Using Their Voice: How Foster Youth Describe Mentoring Relationships

Although numerous studies have been conducted on foster care and the negative issues well documented, youth in foster care have a voice when people are willing to listen.  Even though many youth in foster care or those aging out of the system do not have mentors, some youth do.  The mentors are friends, family or staff members and have left lasting impressions. 

But how does youth describe their mentors and their relationships?  A study conducted that netted 194 youth responding, indicated that they had a non-kin mentor.  Their responses were uploaded to a software program and analyzed. The adult mentors were defined as being older and willing to listen to them.  Sample questions included how they met, how they were referred, what made them easy to relate to/listen to, and they were also asked to give example of advice received that they used.

Results indicated that youth described their mentoring relationships in positive ways.  Their mentors were described as “approachable and easy to be with”   (Munson, et.al., 2010) because of descriptions indicated on their responses with words such as “down to earth,” “funny,” and “humble.”   The mentors were also described as “understanding,” which made them easier to relate to and distinguishable from other adults in their lives. For some, the relationships were also similar in personality, interests, life experiences or backgrounds.  One youth said that she acted like her mentor when she was her age and another described herself as having a quick temper as her mentor did when she was growing up.  Youth in the study valued the consistency and longevity that the mentoring relationships offered; being able to trust their mentor and having their mentor listen to them.

With the positive expressions shared by these youth interviewed in the study, it is obvious that they have a voice and see mentoring as a positive aspect in their lives.  In comparison to youth in foster care, mentors are minute and there is a definite need for more recruitment of quality mentors to foster positive relationships so that youth will continue to communicate a positive relationship.

Fostered to Succeed

Many studies and research reports about foster care have been published.  America is no stranger to the many issues with the welfare system—the abuses, lack of support, and challenges faced.  A system designed as a temporary shelter is a permanent home for many children and youth placed there.  The ideal design was to reunite children with their birth parents or if not conducive to positive outcomes for the child, place them with family members so that they receive the love, care and permanence they need.

 

In many cases, youth living in foster care have been in the system long enough to “age out” of it when they reach the age of 18, but some states have allowed youth to remain until they are 21.  Children who have not been reunited with family or adopted out of the system face the daunting experience of having to make it on their own with limited resources or no resources at all.  The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 was designed in part to help youth aging out of foster care with guidelines to extend payments—basically support—to age 21.  Program instructions with comprehensive information to IV-E agencies based on the amendments is provided as well as “guidance on the option to extend assistance for foster care maintenance, adoption assistance, and/or kinship guardianship programs to eligible youth age 18 and older up to age 21.” With extension of payments to guardians and adoptive parents, this may encourage better outcomes for youth emerging into adulthood from foster care. 

 

The Act is designed in sections and each section offers specific information and criteria agencies must meet, offering the agencies opportunities to participate and implement the new Act.  Sections include information on provisions specific to extending foster care to youth 18 and older, guidelines for transition plans emancipating these youth, and information on the guardianship program, to name a few.  Youth in foster care also must meet certain eligibility criteria to remain in foster care under the amendment’s provisions.

 

The statute provides an option that agencies may use to select an age up to 21 for definition of “child” and encourages agencies to expand the definition of “child” to age 21.  If the agency selects an age younger than 21, they have to provide a written description to their Region Office on why they chose an age lower than 21.  For education and employment conditions, agencies may define different criteria.  Youth in the program must also meet specific criteria.  They must be in foster care or part of an adoption assistance agreement and age 16 or older before the agreement became effective or part of a kinship guardianship agreement and 16 years old before the agreement became effective and 18 or older up to 21 and meet education or employment conditions.  The statute also provides information on how agencies can use the option to extend assistance consistent with the law’s requirements and needs of older youth. 

 

Although the Fostering Connections and Success Act is detailed and appears to be filled with rules and regulations, the main theme running through it is the option to give agencies the opportunity to meet criteria and have success in assisting youth in foster care and those on the verge of aging out of foster care.  The Act offers financial support to adoptive parents as well as guardians to ensure that youth in foster care are taken care of.  The Act also discusses the needs of youth in independent living and how the act is designed to support them.  With all areas in the law, eligibility requirements and criteria must be met.  Agencies must provide specific information on designated dates and based on the date of the document some of those dates have passed.  If agencies follow instructions and guidelines of the Act and implement them, youth in foster care should meet with more success and less negative outcomes when they outgrow the system and transition into adulthood.

 

The Possibility of Permanency in Foster Care

Foster care was never intended to be a permanent home for youth separated from family members through no fault of their own.  The goal was reconnection with their parents and family members.  However, as stated in an earlier post, many foster youth spend years in state care and are never reunified with family members.  In these cases, youth have aged out of the system with limited or no support.  Support previously provided for housing, finances, health, and education terminated at the age of 18 and some youth found themselves in independent living programs or on their own.

Although these programs were thought to help, they have been proven to be inadequate in preparing youth for independence.  The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoption Act of 2008 mandated that youth leaving foster care must leave through safe reunification with their parents, adoption, guardianship or “another planned permanent living arrangement” (Avery, 2010).  The Act provides an option of extending financial support to kin providers and older youth.  Mandates for notifying kin, analyzing kin foster care, and explaining foster care benefits and requirements to kin are also included in the bill, but until recently little attention was paid to acquiring permanence for youth or post foster care.  The lack of social support was evident.

J. S. Coleman (2009) termed “social capital” as a way to describe the complex social support system—fundamental foundation—for foster youth.  This “social capital” includes parents, family members and other adults in their lives that help youth achieve positive outcomes.  Social capital is important in helping youth develop a social trust, which is important in developing acceptable behavioral social patterns. A trustworthy social network is important for youth who are emerging into adulthood because family relationships influence their psychological development. Independent living programs was designed to prepare youth aging out of foster care to connect to caring adults who could provide support, but it is well documented that these types of programs have failed.

Youth in foster care as well as foster care alumni desire permanence.  Permanence is considered a core need.  This need includes reliable, lifelong parenting relationships as well as maintaining contact with family and other important people in their lives. Along with this need is the need for independence.  For youth exiting out of care who do not achieve permanence, they are faced with incomplete education, significant health problems, are unemployed or underemployed and socially isolated.

One project, the “Permanent Parents for Teens” conducted to find permanence for youth is considered successful.  The project funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Children’s Bureau was designed to find permanent adoptive parents for adoptive teens or committed permanent parents to morally adopt teens not freed for adoption but in danger of discharge from foster care to homelessness.  The project, conducted in New York City, focused on a child-specific recruitment approach called Permanency Action Recruitment Teams (PART).  The project accepted referrals and PART meetings were attended by teens and all involved in their lives. Family permanency advocates led the meetings and also worked with teens to identify potentially permanent resources in their lives, reaching out to them and other relatives not previously considered.  Of the 199 teens referred to the program, 98 were placed into permanent homes by the end of the project.   

Based on the success of this project and similar types where family members have been located and reunited with youth in foster care, permanency is more than possible, it is a reachable goal for youth in foster care.

 

 

The Cradle and Bough

"Rock-a-bye, baby..."
by Mother Goose

Rock-a-bye, baby,    In the tree top: When the wind blows,    The cradle will rock; When the bough breaks,    The cradle will fall; Down will come baby,    Cradle and all.

Like the simple words of this Mother Goose nursery rhyme, youth in the foster care system found that the wind blew strong enough to break the bough they were on –the foster care system—and their cradle fell with them still in it.

The system that was intended to be a temporary place for them to rest from abuse and/or neglect until they were unified with their parents became permanent.   Foster care’s initial intent did not change, but because many children are never reunified with their parents, they live their lives in the foster care system until they reach the age of maturity, which are 18 or 21 years of age according state laws in which they live.  Many children the same age as those in foster care are still at home with parents, attending college or working part-time jobs while still at home because they do not have the resources to be able to live on their own.    These children have a safe haven and are given time to grow up, but youth in foster care are expected to venture out into the world sooner than other children their age.  These youth deserve our support and in not doing so, the costs to the public are not only monetary, but emotional, mental, and material. 

Quality programs over quantity are a beginning.  Quality programs must be created and designed specifically in support of these youth, who associate stigma and isolation with being in “the system.”   Success Beyond 18 is an initiative designed to help youth in foster care succeed.  When we all come together in unison focused on support, the cradle that fell holding the child can be repaired, the child comforted and the cradle returned to the tree of support…on a different bough.

Eighteen and Slipping Away

It is no secret that America’s foster care rolls are filled with more than 400,000 children placed in the welfare system for care.   The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System (AFCARS) compiles information received from states to produce the report.   But information that may be is surprising, is the number of youth who no longer receive government assistance and have to provide for themselves because they have “aged out” of the system.  According to information obtained from the AFCARS report, more than 25,000 youth “aged out” of foster care in 2011.  With more than 400,000 children in foster care, this number appears to be minute, but when we think about these young people having no permanent home and the chance of ending up in the streets, this number is astounding.

Greeson writes that when youth legally emancipate from child welfare prior to being reunified with birth families, being adopted or achieving permanent placement, they “age out” of foster care.   Youth typically age out of foster care at age 18 and support these children received while in foster care is limited causing them to seek support on their own.  Because they are not equipped to find the support they need, many have slipped through cracks in the system and suffered negative consequences such as homelessness, health issues and financial ruin before their lives really have a chance to begin.

This is where mentoring can benefit.  Early results of mentoring shows that mentoring benefit youth, whether through structured programs or through relationships that develop on their own, but more study needs to be done.   A positive association between mentoring quality and self-esteem was also revealed in a study on natural mentoring.    However, although mentoring is viewed as positive for foster youth, Spencer, Collins, Ward & Smashnaya (2009) suggest that individual-level interventions such as mentoring do not eliminate the need for more systemic action to meet the many needs of these vulnerable youth.  With the early positives of mentoring and the suggestion that mentoring does not eliminate the need for systemic action, where does this leave the youth who have already slipped through gaps in the foster care system and seemingly have no hope?