care develop a stable foundation in order to pursue independence with the freedom to choose the services they need to succeed.

Conclusion

“When I got my own apartment, I ended up going back to the group home I lived in and becoming staff there. I helped implement some educational things for the pregnant moms because I’d been there. I basically made a binder to help with gathering resources for the girls to get their GED and things like that.”
Yolonda Washburn, age 27, Providence, Rhode Island. Aged out at 18, received services until 21.

“With my experience in the foster care system and in financial planning, I’m actually going to start my own nonprofit. I want to start a movement in Michigan that’s foster–care–alumni run, to empower foster youth to use their voices to make change in policies, to better our foster care system. I want to lead a movement like that, but it doesn’t exist so I have to start it myself.”
Angellica Cox, age 23, Lansing, Michigan. Adopted from care at 14.

Overwhelmingly, youth with lived experience in the foster system seek opportunities to advocate for their peers, to lift up others in tough situations, and to renew and improve the system that intends to provide more secure futures for children with nowhere else to go. Shifting the popular narrative on what it looks like to have been formerly in foster care begins with centering and empowering the individual to live a life they choose, both in spite of and inspired by the situations they were given. That said, in order to understand adulthood and develop a stable foundation, young adults exiting care need guidance and resources to develop an independence plan, just like any other peer their age. A holistic approach will fix the foster system over time and support the immediate needs of young adults now. If policymakers support primary prevention efforts to keep children out of the child welfare system and empower youth already in the system to build positive environments through inclusive and accessible safety net policies, then the benefits will extend well beyond the positive impact on individuals’ lives. Young adults exiting care may be independent, but they do not have to be alone.

Roselyn Miller is a 2017-18 Millennial Fellow with the Better Life Lab at New America. She would like to thank the many organizations and individuals, notably those formerly in the foster system, that contributed thoughtfully to the ideas and development process of her paper. She would like to specially thank the Millennial Public Policy Fellowship, particularly Reid Cramer and Melody Frierson, and the Better Life Lab, specifically Alieza Durana, for guidance and mentorship throughout.