Aging out of foster care

I don't know anything about the foster care, but I know that around here it is very very easy to get a scholarship/free tuition to the community college. Generally you just have to have decent grades and sometimes you have to do some community service.

He'd need to go to a college in the University of New Hampshire system. This includes all the local technical colleges. State pays tuition and board, he has to pay for food. Usually he can get a student job for this. Basically there's no real cost to the State, which is probably why they do it. It's also a very little known program, but very few kids age out of foster care and enter college.

No other benefits. He can live with whoever wants him.

Beyond this, he might be able to get other scholarships and tuition assistance, and student loans. The one client who I had that did this received several scholarships and ended up with money in her pocket by the end of it all.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Prior to recent changes in health care law, how much coverage was available to most kids when they turned 18?

Transition planning takes place prior to turning 18. The child will hopefully develop some work experience and savings plan.

Kids who come out of foster care in good shape are the exception, not the rule. Some connect with their foster parents, some don't. Some move right back in with mommy as soon as they turn 18. Some will never look for their natural parents.

Quite honestly I never kept tracks of the kids I represented. Good kids tended to require a lot less work so I tended to forget them even faster then the bad ones. I liked the kids, but most of them were so hopeless that you didn't want to know their future.

Understand that by the time a kid has an attorney appointed to represent them, the kid was deep into crap, even if it wasn't of the kid's making.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

It's a sad world, but understand to end up in the foster care system means no grandparents or siblings of the parents willing to step forward. Nor do the parents have any friends who are willing to step forward. Foster care is the last resort.

But the results coming out of foster care are all over the place. I know a physician who is out of foster care. He got lucky in high school and one of the science teachers he had really worked with him. I had several kids in foster care who ended up in state prison.

I had one female, who both the case worker and I thought would make it. Went to UNH, was on the Dean's List, and doing good. Then she had a touch of the stupids when she was 20, engaged in criminally reckless behavior, and that was that. Nice girl, not really criminal, just some stupid behavior that most teens are capable of, and some bad luck and no safety net.

But done right, an author can make their foster child into anything they want. Because it does happen. They need to make a connection with an adult, and the adult has to have the ability to hang in there. The kid will have problems with appropriate relationships, especially in the area of sexual relationships. Substance abuse is likely to be a concern. (The MD I know avoids all alcohol -- he looked at his family history and rejected the whole idea.) Mental health issues are the norm.

One of the things that is so depressing is you put a kid in a new school. Fresh start. Yeah, they find all the losers in the new school and it's back to the status quo. But that's who they're comfortable with.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

It's not uncommon for kids to be turned out of foster care with next to no support. The money from the state/government dries up, so the parents are suddenly faced with a financial burden they don't want/can't afford. The kid might get set up with accommodation but not the kind of support they need to make a success of independence. Add to that, in the UK there's a ridiculous loop-hole in the mental health services most of these kids would need: Child & Adolescent services stop at 16, Adult services don't start till 18. It can be next to impossible to get the right support in that limbo, a lot of people fall through the cracks.

Saying that, there are reasons a family might have wanted to adopt the child but were unable to (complications with natural parents), which would make them more likely to continue to support the kid through college. Or just be nice people who get that they took on a human being, not a rental agreement they do exist.

One of the kiddos I worked with aged out and refused to sign papers to commit to further treatment. They had no family. Staff had no alternative other than to drive her to a homeless shelter and drop her off, which they did.

I have yet to meet a foster family that didn't have multiple kids. When one child dropped out of the family for any reason, the family just picked up another one. That doesn't mean a lasting attachment cannot happen, but I have never seen this. If the kid is 18, and the family wants them to visit, no one can stop them. Everyone's legal adults at this point, and can do what they wish.

In Kentucky, kids who age out of the system do get some benefits. State kids get tuition. they can get help with housing, including group housing where an adult checks in with them. They can also recommit to stay in the system, but that means in a residential placement, not in foster care. The state won't pay people to take care of kids over 18.

I do have a question. If your family is that attached to the child, why didn't they adopt them? To be in state's care, the biological parents would have had to terminate parental rights. My mother's stepparents fostered her for a couple of years and then adopted her at age 13.

I am going to be entirely unhelpful here. This doesn't answer any of your questions at all. But have you read The Language of Flowers (Vanessa Diffenbaugh)? It's about a girl who just aged out of foster good. I thought it was a great read

dascmom said:

Wow. This is a very sad situation for foster children.

I guess in fiction you can make things turn out how you want them to, but the reality seems quite grim. And for my novel to be realistic, I know I can't stretch it too much, but I at least want to know what is legally available to him.

Thanks, as always, Jim . You seem to have the answers to many of my questions. Thanks as well, Melindamusil.

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The support for kids aging out of the system varies widely from state to state. in Illinois, foster kids can get benefits and job training and other support up to the age of 21.

Also, the rules change every time a new budget is passed, it seems!

Don't forget that there are other resources available to a kid who has the ability to find them, or an advocate who can help. Many religious organizations and community based organizations have programs to help underserved populations, and there are foundation scholarships etc. but you need to know how to find them, and how to navigate the process, which is another barrier for many foster kids.

He had a very positive experience with his foster family-could he continue living with this family on college breaks?

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Since I haven't seen as much addressing this... yes. There are some foster families that continue to provide emotional (not necessarily financial) support to kids who age out of the system. I can think of a couple foster parents I know (they specialized in teens and generally fostered them over the course of years) who continued to provide them a safe space to return to after they turned 18.

Assuming your character is living in a dorm situation, he will probably only leave when the dorm closes for extended holidays (so... sticking around for fall break, Thanksgiving break, spring break, etc.) or be invited home with a friend/roommate for the shorter breaks (it's common for local kids to look out for people whose families are too far away to visit for short breaks). But unless he gets a 12-month lease off-campus (which is usually more expensive and doesn't sound like it would work with the programs Jim is describing) there are going to be periods of time where the dorms are closed and the student *has* to move out. Winter break is the big one. Also, the short periods of time between the end of the spring semester and the start of summer sessions, as well as the end of the summer sessions and the start of the fall semester. Those are the times when a former foster family giving the kid even crash space on a couch would make a heck of a difference.

You might want to search "independent living programs AND foster care." Maybe New Hampshire has such a program.

New Hampshire thought about an independent living program ten or more years ago. But no money and not much interest.

We do have an Easter Seals program that works at developing independent living skills at age 17. Work is done on things like preparing for the GED, finding an apartment, learning basic skills like laundry and cooking. Easter Seals also provides some support to 18 - 20 year olds if you're willing to live in Manchester or Nashua. There are some local churches that run ad hoc programs.

Years ago New Hampshire had a governor who not only wanted to have the National Guard to have nuclear weapons (probably to deal with the protesters at the Seabrook Nuclear Plant), but he developed the pledge -- "No new taxes." Since then, everybody in state politics has to take the pledge. New Hampshire has no income tax (more or less) and no sales tax. For decades, New Hampshire was funded by horse racing at Rockingham Park. That money is gone now, and the state has no good revenue streams. Result is we don't fund a lot of things you'd expect a state in the Northeast to do.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe