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Ageing out of foster care
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On Their Own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care
System
by Martha Shirk
Book description:
For most young people, crossing the threshold from adolescence into adulthood is
an angst-filled journey that can take years to complete, and requires the
guidance and support of caring adults. But for some children, there is a
deadline past which no guidance, support or supervision is available. Each year,
as many as 25,000 teenagers "age out" of foster care, usually when they turn
eighteen. For most of their lives, a government agency had made every important
decision for them. Suddenly, they are entirely alone, with no one to count on.
What does it mean to be eighteen and on your own, without the family support and
personal connections that most young people rely on? For many youth raised in
foster care, it means largely unhappy endings, including sudden homelessness,
unemployment, dead-end jobs, loneliness and despair. 'On Their Own' tells the
compelling stories of ten young people whose lives are full of promise, but who
face economic and social barriers stemming from the disruptions of foster care.
For other youth, proper preparation for adulthood and support from caring adults
helps them develop the resiliency and skills needed for success.
As President Jimmy Carter writes in his Foreword: "The question we should ask
ourselves is this: if we willingly give our own children the benefit of our
support as they struggle to become independent, productive adults, why do we
tolerate the abrupt withdrawal of support for youth who are aging out of care?" |
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Meeting the Challenge?: Young People Leaving Care in Northern Ireland
by John Pinkerton, Ross McCrea
Synopsis:
Preparation for leaving care and aftercare support have become increasingly
important areas of interest for child care practitioners, policy makers and
researchers within the UK. In addition to the practice imperatives for this
development there is now a clear legal mandate for work in this area. The
Northern Ireland study reported in this book has a contribution to make on both
these fronts. Working in close relationship with English research, both
theoretical material and empirical findings are explored. Key concepts relating
to adolescence, child care careers and youth transition are integrated to
provide a firm theoretical underpinning to a study of young people leaving state
care in Northern Ireland. The study provides detailed information on an entire
cohort of young people leaving state care – their personal characteristics, the
main features of their care careers, their experience of leaving, aftercare
support and their coping up to two years into aftercare. Through combining the
theoretical and empirical material the book's conclusion details the manner in
which a high quality leaving care service as a variation on the theme of how
best to meet the general challenge of youth transitions in contemporary Britain.
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Foster Care Odyssey: A Black Girl's Story
by Theresa Cameron
Book Review:
From Publishers Weekly
Left as an infant with Catholic Charities in 1950s Buffalo, N.Y., Theresa
Cameron was doomed to spend her childhood in foster homes because her mother
never signed the final adoption papers. "Very little has been written to convey
what children experience and how they feel living among strangers," notes
Cameron, now a Harvard-trained urban planner and designer, in her introduction
to Foster Care Odyssey: A Black Girl's Story and even less about that of black
children. Her ability to clearheadedly evaluate the morass of negative feelings
without lapsing into sentimentality is one of the most affecting aspects of this
memoir, which covers 19 years in foster care.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. |
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ORPHANS OF THE LIVING : STORIES OF AMERICAS CHILDREN IN FOSTER
CARE
by Jennifer Toth
Book review:
From Publishers Weekly
The substitute, or foster, child-care system does more harm than good, the
author was told by a number of caseworkers and social workers she interviewed
for this report. And according to Toth (The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels
Beneath New York City), a "code of silence" keeps most workers in the system
from discussing their cases. According to Toth, 40% of the half-million children
in the foster-care system eventually will wind up on welfare rolls or in prison
because of the lack of loving adults in their lives. Toth spent two years
researching systems in North Carolina, Chicago and Los Angeles responsible for
providing parenting for children whose parents cannot, or will not, care for
them. In this eloquent and harrowing study, she focuses on five children who
grew up in substitute care, describing the original dysfunctional families the
children came from as well as the ways that foster care made things worse for
them. Angel was sexually abused by, and eventually married and had children (now
in foster care) with her 69-year-old foster father. The inappropriate
institutions in which Bryan was placed led to juvenile detention and
incarceration. Although Jamie has become a self-sufficient college student, she
hasn't overcome her mother's desertion. Toth has written an excellent expose of
a system that hurts those it is charged to help.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Preparing Adolescents for Life After Foster Care: The Central Role of Foster
Parents
by Anthony N. Maluccio, Robin Krieger, Barbara A. Pine
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With No Direction Home : Homeless Youth on the Road
and In the Streets (Case Studies on Contemporary Social Issues)
by Marni Finkelstein
Book description:
This book gives voice to the homeless youth and is rich with material on their
everyday lives, including living conditions and street experiences. The case
study's strength lies in its ethnographic methodology, which combines direct
observations and qualitative interviews. Ethnography is particularly important
in describing populations and social environments that are hidden from normal
observation, and is indispensable when exploring emerging phenomena, such as the
formative fictive kin networks among street youth, or new ways of looking at
drug addiction. Finkelstein discusses her own experiences with the street kids,
including how she was able to develop a rapport within the "street scene."
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Our Runaway and Homeless Youth : A Guide to
Understanding
by Natasha Slesnick
Book description:
The stories of four among hundreds of runaway youths treated in Slesnick's
program illustrate points in this volume, which offers a summary of the
information known about runaway and homeless children and teenagers. In addition
to describing the breadth of this problem, this book explains different types of
runaway and homeless youths and why they leave home by choice or are asked to
leave. Slesnick also explains some of the factors common to these children and
their families, as well as what happens to the youths when they leave home.
Direction and support are provided for parents from this clinical psychologist,
who notes that there are few resources and programs across the nation designed
specifically to help families with runaway youths. |
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Preparing Foster Youths for Adult Living:
Proceedings of an Invitational Research Conference
by Edmund V. Mech, Joan R. Rycraft, Child Welfare League of
America, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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