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A recent study out of Michigan is painting a pretty grim picture, and really it’s not that surprising.
For children who leave foster care without having been adopted, life is more than difficult. The statistics show that the children, now young adults:
• Are twice are likely to be unable to pay their rent.
• Are three times more likely to be unemployed or not in school.
• Fewer than half had bank accounts.
• Jail time was served by 11% of girls and 30% of boys after they left foster care.
These statistics come from a study conducted across three different states in the Midwest, so this is not just a Michigan problem.
Other statistics from Michigan specifically are just as disturbing.
• Barely over a third of young adults aged eighteen to twenty –three were employed and only a little over ten percent are working full time.
With those figures, these next two should not come as a big surprise:
• More than half of those in the eighteen to twenty-three range relied on public assistance.
• Forty percent said they were either homeless or had no stable housing.
All of these statistics work together. If these kids do not have decent jobs, how can they afford rent? Who can really make ends meet on a part-time salary, especially if it’s a minimum wage job? Most of us could barely make ends meet on a full time minimum wage job. What if you’re doing it with minimum education and no family support?
Most of us probably could have gone to our parents for dinner some night if things got financially tight, borrowed money, or moved back home. I know for the first years of our marriage, while my husband was still in college, my in-laws did a lot of things to help us out financially and emotionally. We were married at twenty-one and twenty-two so were basically the same age as these kids and we had many more advantages than these kids did.
Many people have asked us why we never terminated our rights on Sammy. This is a large part of why. I cannot imagine Sammy out in the world at eighteen and trying to figure out how to make life work for him. He would be one of these statistics.
What are the answers to help these kids? I don’t know. I’m not sure there is an easy answer, but there has to be something better than this. I bet it’s less expensive to keep a child in foster care a little longer than to put this same child in jail, support the child through food stamps, in a homeless shelter, or through other government assisted programs.
Let’s help these kids make a good life and have a chance at a successful life.
One of my former group home kids is aging out of the system this summer. Emotionally she is only 11 or 12 at best, and has very few life skills. They are looking at adult foster care, and I hope that her caseworker thinks about some serious training/mentoring programs. Is there any funding in MI for helping these kids after they are 18?
In Michigan, a child can stay in foster care until the age of 19 if the child is still enrolled in school trying to get a diploma. Then they are out, no matter what. My mother, a senior citizen on fixed social security income has had a foster daughter since the age of 11. She turned 19 in March, but doesn’t graduate until June from HS. She is LD. My mother is currently keeping her for free. She has applied for public assistance.
My foster daughter who turned 18 last year, had her diploma, but hasn’t managed to keep a job more than a week since leaving our home. She went back to her mom, but that hasn’t worked out too well. Mostly she has stayed with various friends until her welcome runs out. She is currently on public assistance as well.
The daughters we adopted at 15 and 9, are currently 25 and 19. Both are employed full time, have appartments and automobiles, and attend college.