Teens Who Age Out of Foster Care
Foster teens are a unique group of teens that did not get adopted while in the foster system. They were raised by the foster care system or foster parents instead of biological or adoptive parents. Unlike reunited or adopted teens, they’re simply released from the foster care system onto the street with little or no life skills. Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the way we release prisoners from jail?
These teens are not deprived of an education and they certainly may bond with the foster family they live with before they’re cut off from the foster care system, but what they don’t have is the sense of a home base, or safety net that allows them to wonder and think about what they might want to do with their lives. It removes their sense of connection with someone to help ground them and mentor them through young adulthood where still so much maturing occurs. If you think of where you might have been emotionally and mentally when you graduated college it’s hard to imagine that someone thinks this person is ready to make it on their own. We know that the teen brain really continues to mature until the age of twenty-six, but this information is new and the foster care system has not yet caught up, the healthcare system is still struggling to catch up.
These teens may or may not have received the mentorship and proper life skills training required to transition to adulthood. This overwhelming feeling of being on their own when they may not be emotionally or mentally ready causes disasters in the way of feelings of helplessness, desperation along with depression and other mental health disorders like anxiety.
These teens like a prisoner who has served their time are released to the outside world with more or less the possessions with which they walked into the foster care system. This is an incredibly anxious time and when they have nowhere to go they stand on the street until something happens. There is a growing number of homeless foster teens about 20, 000 released each year. Desperate teens make primitive decisions: stealing, prostitution, substance use, etc. These aren’t the teens that you want wasting away in your town.
If you know of a teen or a local foster care home that has teens and you are in a position to mentor or inspire these youth, please extend a hand. If the community does not recognize that these youth are not disposable, we will lose our future to the street and all that is required to survive there or forget you live there.
Other ways to help:
The Teen Project
Volunteer Opportunities
Foster Care Youth United
National Resource Center for Youth Services
Child Welfare League of America
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