Looking Ahead After the Foster Youth Summit
The foster care system aims to safely reunify children with their
parents or secure another permanent home. Too often this goal is
not achieved. Instead, many children spend years in foster homes
or group homes, often moving multiple times. These children are at increased risk for a variety of
emotional, physical, behavioral, and academic problems, making it
less likely that they will graduate from high school and go on to
college or career training. Studies show time and again that
education beyond high school makes it less likely that people
will live in poverty. Unfortunately, too many foster youth in our
region struggle just to graduate from high school and therefore
find themselves unemployed and homeless within a year after they
age out of the foster care system.
So what will it take to ensure that more foster youth age out of
the system prepared to enter adulthood? United Way California
Capital Region, in partnership with local universities and
colleges, nonprofit organizations, and community, brought
together key stakeholders at the first ever Foster Youth Summit
to take up the question. The summit, which actively engaged
foster youth, featured a deep dive into community-level data on
foster youth in the region, a panel of foster youth who spoke
about the real-world implications of the data, and a variety of
speakers highlighting the resources available in our community.
During the summit, attendees identified opportunities with two
specific goals in mind: to increase the number of foster youth
who graduate from high school and increase the percentage who go
on to complete post-secondary education. Summit participants
identified three key issues that must be addressed in order to
achieve those goals: permanency (permanent relationships that
last into adulthood), financial support (which includes housing),
and trauma-informed care.
In the coming months, United Way, summit participants, and others, will turn ideas for how to address those issues into action. None of this can do this work alone. It will take not only financial resources, but also public–private partnerships and a prioritization of the needs of foster youth among public-policymakers across the political spectrum. Together, we can open doors to opportunity for foster youth to thrive.