First-of-its-Kind Data Track Troubling Outcomes of Youth Transitioning From Foster Care

The Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion today released Fos­ter­ing Youth Tran­si­tions, a data brief that high­lights the most com­pre­hen­sive dataset ever col­lect­ed across all 50 states to assess the out­comes of fos­ter care youth as they tran­si­tion to adult­hood. The brief gives a snap­shot of how young peo­ple are served dur­ing fos­ter care and lead­ing up to this tran­si­tion. Among the find­ings, the data show that young peo­ple tran­si­tion­ing from fos­ter care across the coun­try are lag­ging their peers in com­plet­ing high school and gain­ing employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. We also know that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age are expe­ri­enc­ing homelessness.

Down­load the Data Brief

“We’ve wait­ed a long time for this data. They should be seen as a wake-up call to guide pol­i­cy­mak­ers in advanc­ing need­ed pol­i­cy reform,” said Patrick McCarthy, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion. ​“If we want to ensure young peo­ple don’t fall through the cracks after aging out of fos­ter care, then pol­i­cy­mak­ers need to look at these data and embrace poli­cies that will help young peo­ple become suc­cess­ful adults.”

Fos­ter­ing Youth Tran­si­tions has great poten­tial to spur pol­i­cy reforms that can make a real dif­fer­ence for youth and improve the sys­tems that are respon­si­ble for ensur­ing their safe­ty, sta­bil­i­ty and well-being while prepar­ing them for the future.

Mak­ing the Case for Sup­port­ing Youth Tran­si­tion­ing out of Fos­ter Care

For young peo­ple in fos­ter care, the course can be filled with more obsta­cles and detours than the typ­i­cal young per­son faces in the world. In its 17 years of work­ing with child wel­fare lead­ers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers and young peo­ple across the coun­try, the Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Ini­tia­tive^® has uncov­ered stark data about this pop­u­la­tion. Fos­ter care youth often lack employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and face dis­pro­por­tion­ate lev­els of unem­ploy­ment and home­less­ness, as well as oth­er bar­ri­ers to well-being — chal­lenges that are great­ly exac­er­bat­ed by race. Young peo­ple of col­or are over­rep­re­sent­ed in fos­ter care; they enter the fos­ter care sys­tem at much high­er rates than their white peers and have dis­parate out­comes. In fact, in about half of the states, the rate of being in fos­ter care for young African Amer­i­cans ages 14–21 is over three times high­er than the rate of young white peo­ple. African-Amer­i­can youth are more like­ly than their white coun­ter­parts to expe­ri­ence three or more place­ments in fos­ter care.

Addi­tion­al key find­ings that are high­light­ed in Fos­ter­ing Youth Tran­si­tions include:

• Among old­er teens in fos­ter care nation­wide, more than half age out of fos­ter care with­out being reunit­ed or con­nect­ed to a family.
• Leav­ing fos­ter care with­out sup­port­ive adult con­nec­tions, access to resources and at only 18 years old puts tran­si­tion­al fos­ter care youth at increased risk for home­less­ness, pover­ty, unem­ploy­ment and oth­er challenges.
• All youth who reach age 18 in care would ben­e­fit from extend­ed care and sup­port, but only one in four is get­ting it.
• Less than a quar­ter of youth leav­ing fos­ter care who recieved a fed­er­al­ly fund­ed tran­si­tion ser­vice received ser­vices for employ­ment, edu­ca­tion or housing.

The Casey Foun­da­tion is releas­ing Fos­ter­ing Youth Tran­si­tions on the heels of state and nation­al elec­tions to help pol­i­cy­mak­ers bet­ter under­stand the expe­ri­ences of young peo­ple prepar­ing to tran­si­tion from fos­ter care, so they can begin craft­ing solu­tions to improve their outcomes.

Near­ly two decades ago, Con­gress resolved (through the Fos­ter Care Inde­pen­dence Act of 1999) to track nation­al and state-lev­el data and out­comes around youth who have expe­ri­enced fos­ter care. Nev­er­the­less, the robust­ness and qual­i­ty of the data vary state by state, with many states miss­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to col­lect full data on tran­si­tion ser­vices and out­comes. As a result, some state report­ing is incom­plete, and this under­re­port­ing inhibits a com­plete pic­ture of state performance.

Fos­ter­ing Youth Tran­si­tions shows the clear need not only for more and bet­ter data gath­er­ing but also for bet­ter poli­cies and prac­tices, to give young peo­ple in fos­ter care the best chances possible.

“We now have the data to con­firm that our sys­tems are not deliv­er­ing on the com­mit­ment to ensure these youth are grow­ing up with per­ma­nent fam­i­lies that would best enable them to thrive,” says Leslie Gross, direc­tor of the Jim Casey Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Ini­tia­tive. ​“This new evi­dence makes unde­ni­able the need to push poli­cies that sup­port permanence.”

Gross says that pol­i­cy­mak­ers can start by ask­ing tough ques­tions that will help improve a state’s abil­i­ty to col­lect and report child wel­fare data.

Next, the Casey Foun­da­tion calls on these fos­ter care sys­tem lead­ers to seek out young peo­ple in fos­ter care or who are in or have expe­ri­enced fos­ter care to hear direct­ly from them about what has worked for them and what hasn’t.

Final­ly, once areas of reform are iden­ti­fied, the fos­ter care sys­tem must hold itself account­able to work­ing with young peo­ple to take appro­pri­ate action to address them.