Extended Foster Care

Extend­ing fos­ter care ser­vices to young peo­ple beyond age 18 helps young peo­ple and their com­mu­ni­ties and is asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive out­comes — includ­ing high school com­ple­tion, employ­ment and reduced home­less­ness and young par­ent­hood. Learn about what it takes to extend fos­ter care the right way, and how states are mak­ing improve­ments to ensure a bet­ter path for young peo­ple tran­si­tion­ing from fos­ter care to adulthood.

Fea­tured Resources:

Sup­port­ing Old­er Youth Beyond Age 18: Exam­in­ing Data and Trends in Extend­ed Fos­ter Care
This report from Child Trends deliv­ers key find­ings on the ben­e­fits of extend­ing fos­ter care beyond age 18, as well as rec­om­men­da­tions to ensure that the fos­ter care sys­tem is respon­sive to the unique needs of young peo­ple tran­si­tion­ing to adulthood.

Suc­cess Beyond 18 Initiative
The cam­paign, launched in May 2013, aims to change the sta­tus quo, and give young peo­ple in fos­ter care bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties to suc­cess in fam­i­ly, work and life. Resources include:

• A Bet­ter Path for Young Peo­ple Tran­si­tion­ing From Fos­ter Care to Adulthood
  This report out­lines the pol­i­cy and prac­tice goals of the Suc­cess Beyond 18 cam­paign, which is focused on extend­ed fos­ter care done right.
• Extend­ing Fos­ter Care Beyond 18: Get­ting Started
  This resource pro­vides guid­ance on struc­tur­ing a plan­ning process to con­sid­er crit­i­cal design issues for extend­ing fos­ter care and to project the net fis­cal impact of that extension.
• Qual­i­ty Case Plan­ning with Young Adults in Extend­ed Fos­ter Care
  This resource focus­es on improv­ing the case plan­ning process to help young peo­ple build strong social net­works and pre­pare them to enter adult­hood with con­fi­dence and purpose.
• Extend­ing Fos­ter Care Beyond 18: Hous­ing Options for Young Adults
  This resource details the array of hous­ing options that states can con­sid­er as they plan to extend fos­ter care beyond the age of 18.
• Re-exam­in­ing the Fos­ter Care Review Process: Extend­ed Fos­ter Care as a Cat­a­lyst for Improved Prac­tices and Bet­ter Outcomes
  This brief out­lines the key ele­ments of the review process required by fed­er­al law for young adults in extend­ed fos­ter care and dis­cuss­es impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions for juris­dic­tions as they design and imple­ment review process­es con­sis­tent with the fed­er­al requirements.
• A Guide to Sup­port the Imple­men­ta­tion of Fos­ter Care Beyond Age 18: Ques­tions & Answers, Sum­ma­ry of Fed­er­al Fos­ter­ing Con­nec­tions Guid­ance and Per­spec­tives from the Field
  This resource pro­vides reli­able infor­ma­tion to help stake­hold­ers inter­est­ed and involved in imple­ment­ing fos­ter care beyond age 18 to max­i­mize oppor­tu­ni­ties to help young peo­ple through extend­ed care.

Cost Avoid­ance: The Busi­ness Case for Invest­ing in Youth Aging Out of Fos­ter Care
This issue brief pro­vides an update on how cost sav­ings can be achieved through invest­ments in extend­ed fos­ter care for young peo­ple aging out of the system.

Fos­ter Care to 12: Doing It Right
This issue brief pro­vides a pol­i­cy blue­print for extend­ed fos­ter care done right through authen­tic youth engage­ment and sup­port from courts and oth­er partners.