Receipt of help acquiring life skills and predictors of help receipt among current and former foster youth

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Abstract

US law has long recognized the need to help prepare foster youth for the transition to adulthood and states receive funds specifically intended to provide their foster youth with independent living services. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to whether foster youth in fact receive the services states are supposed to provide using federal funds. This study uses data from the Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth to describe the kinds of help foster youth receive in making the transition to adulthood and the factors associated with help receipt. Study findings call for a redoubling of efforts to provide foster youth with the assistance called for in federal law, provide support for the extension of foster care through age 21 in the interest of ensuring that such assistance is provided, highlight the need to involve foster parents more actively in providing youth with life skills training, and call into question whether current efforts to assist foster youth in acquiring independent living skills are well targeted.

Highlights

► Foster youth do not appear to be receiving many forms of help that are called for in federal law. ► Over one-third did not receive help they would have liked to have received. ► System factors play a stronger role than individual indicators of need in help receipt. ► Independent living services should be more widely available and better targeted.

Introduction

US law has recognized the need to help prepare foster youth for the transition to adulthood since Title IV-E of the Social Security Act was amended in 1986 to create the Independent Living Program. States received funds specifically intended to provide their foster youth with independent living services. This federal support for foster youth making the transition to adulthood was enhanced in 1999 with the creation of the John Chafee Foster Care Independence Program. That legislation increased funding to $140 million per year, expanded the age range deemed eligible for services, funded for a broader range of purposes (e.g., room and board), and granted states the option of extending Medicaid coverage for youth who age out of foster care until age 21. Amendments to the law added funding for vouchers for post-secondary education and training to the range of federally-funded services and supports potentially available to current and former foster youth making the transition to adulthood.

More recently, there has been a fundamental shift toward greater federal responsibility for supporting foster youth during the transition to adulthood (Courtney, 2009). The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 amended Title IV-E to extend the age of eligibility from 18 to 21. States are now able to claim federal reimbursement for the costs of foster care maintenance payments made on behalf of Title IV-E eligible foster youth until they are 21 years old. To qualify for reimbursement, Title-IV E eligible foster youth age 18 and older must be either completing high school or an equivalent program; enrolled in postsecondary or vocational school; participating in a program or activity designed to promote or remove barriers to employment; employed for at least 80 h per month; or incapable of doing any of these activities due to a medical condition. They can be living independently in a supervised setting as well as placed in a foster home or group care setting, but the protections afforded to foster children under age 18 (e.g., judicial or administrative case review every 6 months) still apply. State child welfare agencies are also required to help young people develop a youth-directed transition plan during the 90 days immediately before they exit care. The Fostering Connections Act does not reduce states' obligations to provide independent living services to foster youth; the provisions of the Chafee Program, including funding for independent living services, remain in effect.

While concern has been raised about the effectiveness of independent living services in improving outcomes for foster youth making the transition to adulthood (Montgomery et al., 2006, United States General Accounting Office, November 1999), little attention has been paid to whether foster youth in fact receive the services states are supposed to provide using Chafee Program funds. While the federal government has surveyed state child welfare administrators to ask them what kinds of services their state provides and approximately how many eligible youth receive services, no reliable data have been regularly collected at the state or national level on provision of independent living services (United States Government Accountability Office, 2004).1 The surveys of state program managers indicate that many gaps in services exist, but provide no detail regarding who is not being served (US GAO, 2004).

This study attempts to fill an important gap in knowledge about provision of independent living services to current and former foster youth by using information gathered from interviews with a representative sample of foster youth making the transition to adulthood in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Relying on answers to questions about whether the young people participating in the study have received various kinds of help, we find that foster youth report receiving few of the kinds of help that the Chafee Program is intended to fund between ages 18 and 21. Moreover, our findings suggest that child welfare system-related factors likely play more of a role than the individual needs of foster youth in driving service provision.

Section snippets

Methods

The Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth (Midwest Study) is a prospective study following 732 youth in their transitions out of care. The study collects information about the following domains: demographics; out-of-home care placements; living arrangements; relationships with the family of origin; social support; receipt of independent living services; education; employment; economic hardships; receipt of government benefits; health and mental health status and

Results

For the sake of brevity, significant relationships between predictors and ILS receipt will be reported and interpreted for total ILS where findings were comparable across domain-specific models. Full results of the estimated odds ratios are included in Table 3, Table 4; complete tables including betas and standard errors are available upon request from the authors.

Study limitations

Interpretation of study findings should be done in the context of the study's limitations. First, the characteristics of the study sample have implications for the external validity of study findings. The youth participating in the study come from three Midwestern states and foster youths' receipt of services in other places may differ from the experiences of the study participants. Also, the sample selection criteria meant that some youth who are eligible to receive independent living services

Discussion

Several fairly consistent findings about foster youths' receipt of help during the transition to adulthood emerge from this study. Perhaps the most striking finding is that foster youth in transition do not appear to be receiving many forms of help that are called for in federal legislation providing for funding of independent living services. As Table 2a, Table 2b make clear, on average youth report receiving few of the types of help they were asked about and are eligible for under federal

References (16)

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