Beyond The Foster Care System: The Future for Teens

Conclusion

Consensus is growing that the foster care system needs to be rethought for teens. Our journey with youth in foster care led us to conclude that foster care for teens should have different goals, strategies, and structures than foster care for younger children. Adolescents in foster care have needs and priorities different from small children. In addition to safety and efforts at family reunification, teens in care must be prepared for adulthood. This vital objective requires a different kind of system than child welfare currently offers. Many professionals recognize the need to rethink the objectives of foster care for teens in light of the need to prepare them for independence. Providing for teens in foster care is a process that the system must examine continuously and renew. This process requires continuing accountability. We have learned that a good approach or an effective solution today will most certainly need to be reviewed, modified, and even abandoned as the needs of teens and society change. Therefore we not only need a different current approach to foster care for teens, but a system that is more adaptable to economic and social changes in society. The philosophy and program we have developed through our work at Youth Advocacy Center has roots in the American ideal. Every child, regardless of his or her background, must receive the necessary preparation to achieve their maximum potential and become a successful participating citizen . By that we mean that these future adults are citizens not just by having 217 Conclusion a job and paying taxes, but also by contributing to the community, achieving some sense of personal satisfaction, and fulfilling their potential as well as meeting their responsibilities to their families. We must make it possible for every teen in foster care to have substantiated hope that no matter how rough their beginnings, how dysfunctional or disrupted their family life, how poor their neighborhood, and how inadequate their early education was, they can improve their lives. We need to give them a vision of a hopeful future and provide them with some essential skills and understandings to become successful adults. We must establish a new system of preparing these teens for participating citizenship, and the foundation of it must stem from higher expectations for what teens in foster care can achieve. We ought to instill in every teen an expectation that he or she can make it—which should mean more than merely struggling on a subsistence level. For the past two decades an underlying assumption in the foster care system has been low expectations: if a teen gets a fast food job, then this is viewed as a grand success and perhaps final attainment of a lifelong career. This view is not only unsatisfactory but also insulting to young people in care. If we set higher expectations, then many teens will rise to meet them; the bar will be raised for all. Although there may be many ways to establish and convey higher expectations , we propose that a greater focus on education for teens in foster care is a logical and important start. We could begin by acknowledging that foster care teens indeed have suffered traumas in the past, and that perhaps making their families whole or finding them all new permanent families simply cannot be the exclusive objective of foster care. At the same time, we could acknowledge that, despite their past ordeals, foster care teens have intellectual abilities, strengths, and desires to succeed, and they deserve to be educated to the highest degree possible. Imagine if preparing these teens for education and careers was the system’s main priority, rather than treating them as dysfunctional and traumatized victims who require continuing intervention for their incapacities. This new emphasis would create a different attitude among caretakers and policy makers about teens’ performance in school and after-school programs. Beyond the Foster Care System 218 Therefore, one possible goal is to expect that some large percentage of teens, if not all teens, should graduate college or complete advanced vocational training, and the system should expect that all are given opportunities to prepare for meaningful careers. The natural intellectual talent is present; it is up to us to find ways to make college education and advanced training a reality. Our experiences demonstrate that many teens in the system could and should prepare to attend four-year colleges. For students not interested in a four...