A forever home can be a notion, a heart’s desire and an elusive place for many foster youth whose lives know more frequent stops, short-lived placements, and revolving doors than anchors. Growing up in Tampa, Fla., Cory Carter was one of them.
Now 33, Carter was just weeks old when he became a ward of the state. “I guess you can say that I was born into the foster care system.” Addicted to drugs and unable to care for Carter and his siblings, his mother went to jail. Carter, who is Afro-Cuban, cycled through nearly 30 foster homes by the time he was 18. That’s the age that he was required to exit the system. Carter had aged out. Every year, more than 22,000 youth in the U.S. must also leave when they turn 18 or 21, depending on the state. Many exit without a safety net or the chance to be reunited or connected to family.
The process left Carter instantly homeless. For foster youth who age out of the system, experiencing homelessness is common and the percentage who end up on the street is high — 28 percent by age 21. Also common is getting tangled up in the criminal justice system. Such outcomes can be especially troubling for Black youth who have long been overrepresented in the foster care system. When these youth exit or emancipate, they will likely be on track to face higher levels of poverty, unemployment and homelessness. These are among the challenges that are also exacerbated by race, according to researchers at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The foundation’s “Fostering Youth Transitions” is the first-ever data report to assess how young people in the U.S. make the transition from foster care to adulthood.
A decade earlier, in 2008, those poor life and educational outcomes that existed for youth who aged out of the system also concerned the president of the city’s only historically Black university. The national data told him that just 50 percent of foster youth graduate high school by age 18. Also, just 2 to 9 percent of foster youth obtain a bachelor’s degree by the time they’re 26, compared to 36 percent of the general population. The research, which also showed that two-thirds never go to college, was like a call to action for Dr. Ronald L. Carter, then president of Johnson C. Smith University (JCSU) and a foster parent. Working together with Dr. Helen T. Caldwell, who was at the time the dean of the College of Professional Studies and a social work professor, and others, the result was the Foster Care Initiative. The recruitment, retention and support program at the private Black university would help put young people making the leap from foster care to adulthood on a path that leads to college and a bachelor’s degree — and provide them with a safety net.
A support network
Today, much of the national research on college-going and foster youth continues to be dismal — but not all of it. For these youth, it appears that support makes the difference. Champions for former foster youth at JCSU say that support that keeps students from falling through the cracks is what they have relied on since launching the Phasing Up to New Possibilities Scholars Program (formerly The Foster Care Initiative). In its 10 years, a network of support and partnerships from the community, on campus and across the nation is what helped to get 22 former foster youth, including Cory Carter, to the graduation finish line at JCSU, said Patricia K. Newell, who directs the Phasing Up-Guardian Scholars Program. She announced that tally in September at a daylong symposium in Charlotte, N.C. on foster care to mark the program’s milestone anniversary.
Many of those partners, supporters and advocates for foster youth and Phasing Up participated in the event. “We are all taking this bull by different horns, but we are also learning from each other,” said Jarrett Pratt, a presenter at the event, on the patchwork of campus, philanthropic and community-based efforts underway to support those who have aged out of care. Newell invited many of them to the forum, including the Atlanta-based nsoro Foundation, First Place for Youth in California, and the Gamecock Gateway program at the University of South Carolina.
