The Importance of Investing in America’s Disconnected Youth

The youth described in this essay arguably represent our nation’s most vulnerable young people. Viewed as a whole, they're largely minority & endure the effects of having been raised in troubled families & in neighborhoods that don't offer the supports & opportunities available in more affluent communities.

Most have attended our worst schools & many have lacked access to adults whose guidance & networks can connect them to mainstream opportunities. Although they may reach adolescence & early adulthood with the same dreams & aspirations of all young people, their ability to realize them is severely limited.

Specifically, if we don't learn to intervene more effectively in the transition of the most vulnerable young people, then we can expect the following outcomes:

• Over the next decade a new generation of children will be born to parents whose ability to provide for them financially will be severely compromised. Given the background & experiences of today’s disconnected youth, a significant number of their offspring will be at risk for the same negative outcomes experienced by their parents.

• We'll spend approximately $1 billion annually to incarcerate youth in our nation’s detention systems, with the disheartening prospect of doing more harm than good. 39

• We'll spend more than $150 billion annually for police protection, corrections & judicial & legal activities nationally. 40

• We will spend more than $223 billion at the federal level alone to help our needy kids & families, the amount it currently costs to support federal programs that address substance abuse, violence, teen pregnancy, nutrition, school failure & workforce preparation. 41

Furthermore, we can expect to spend billions more at the state & local levels.

• Finally, we'll lose a sizeable portion of our potential labor market, along with billions of dollars in earnings & tax revenue that could be pumped into our economy annually.

We know that we can avoid a good share of this human tragedy & financial waste. We also believe that as a nation, the best way of doing so is to make more prudent & effective investments in our most at-risk youth, investments that can help dysfunctional public systems improve results & spend resources more efficiently; investments that can help communities connect kids to opportunities that enhance the skills, knowledge & relationships they need to make it as adults.

Crafting New Connections for Our Most Vulnerable Young People

The range of data reported in this essay make it abundantly clear that for many of today’s disconnected young adults, their diminished prospects are rooted in the risk factors they experienced as adolescents.

Therefore, we believe that the smartest interventions we can advance are those that can prevent kids from experiencing the factors that put them at risk for disconnection, as well as help those who have faced these challenges get back on their feet.

Below, we discuss several efforts in a wide range of states & communities that are addressing the needs of the kids experiencing the various risk factors we have described.

Connecting Foster Youth to Families & Transition Assistance

For any adolescent or young adult, the most powerful predictor of future success is a connection to a caring & supportive family. For those young people who, thru no fault of their own, have been removed from their families, this critical connection is often either temporary or lacking altogether.

The fact is, the older a child gets, the less likely it is that foster care systems will find a suitable foster family or relative willing to provide care. As a result, 40% of older youth routinely spend at least a part of their adolescence in group homes & other institutional settings, disconnected from enduring family relationships & support. 42

And even those who do get placed with foster families often have a rough ride, as the probability of a disrupted foster placement for an adolescent is much greater than for younger children.

Given this, it's imperative that we do more to promote the chances that adolescents removed from their homes can connect to strong families & do more to help those in foster care successfully transition to adulthood.

At the Casey Foundation, we've spent decades promoting strong family connection for kids, particularly those in foster care. For 25 years we have provided high-quality foster care services in each of the New England states thru Casey Family Services, our direct service arm.

We recruit committed, talented foster parents & support them with training & a range of ongoing services that enable them to provide a stable family connection for even the most vulnerable adolescents.

The program encourages & assists each child in maintaining a connection with his or her birth family. Casey Family Services, i.e., also provides counseling & support to children making the transition from foster homes to their birth or adoptive families, or to independent living. We try to provide all of our foster kids with the necessary supports once they age out of care.

Casey Family Services helps young adults make these & other critical short & long-term decisions by providing a variety of resources, from tuition & housing assistance to counseling & training.

Perhaps most important, our social workers, foster parents & kin resources remain connected to these foster kids after they've officially left care. The results are impressive.

A 2001 study of Casey Family Services alumni found that:

• 73% had graduated from high school or earned a GED
• 48% had received education beyond high school
• 68% were currently employed
• 61%were in regular contact with their foster, adoptive &/or birth parents. 43

At the system level, we have also put Casey’s experiences & principles to work thru our national Family to Family Initiative, now being implemented in 35 cities & 16 states, including cities as large as New York, Los Angeles & Cleveland.

In Family to Family, our goal is to help child welfare systems connect all of the children in their care to supportive & protective families & communities.

The agencies involved in our Family to Family Initiative have  committed to developing networks of foster care that are family -centered, culturally sensitive & located in the neighborhoods where children currently live & to ensuring that all kids, including adolescents & their siblings, are routinely placed with families, rather than in institutional settings.

Thru a variety of creative strategies, these state & local - level systems are increasing the number & quality of foster & kinship families; making better decisions about child placement & treatment thru the use of a team decision making approach that involves foster families, birth families & child welfare personnel & establishing networks of neighborhood-based services that are providing birth & foster families with the ongoing support they need.

Family to Family’s results indicate that these systems are making a significant, positive difference for young people. In Cleveland, i.e., among youth 15 & older who entered the child welfare system for the first time, placement in their network of family foster homes increased from 4.1% to 19% between 1996 & 2003.

During that same period, group home placements declined from 6.2 % to 2.5%, while placements in detention facilities were reduced from 5.6% to 1.6%.

Family to Family is now being replicated in a number of settings nationwide. We believe that it represents a proven model for how our nation’s foster care systems can help more vulnerable young people, including adolescents, develop the stable family supports & connections they need to successfully transition to adulthood.

While Casey Family Services & Family to Family provide strong examples of how we can more effectively work with adolescents in care, we must also do much more to help vulnerable young people as they transition from, or age out of, foster care.

A major national effort to help foster care alumni transition to successful adulthood is the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative (JCYOI).

JCYOI is a nonprofit, single-purpose, grant-making foundation, supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation & Casey Family Programs,44 that brings together the people & resources needed to help youth in foster care & foster care alumni gain access to education, employment, health care, housing & supportive personal & community relationships.

To date, this effort has been launched successfully in 9 sites -Atlanta; Denver; Des Moines; Jacksonville; Kansas City; Nashville; Detroit & Traverse City, Michigan & Portland, Maine - with plans to bring on 5 more sites in the coming year.

A key component of JCYOI’s approach is to engage youth directly as key partners & catalysts to improve outcomes for youth leaving foster care. The Initiative does this in each site by establishing & working closely with youth leadership boards & community partnership boards, which bring youth & civic leaders together to develop new options for transitioning youth.

For example, in Michigan, the youth board has been instrumental in advancing new policies that ensure that youth receive key documents, such as birth certificates or proof of residence, that are required to open bank accounts & participate in other routine financial transactions.

Nashville’s youth board started a “suitcase drive” to collect luggage for youth in & leaving foster care to replace the ubiquitous plastic trash bags historically issued to carry their belongings. The response was so overwhelming that excess suitcases were donated to other cities & the luggage drive is now statewide.

Each site is also developing Opportunity Passports™, a tool  designed to organize resources to create opportunities - financial, educational, vocational, health care, entrepreneurial & recreational - or alumni of the foster care system & for youth still in foster care.

The Opportunity Passport has several components, including a  personal debit account; a matched savings account (also known as an Individual Development Account, which can be used for education or for other critical purchases, such as housing) & a range of “Door Openers.”

These are locally developed benefits that may include pre-approved registration for community college courses, expedited access to job training or adult education courses, mentors, assistance with  finanacial aid applications, part-time jobs & pre-certification for subsidized housing.

Almost 400 Opportunity Passports have been issued to transitioning youth to date. Another innovative program to help foster care alumni make a successful transition to adulthood is the Casey Foundation’s School to Career Partnership, which is administered thru the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative.

The School-to-Career Partnership provides employment training & placement services to help transitioning youth get, keep & succeed at adult jobs, as well as supports that can improve career, academic & life success.

In contrast to standard job training programs, which focus on placement, the School-to-Career model establishes a range of observable & measurable goals for both youth & their employers. Partners include public & private nonprofit child welfare agencies, for-profit employers, community based organizations & the youth themselves.

In 2003, more than 340 youth across 8 program sites were placed in jobs with an average salary of $7.92 per hour. 51% received health benefits & the program had an 81% retention rate.

A program modeled on the lines of the School-to-Career Partnership, but with an entertainment industry focus, is the Rowell Foster Children’s Positive Plan (RFCPP), which annually sponsors more than 60 foster youth to participate in fine arts programs, camps & cultural activities. Additionally, it provides older & former foster youth with employment opportunities on the East & West Coasts.

For example, last year, RFCPP enabled more than 30 foster youth to participate in entertainment-related employment training. It has placed foster youth with such notable entertainment corporations as Viacom, Paramount & BMG Music. RFCPP is piloting an  accredited class on the campus of Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, which has a student population that is 1/3 foster youth.

Given the lack of opportunities for foster youth to obtain quality post-secondary education, some transition efforts have specifically focused on bolstering foster youths' access to college.

For example, in San Jose, California, the Silicon Valley Children’s Fund launched their Youth Education Scholarship (YES) program as a pilot project in 2000 & began bringing it to scale last year. This initiative provides transitioning foster youth with scholarships for college tuition, books, food & transportation, plus a comprehensive support system that includes outreach, mentoring & counseling services.

Since 2000, 28 foster youth have received YES scholarships & it's estimated that 1,000 will be eligible over the next 5 years. To date, 85% of YES scholars have returned for a second year of college (compared to a 33% national rate for foster youth) & more than 95% have maintained a GPA of 2.0 or above.

Similarly, California State University, Fullerton, thru its Guardian Scholars Program, annually provides an array of financial & other supports to up to 10 former foster youth between the ages of 17 & 23.

In addition to paying all annual fees, academic tuition &  textbook costs, the Program offers on-campus housing, employment opportunities, individual counseling & mentors who can assist with various needs & help students plan for their postgraduate future.

In 2003, 7 Guardian Scholars received their bachelor’s degrees.

To help foster care youth get ready for higher education, Seattle’s Tree House Coaching to College Program offers a pre-college preparation & access program that matches transitioning youth with coaches who help them define educational goals & navigate the college application & financial aid systems. It produces up to $4,000 in scholarship assistance per year. Last year, 151 youth benefited from this aid.