Research Paper: Challenges with Younger Youth Aging Out of Foster Care
Introduction
Although well intentioned, the foster care system often places youth in a precarious position once they age out of the program. Evidence suggest that foster care youth often experience trouble securing stable housing, difficulty in juggling work and school responsibilities, and overall healthy development. These elements also harm foster care youth in their ability to properly matriculate into society. Other issues related to the foster care system itself, along with social workers and practitioners also presents foster care application issues. Here practitioners are often ill-equipped to handle the overall transition of adolescents. Likewise, they may have a lack of experience to properly ascertain and help foster care youth to matriculate into adulthood. These elements all coalescence into an adverse circumstance in which many foster kids are subjected to harsh conditions immediately after they leave foster care. In addition to the above elements, complexities related to the individuals that cared for the foster child to begin with, also can contribute to adverse circumstances. Here, the beliefs, personality and living environment can all have an adverse impact on the youth (ACF, 2017).
Research has shown the adolescents are the most malleable during their early teenage years. Here, parents, communities, peers, and social media can have a direct impact on how the foster care youth performs in life (Bauman, 2006). As the brain is still functioning, stimuli form multiple sources can have an impact on the perceptions and thought processes of the foster care youth. Social media only exacerbates these circumstances as it helps to contribute to silos, inappropriate perceptions of what is success, and even adverse dialogue to others. Due to these influences, it is the contention of this paper that foster care youth are adversely impacted by the current system. In addition, older youth, who have experience and proper brain development fair exponentially better than their younger counterparts. This ultimately helps to provide a template to determine which youths will be successful as they transfer out of foster care and which youths will be unsuccessful.
From review of the research there appears to be a common thread that unites the successful foster care students from the unsuccessful (Benach, 2014). These threads often coalesce to form a standard philosophy that can be adapted to suit the individual needs for foster care participants. First, the research has shown that successful foster care students are able to handle and manage multiple tasks at one time (Bender, 2015). Many of the successful foster care students were able to handle both school and work as a means to creating a stable lifestyle. More detail on this research will be provided in subsequent sections Likewise it is important for the foster care parents to provide an inclusive and engaging environment designed to help manifest the childs innate abilities (Berzin, 2011). Here, the environment is important as it provides as stable environment in which learning and development can occur. The issue here is that many young individuals in foster care often do not see this education experience, particularly when compared the older foster care participants who are further along in their brain development. Finally, the social workers themselves along with their overall employment environment can contribute to an adverse circumstance for both foster care students and those who elect to support them. Each of these items will be discussed in detail within the subsequent pages that follow. In each instance, care will be taken to provide both sides of the prevailing research in order for the reader to make a proper determination as to the merit of each argument (Blome,...
…symptoms, avoidant symptoms, and hyper-arousal. This can not only inhibit the well being of the worker, but also cause their work to be heavily biased and defeating to the clients they are attempting to help. According to McCann and Pearlman, this ultimately contributes to compassion fatigue and negative emotional reactions. It is therefore important for foster care organizations to development a trauma-informed organization that can help alleviate many of the stressors in the day to day operations. This ultimately can adversely impact youth aging out of foster care as they no longer have the services needed to help them transition. In certain instances, the organization they contact may have an inability to administer services that are required given the prevailing circumstances. Look of staffing, burnout, PTSD, and other employment elements can all impact the manner in which services are rendered. This can have both a psychological and a personal impact on the individual. From a psychological perspective, the individual may believe the system does not care for them in the manner they originally though cause anger and resentment. From a personal level the inability to administer timely and applicable help can adversely impact the youths transition into adulthood (Adams, 2018).In conclusion, there are many challenges youth face when aging out of foster care First, the issues related to risk factor play a large role in homelessness. These risk factors include prior legal trouble, teen pregnancy, the number of prior foster families, and youths success in school. These factors are then combined with other element discussed above which include the lack of foster families, an adversarial relationship with foster families, and a bad organization culture. All of these items eventually coalesce to form an environment which inhibits the transition of youth out of foster care. It is these circumstances that will need…
References
1. ACF (2017). Number of Children in Foster Care Continues to Increase. Administration for Children and Families. Washington, DC: Children’s Bureau.
2. ACF (2019). The AFCARS Report #26. Administration for Children and Families. Washington, DC: Children’s Bureau. Retrieved from: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/ default/files/cb/afcarsreport26.pdf.
3. Adams, E., Hassett, A., & Lumsden, V. (2018). What do we know about the impact of stress on foster carers and contributing factors? Adoption & Fostering, 42(4), 338–353.
4. Ahn, H., Greeno, E. J., Bright, C. L., Hartzel, S., & Reiman, S. (2017). A survival analysis of the length of foster parenting duration and implications for recruitment5. Bauman, L., Silver, E., & Stein, R. (2006). Cumulative social disadvantage and child health. Pediatrics, 117(4), 1321–1328. Retrieved from http://www.pediatricsdigest. mobi/content/117/4/1321.short.
6. Benach, J., Vives, A., Amable, M., Vanroelen, C., Tarafa, G., & Muntaner, C. (2014). Precarious employment: Understanding an emerging social determinant of health. Annual Review of Public Health, 35, 229–253. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurevpublhealth-032013-182500.
7. Bender, K., Yang, J., Ferguson, K., & Thompson, S. (2015). Experiences and needs of homeless youth with a history of foster care. Children and Youth Services Review, 55(August), 222–231. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.06.007.
8. Berzin, S. C., Rhodes, A. M., & Curtis, M.a. (2011). Housing experiences of former foster youth: How do they fare in comparison to other youth? Children and Youth Services Review, 33(11), 2119–2126. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.06.018.
9. Blome, W. W. (1997). What happens to foster kids: Educational experiences of a random sample of foster care youth and a matched group of non-foster youth. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 14(1), 41–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A.
10. Brown, A., Courtney, M. E., & McMillen, J. C. (2015). Behavioral health needs and service use among those who've aged-out of foster care. Children and Youth Services Review, 58, 163–169. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.09.020.
11. Osgood, D. W., Foster, E. M., & Courtney, M. E. (2010). Vulnerable populations and the transition to adulthood. The Future of Children, 20(1), 209–229. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1353/foc.0.0047.
12. Padgett, D. K. (2006). Housing first services for people who are homeless with co-occurring serious mental illness and substance abuse. Research on Social Work Practice, 16, 74–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049731505282593.
13. Pecora, P. J., Kessler, R. C., O'Brien, K., White, C. R., Williams, J., Hiripi, E., ... Herrick, M. A. (2006). Educational and employment outcomes of adults formerly placed in foster care: Results from the northwest foster care alumni study. Children and Youth Service2
Foster care is a harsh reality for many children in our society. After reading Chapter 15, answer the following questions: How is the effectiveness of Foster Care often inhibited? At Coachella Valley California, three factors prohibit the effectiveness of foster care: communities, children, and families. Communities: the families of children placed in foster care live in an environment characterized by structural deficiencies and poverty, or basic needs believed to characterize stable communities. Often,
Foster Care Review scenario: •A recent policy implemented Anytown's Department Job Family Services issue child endangerment. Any household documented offense domestic violence, child abuse, drug alcohol related offenses committed mother, father, guardian, / caregiver, result removal child children home Anytown's Department Job Family Services On the surface, a 'zero tolerance' policy regarding domestic abuse and drug abuse for children might seem warranted. After all, it is better to be 'safe than sorry' regarding
2). Barber and Delfabbro report that research has determined that children with physical and mental disabilities fare better in institutional settings, where the continuity in care-to-need structure is in place and the consistency in structured routine seems to better serve the individual (p. 7). Thus, best practice in foster care should begin with a careful assessment of each child's suitability for placement. Where the child suffers from serious emotional or behavioural
Foster Care Community Assessment: Foster Care Youth Needs What is a community assessment? A community assessment is a process by which a collaborative partnership gathers information on the current strengths, concerns, needs, and conditions of children, families, and the community. The information comes from many sources -- especially parents and family members -- and is elicited by many techniques, including interviews, focus groups, and scanning demographic data collected by local agencies. Because
(2006). Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 28, 1459-1481. The study in this research piece evaluated the adult education, employment and financial successes (or failures) of 659 adults (20 to 33 years of age) who had gone through intermediate and long-term foster care stays in their youth. These kinds of studies are important for present and future agencies because a fuller understanding of shortcomings -- and strengths -- in policy
The authors examined the outcomes of children who were kept with their siblings and those who were separated from their siblings and compared those with a stable arrangement from ones who were initially placed together and later separated. Partial support was found for the policy of keeping siblings together in foster care; the results suggest that the policy is positive for a unique subset of siblings, or those who
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now