Investigations
Fostering a new system
Mark Courtney wants foster teens to have a fairer
shot at adulthood.
Every year an estimated 30,000 foster
children turn 18, age out of government-run programs, and
are expected to transition smoothly into adulthood on their
own. Within the first year more than one-third are in jail,
homeless, or the victims of physical or sexual assault.
That’s according to Chapin Hall
Center for Children director Mark Courtney, who tracked
141 foster youth who “graduated from” the Wisconsin
system in 1995 and 1996. Courtney, associate professor in
the School of Social Service Administration, wasn’t
surprised by the bleak findings. “The idea that we
stop providing a home at age 18 is shortsighted,”
he says. “Parents don’t kick kids out at 18
these days. Why would we expect foster youth to be more
likely to make it at 18?”
Photo by Dan
Dry |
| Chapin Hall Center
for Children director Mark Courtney stands before a
turn-of-the-century photo of orphans cared for in one
of the center’s earliest incarnations. |
The study has been posted online since
1998 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (where
Courtney taught before joining Chicago in 1999) and was
published in the November/December 2001 Child Welfare
Journal. The most comprehensive of its kind and considered
the seminal work on the topic, Courtney’s research
spurred the state to rejigger its foster system, creating
a committee in 1999 whose recommendations are now being
carried out. It also led to 1999 federal legislation allowing
states to provide more housing dollars and extend Medicaid
to foster kids through age 21. But Wisconsin’s previous
system is typical for the United States, Courtney says,
and the legislation is full of loopholes and affects only
those states choosing to claim funding. So Courtney has
widened his scope to provide a more national picture, now
tracking 800 youths in three states—Illinois, Iowa,
and Wisconsin—at ages 17, 19, and 21. Finishing the
first wave of interviews in fall 2002, he sees few anecdotal
differences in these adolescents (statistical results are
forthcoming). Although Illinois allows those in school to
stay in foster care through age 21 and has more children
living with relatives, he says, “the kids in Milwaukee
look a lot like the kids in Chicago.” That is, many
are not doing well.
The Wisconsin subjects from his first
study—57 percent female, 65 percent Caucasian, 27
percent African American—had been in foster care for
an average five-plus years. During the first round of interviews,
when they still lived in foster settings (either families
or group homes), many reported neglect, physical abuse,
and sexual abuse by their birth families. Forty percent
said a primary caregiver abused drugs or alcohol, 14 percent
said a caregiver had a mental illness, 18 percent said a
caregiver had engaged in domestic violence, and 10 percent
said a caregiver had spent time in prison. While in foster
care many kept in touch with their birth families, though
41 percent said they wished they had been adopted.
When they reached adulthood, their first
year out of the system was the most difficult, Courtney
says. Before leaving three-quarters believed they had been
trained—mostly by their foster parents or specialized
programs—in independent living, including money management,
food preparation, health care, finding housing, transportation,
and employment, legal skills, interpersonal skills, community
resources, and parenting. After a year or more on their
own, however, less than 20 percent said they had received
assistance with life skills like obtaining a job, housing,
personal-health records, health insurance, and public assistance.
By those second interviews a year to
a year-and-a-half later, 8 percent of the males and 19 percent
of the females were themselves parents. One-third said having
enough money was a problem most or all of the time, and
44 percent said the same about obtaining medical care. More
than one-third had not yet received a diploma or GED. And
though almost half received mental-health services such
as counseling while in foster care, only 21 percent were
receiving similar care on their own.
Perhaps even more troubling, some of
the Wisconsin young adults had graduated from juvenile delinquency
to serious run-ins with the law. Although not exactly saints
while in foster care, with an average of four crimes per
person, a year or more out of the system 18 percent—27
percent of the males and 10 percent of the females—had
been arrested and jailed.
Many also had a difficult time supporting
themselves: 12 percent reported being homeless at least
once since leaving foster care, and 22 percent had lived
in four or more places. Although 81 percent had held at
least one job, only 61 percent were employed by the second
interview, on average receiving less than minimum wage.
Almost one-third, meanwhile, received public assistance.
Also during that first year, 25 percent
of the males and 15 percent of the females said they had
experienced some form of physical victimization, including
being “beat up,” “choked, strangled, or
smothered,” “attacked with a weapon,”
or “tied up, held down, or blindfolded.” Thirteen
percent of the females (none of the males) reported being
sexually assaulted or raped.
As the evidence shows, foster children
need more help transitioning to independent life. With a
new federal grant, this spring Courtney will begin researching
at least six programs throughout the country, some private
and some government-run, aimed at helping foster youth learn
to live in the adult world. “We’re actually
going to test the programs,” he says, to try to find
a model other states should follow. “We spend $170
million nationally a year on independent-living services,
and we don’t even know if they’re helping.”
Courtney, who began his career in psychology,
switched to social work after counseling abused teens in
a California group home in 1984–89. “They were
good kids, but they needed help,” recalls the 45-year-old
with a gray muss of hair. “The systems we set up as
a society were woefully inadequate.”
He hopes to find a way to address foster
kids’ poor education levels (“better interaction
between schools and child-welfare programs”), housing
problems (“the key is to have a range of housing options
that move from heavily supervised to very independent”),
and lack of life skills (“go grocery shopping, introduce
them to community college”).
They also need a place to return if independent
living doesn’t work out. “Just like in college,”
he says, “you live in a dorm and in the summer you
go home”—an experience that seems a world away
from these teens.
— Amy Braverman
Corrected 2/28
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