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Speakers at Youth Policy Forum in Iowa Emphasize Family Relationships
Des Moines, Iowa – For most youth in foster care, making a successful transition to adulthood will require both adequate preparation in life skills and the support of enduring lifelong relationships.
Equipping youth with independent living skills, while difficult, is the easy part. Helping them develop lifelong relationships – what the child welfare system refers to as "permanency" – is the bigger challenge. Child welfare systems must adopt new strategies and enlist new partners to ensure that no youth ages out of care on his own. That was the message at a day-long youth policy forum in Des Moines on October 24 by the Iowa Collaboration for Youth Development and the Iowa Department of Human Services.
The forum drew about 150 caseworkers, policymakers, foster parents, and children's advocates from Iowa. The Youth Policy Institute of Iowa, which administers the Opportunity Passport™ in Iowa, facilitated the forum, titled "Permanence and Preparation: Connections = Success." Iowa lieutenant governor Sally Pederson praised the Iowa Department of Human Services for developing a plan to permit some youth to voluntarily remain in foster care until age 21. The proposal would extend the foster-care safety net by three years for foster youth who sign a self-sufficiency plan and work or attend school, GED preparation, or work-training programs. The Iowa legislature likely will consider the proposal in its next session, beginning in January. About 550 Iowa youth age out of foster care each year, usually at 18. Those who choose to stay in foster care until age 21 would be assured of health insurance, housing, and continued adult support. DHS Director Kevin Concannon said extending the age of eligibility was a matter of justice. "We ought to do for the young people for whom the state is the parent what we are willing to do for our own children after they turn 18," he said.
New Strategies Needed
Keynote speaker Martha Shirk used the experiences of several youth profiled in her book, On Their Own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System, to demonstrate how foster care's "culture of impermanency" contributes to the difficulty that some youth experience in forging deep, lasting relationships. Shirk co-authored the book with Gary Stangler, executive director of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative. Shirk noted that the youth in On Their Own who have had the most difficulty moving into adulthood had no significant relationships with adults when they aged out of care at 18. She urged that child-welfare systems become more aggressive in helping children in foster care strengthen existing family ties or forge new bonds with adults who will make lifelong commitments to them. Shirk also urged child-welfare workers to make it clear that permanency means lifelong family or family-type relationships, not peer relationships or relationships with paid staff members. "Every youth who is likely to age out of foster care needs the child welfare system to help him build relationships with caring and competent adults whom he can call upon when he needs help," she noted, "relationships with adults who will be there for him because they care, not because they're being paid to care."
Permanency: Family for Life
Lauren L. Frey, project manager at the Casey Center for Effective Child Welfare Practice, also called for strengthening a child's ties to his biological family, noting that it could prevent some entries into foster care. "We need to think more creatively and ask more questions before we invite a stranger into a child's life," she said. Mary Nelson, chief of the DHS Division of Developmental and Protective Services, said that one of the department's goals is that "no child leaves foster care without a permanent family." To accomplish that, the department is seeking permission from the federal government to use federal foster-care funds to provide some children with wrap-around services in their own homes and to help others enter subsidized guardianship arrangements. Kelli Malone, of Four Oaks, Inc., a non-profit child welfare and juvenile justice agency, spoke about the promise of child-specific recruitment of adoptive families for older youth. Other possible strategies include reinstating his parents' rights or reconnecting him with a foster family with whom he had a strong bond.
"Someone Who Cares"
A panel of young people who aged out of care in Iowa, along with an adult supporter, talked about permanency in their lives. Josiah Service, 19, a University of Iowa sophomore, said he viewed his foster family as his permanent family, describing them as "people that love and care about me unconditionally. . . I couldn't tell you where I'd be sleeping or if I would even have a roof over my head without their love and support." Andrew Tunney, 24 of Red Oak, credited a foster family and Duane Eberly. a staff member at Quakerdale, a residential facility, with providing him with a sense of belonging. "Duane told me he would always be there for me, and through his actions, I've seen that," Tunney said. "And being in a foster family those last few years of high school gave me stability and the experience of a family. My daughter is their granddaughter." Ted Tran, 33, of Des Moines, came into foster care at age 9 as a refugee from Vietnam. He landed in a loving family with foster parents "who treated me like one of their own sons. Every thing their kids got, I got." In the afternoon, participants divided into three groups to discuss new strategies. The sessions were facilitated by Frey, Dorothy Ansell, of the National Resource Center for Youth Development, and Joan Morse, of the National Resource Center for Family-Center Practice and Permanency Planning. Those strategies will be evaluated by the Department of Human Services for possible adoption. Ansell summed up the consensus of the day's speakers: "No young person should be leaving foster care by themselves. They should be walking out the door with someone who cares about them."
