Foster care children are dumped out of the system at age 18, ready or not. Now, experts are seeing more foster care teens thrust into the real world each year, with no skills to survive, trusting no one and having to fend for themselves.
Because teens are legally entitled to independence at 18, the foster care system stops supporting them at that age. Foster care officials in Santa Clara County say they have started classes to prepare foster care teens to live on their own. But the classes need more funding because social workers have too many cases.
For one teen, these classes have come too late.
"It's been crazy, very crazy," said one 21-year-old who ended up on the streets after aging out of the foster care system. The girl was taken away from her biological mother when she was 13; her stepfather had been molesting her. She withheld her name because she did not want her new employer to know her past.
When she entered foster care at 13, she did well in her new foster home, earning As and Bs in school and participating in sports. For three years she made progress and she remembers her foster parents getting "big fat checks.'' But they seemed dissatisfied with her and she felt depressed all the time. Then her foster parents grew so displeased that she was sent back to a group-care home. For her, that meant the end of all hope, and she began to get into trouble. By 18, she was sent from juvenile hall to the streets without the skills to succeed.
Belinda Ramsey-Quesada, a spokeswoman for Santa Clara County's social services agency, said children legally become adults at 18. But she also acknowledged that some teens might not be ready to live independently by then. Santa Clara County has initiated a program, Connected by 25, to support some of these teens.
The 21-year-old girl shows how much help some teens still need when they turn 18. After her first foster parents sent her back to a group home, she was introduced to drugs and alcohol and she ended up in juvenile hall. She enveloped herself in drinking and drugs because she felt her foster parents gave up on her. After she was released from juvenile hall at 18, she shrugged off an offer to join a support program, feeling the need to be independent. Although she has a job now, she still drinks at times in an attempt to cope with troubles in her life.
She feels sure she would be successful had her foster parents not given up on her. If they only had a little bit more trust, she said, "I wouldn't have had to come out such a bad way."
Some foster teens, however, succeed. Monica Simon, now 24, had more stable foster care than most children growing up -- she was able to live with relatives under foster care's "kinship care'' program. Still, when she was forced to leave her grandmother's house at age 18, she was homeless for two weeks.
But she found a room paying rent to an aunt and worked her way through college over the years. Although she bounced from one home to another, she earned her bachelor's degree and now helps a non-profit group, the Emergency Housing Consortium, as a truancy prevention manager.
"Foster care improved since I've been there,'' she said. The system has "turned around, finding homes for youth.'' Simon says most young people aren't full adults until they are 26, and that it's unfair for foster teens to be turned out when they are 18. Simon adds that social workers should have fewer cases because they "need to be more attentive.''
Michelle Covert, director of the youth division of the Emergency Housing Consortium, also believes the foster care program should be extended to serve those older than 18. She has had nearly 14 years of working with foster care children as well as homeless youths. Covert says that before teens turn 18, "some get too old or emotionally damaged and there is no one to adopt them; they bounce around from home to home." She definitely wants "a big push to provide more quality services for the kids throughout their time in foster care and when they're 25."
The foster care system started teaching independent living skills several years ago to teens ages 14 to 15 to prepare them for independence, said Greta L. Helm, the director of governmental relations and planning for Santa Clara County's social services department.
Connected by 25, which began this year as a part of California's Family to Family Initiative, is a youth transitional program aimed at helping and teaching youths so they become independent. Connected by 25 is meant to provide services supporting youth development and successful foster teen transition into adulthood.
So far, five counties in California have implemented the initiative: Santa Clara, San Francisco, Alameda, Fresno and Stanislaus.
Covert said the road to improvement is not so far off.
"It's a good start," she said. "First thing is to acknowledge we weren't doing our best."
Covert says Americans should worry more about prevention services for foster care youths and that the government does a "much better job at responding after the fact." One-fourth of foster care children will end up incarcerated within two years after leaving the system, she said.
Lydia Cabrera, an employment specialist at the non-profit Unity Care Group, works with teens who have turned 18 and have no place to go as part of the Transitional Housing Program.
Unity Care Group provides a safe and productive environment and encourages the youths it serves to find jobs. Unity Care Group works many of the Bay Area's foster care teens and teaches them crucial living skills, including how to rent an apartment, the consequences of sex and how to find a satisfying job.
Though there is a screening process that youths must go through, if Unity can't help, "we link them to the right resource," Cabrera said. The program is a major step for teens, Cabrera said, because teens "like that feel of comfortability, but lack support and a lot don't have family."
The 21-year-old former foster teen said foster care is a good idea, but it needs improvement.
"They don't realize they're taking a little kid to a strange place," she said. "It's scary. You come from living one way, then go to complete strangers. The movements are too fast and all they say is 'You're going to stay over there now.' "
She realizes it is hard to find people willing to sacrifice a room in their house and share their belongings. But all it would take to make foster care children and teens happy, she said, is "attention, time and dedication."
"It would mean the world to them when they get older," she said.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: California Connected by 25 is hosting an informational event July 14 from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 2125 Canoas Garden Ave., Suite 100, San Jose. For more information, call (408) 975-5700.