Study Sees Benefit of Aiding Foster Children Past 18

CHICAGO —  Young people who leave the foster care system at age 18 are much likelier to be unemployed and not in school than those who continue to receive state support into early adulthood, researchers at the University of Chicago say.

The findings, released Thursday, are part of a multiple-year study conducted at the Chapin Hall Center for Children, a policy research organization at the university.

The results are based on interviews with more than 600 foster children from Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa.

They were interviewed at ages 17 and 18 -- when many left the system -- and again more recently at 19.

Among other things, researchers found that those who left the system were 50% likelier to be without work and not in school than young adults who remained in the system.

They also found that about 14% of young adults who left the system at age 18 said they had been homeless at some point.

And about 12% said they didn’t have enough to eat, compared with less than 4% of those who remained supervised by the state.

Those who left the system also were much likelier to be pregnant, in jail and struggling to pay for such basic items as rent.

“The challenges this group faces are troubling and suggest we’re not doing enough to help,” said Mark Courtney, the study’s lead author and director at the Chapin Hall Center for Children.

Of the three states in the study, Illinois is the only one that provides support services after age 18 -- the time when the federal government ends its financial support for young people in the foster care system.

In Illinois and the small number of other states that allow young adults to stay in the system, support often means providing supervision while the young person is living in a dorm or other independent housing, Courtney said.

He and his colleagues are calling for Congress to provide more funding to states so they can help foster children make a successful transition into adulthood.

But some child advocates say the focus should be on fixing a system that often finds young people being shifted from home to home.

“Sadly, a lot of the current attention seems designed more to make us feel better about what we’ve done to these children by lulling us into thinking the damage can be easily undone,” Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, said in a statement.

Carol Emig, executive director of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, agrees that the system needs an overhaul.

But, she said, the findings of the University of Chicago study were still important.

“It isn’t an either-or sort of thing,” said Emig, whose organization works to lessen the likelihood that young people would remain in foster care for years.

She noted that about 20,000 young people left state systems each year.

“These kids are really vulnerable. And now we expect them to go out on their own and be independent, contributing citizens,” Emig said. “That’s unjust.”

The University of Chicago researchers plan to interview the young people involved in the study a third time when they turn 21.

The study was funded by the three states involved and the William T. Grant Foundation.