Aging Out And Into Success

 Each year about 20,000 kids age out of the foster care system. Many of these kids struggle to become successful productive members of society. A "Successful productive member of society" may mean something different to each person. The fact is when these kids were followed up on a little over a year later, 36% had been homeless at some point, 30% were unemployed, 42% had become parents and 26% receiving public assistance. That's a really rough start to life for a lot of foster kids. There are several factors that come into play. Many of these kids have health problems or disorders, and 29% of these kids don't have health insurance. Many can't pay for medication that they've been prescribed to help them improve themselves or keep them on track. Not a whole lot of kids have support when they age out. They get down on themselves and stuck in rut with no one to push them. They don't think they can do better. Sometimes just making it day to day can be the idea of being successful.

 As a teenager if someone asked me what I was most scared of my response would be not being successful in life. Growing up I always had a fear of failure. I can remember this even before foster care. Looking back there are a couple different things I can contribute to that fear. First I have extreme anxiety. Even as a child I remember being afraid of being embarrassed. I always tried hard to not mess up so people wouldn't make fun of me. My parents played on this fear often telling me that I would not be able to make it in the world without them. They would show me bills, how much things cost, and let me know that without them I would fail. Of course this was their way of controlling me but it stuck with me. I knew becoming a successful adult would be hard even before I realized I would someday be a foster kid aging out of the foster care system.

 What can foster/ former foster kids do? The first thing foster kids aging out need to understand is they need to be motivated and want to be successful. There are several different things that can slow us down and this may sound harsh but I learned really quickly that as an adult, "life" doesn't care about what happened to you as a child. The light company doesn't take excuses for payment. As former foster kids we need to want to be successful and not just settle with the cards we are dealt. A wise person once told me that God will only meet us halfway. You need to work to better yourself to become a successful productive member of society. Drug and alcohol use, unprotected sex, and laziness are all things that should not be in your life. As a foster kid you've already had a hard enough life so why make having a successful future harder to obtain for yourself? There's always a place to place blame for the situation your in. If I couldn't place the blame on the government, the foster care system or society for my issues I could always go back to "well if I would have had better parents", but every time I open my eyes after placing blame I'm still in the situation. It's not about who’s at fault or how you got there. It's about getting where you need to be.

 What can those in the lives of foster kids do to help kids aging out become successful productive members of society? The first thing you can do is prepare foster kids for the realty they are about to face. Don’t go about it the way my parents did obviously, but kids need to know the realty a head of time to be prepared to face it. Don’t allow your kids to be lazy or complacent. That’s a bad habit to start and it carries over into adulthood. Most of the time foster kids aging out don’t have a stable adult to help them through the process. They will have to know how to cook, clean, manage money, and live entirely on their own. They also must be taught about the opportunities out there and pushed to take advantage of them. If all you know is just making it by day to day then you often forget that there is a future and should be a goal to work for.  A child has to be taught the bare necessities to live but they must be molded and pushed to be successful productive members of society.

7 Ways To Help Foster Kids

  Looking for a way to help kids in foster care but not interested in being a foster parent? Being a foster parent isn't for everyone. Here are 7 ways you can help kids in foster care.

1. Provide respite. Don't want to be a full time foster parent? You don't have to. You can provide respite care to help out. Respite care can be providing a break for foster families or doing emergency care. At my group home we had respite parents come by our home to help throughout the week. They would also stay one night a week during what we called "date night". This gave our house parents a night off to go spend some time away from the kids and have a break. If you choose to do emergency placement you may have a child or children from 24 hours to 30 days. This is important because your home may be the child’s first experience in foster care. Every foster kid that is old enough remembers their first night after being taken into foster care. You can have a positive impact on kids that really need it, that they will remember for a lifetime.

2. Become a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA). This is a great program if you’re looking to volunteer and really make an impact on a foster child's life. A CASA is assigned to a case to look out for the best interest of the child. They are not paid and have no ulterior motives for helping which I think is important to the foster kid. As a foster kid I realized that almost everyone that was "working for me" was getting paid to do what they do and it was their job to do it. How can I know that what your telling me to do is in my best interest if your getting paid to tell me it? CASA's can really impact the lives of foster kids and help them through the foster care system. It's a piece of mind knowing someone cares and is looking out for you. Find out more about CASA.

3. Be a mentor to a foster kid. As foster kids we've seen more than we should have. Sometimes we've seen more then most adults. Abuse, neglect, drug use, poverty just to name a few. It's sometime had to stay on the right path. A foster kid having a mentor can make a huge impact. Maybe even more than foster parents. I really looked up to my mentor. He was great to talk to and would help me with some of life's decisions or teenage problems. I stayed out of trouble because I didn't want to disappoint him. One bad decision can lead to horrible consequences. A foster kid that has someone to guide them and look up to is more likely to succeed now which will lead to success later in life.

4. Give a foster kid some work. Just like every other teenager when I hit 16 I wanted to drive. Couple problems though; I didn't have a car, money or a job. I had to buy a car, license and pay for insurance by myself and in my name. The solution? Get a job. Not that easy. Many people have wrong stereotypes of foster kids. They think of them as juvenile delinquents. They really just need a chance. I applied for my first job at really the only place to work in town, the local cafe. I put in my application and didn't hear anything back. I checked back and nothing. One morning I went in when the boss was there and asked about my application again. This time the customer at the register was the superintendent of the school and someone I had met through church. He told the owner "You need to hire this boy, he's a great kid". Her response, "I was going to have him come in after school today". She later told me that she didn't know about foster kids and wouldn’t have hired me without him speaking up. All foster kids need is a chance. How is a foster kid supposed to better themselves and not do bad things for money if they aren't given a chance to work and get on their feet? If you have some work, reach out and give a foster kid some work.

5. Donate. Don't have time to volunteer? There is a need for everything in the foster care system. I used to love it when people would drop off donated items such as clothes. Clothing vouchers don't go a long way so it's great to get "new" clothes. All out Christmas items out my group home were from donations. Some group homes NEED donations to operate. If you don't have anything gently used lying around but have a little left over after the paycheck then why not make a small donation every now and then. Think of the kid that's smiling on the other end because he got shoes to play basketball at school (I was happy I was able to get the team shoes to fit it with the rest of my high school team) or will have presents to open at Christmas. A common thing among foster kids is having to carry their clothes in trash bags from home to home. Visit www.suitcaseforkid.org to find how you can help make a foster child's next move a little easier.

6. Provide a service. Do you have a service that you could provide free of cost to help out? There are several skills that could be used to help the foster care system. Maybe you can cut or style hair. Everyone needs a hair cut. There is also many African American foster kids that are living with white families that may not know how style their hair. Maybe you could help them out? Are you good with math, science, ect.? Offer to help tutor some foster kids and help them keep up their grades. As a foster kid their was so much going on outside school that made school seem like not a big deal or made things hard to concentrate. It was great having people to push me in school and help me understand things I may have not gotten in class. Are you pretty handy with a hammer? I'm sure that there are many foster parents that would love some help fixing up the house to make it more suitable for the life style of foster care.

7. Be a driver. In my group home there were up to 8 kids at a time. That is 8 kids that were in school and sometimes in sports. Also there can be a good amount of doctor, dentist and therapist visits for 1 child let alone 8. Many agencies could use some help driving foster kids to their appointments or events. You can call your local agencies and group homes to find out if this is a need where you live.

How To Solve The Aging Out Crisis

If you are involved in foster care or have done any research then you know that the statistics are stacked against foster kids when they age out of the foster care system. This isn't just a short term problem. Many foster kids go on after aging out and continue to be homeless or in jail. Many spend their life on some sort of government assistance. Kids that are told to go out on their own to be adults don't know how to be adults. Sometimes there has been bad habits instilled in them from abuses they received as a child. Some may not know how a person is really supposed to act or behave because they have only been subjected to craziness. How are you supposed to succeed out of foster care if you are never taught how?

 I feel like sometimes in foster care it's more of just taking care of the children. I only lived in one type of placement setting and I know some foster parents teach their kids more than others. This may not be true for foster parents looking to adopt but I feel like foster care is just that, care. There needs to be more of an emphasis on how to be a PRODUCTIVE member of society. Society itself needs to step up and take responsibility instead of complaining about the way things are. If we are tired of spending all this money on people in jail, on drugs, homeless, or just unmotivated; then there needs to be something interjected before it gets to that point. There needs to be someone there to mentor these children into adults.

  Though I have not found statistics relating to kids in foster care and mentoring, I have experienced what it's like to have a mentor, how it affected me, and that mentoring in general has been proven to work. According to a beamentor.org, a California Mentor Foundation survey found that out of 124 mentor programs and 57,659 mentees:

•     98% stayed in school
•     85% did not use drugs
•     98% Deterred from teen pregnancy
•     98% Did not join a gang

 In another study by the Ford foundation of high school students from families receiving public assistance found that those children with mentors where more likely than those without mentors to:

•     Graduate from high school
•     Enroll in college
•     Have fewer children
•     Have fewer arrests
•     Live without public assistance
•     Become involved in community service
•     Be hopeful about their future

 Though it wasn’t through a mentor program and he was labeled a friend and not a mentor, there was a man that took me under his wing for awhile when I was in foster care. I met him at church camp and he was in the Marine corp. I can't tell you how it was cool that he had so much going on in his life and he would want to hang out with me. He would pick me up and we would go on different adventures, work out, he would teach me to shoot and just hang out. The best were the pranks that we would pull.  I felt normal, and got to go out and do normal things. You just don’t get to leave with a foster kid and go off somewhere either. There is background checks and signatures. It means lot when someone is willing to go through that just to hang out and give you a place to get away. I wanted to be a good person and I wanted to succeed, I didn't want to let him down. Though I have lost contact with him, he made a big impact on my life when I needed it most.

 Mentors are need for more than to just keep kids out of trouble or on the right path. They aren't just needed for a couple years after aging out of foster care either.  Sometimes I think that people that grew up "normal" forget that kids in foster care often aren't taught a lot about the "little things" that are really actually major things that can impact your life long term. By this I mean things like budgeting, paying bills, loans, and I could keep going. I can't tell you how many life decisions I've gone through really wishing I had someone just to ask for advice.

 There are many ways your can help kids that have been involved in foster care. It doesn't have to be through an agency or by volunteering. You don’t even have to seek out a foster home. I bet there’s someone in your church, workplace or neighborhood that could use a mentor. You can sometimes help by just making yourself available to someone that needs it, by letting them know that your there if they need help with any of life’s questions.

Seeing Bio Parents Many Years After Foster Care

The other day I got off work and headed down to my car, ready to start my weekend. We work at a company that is above a shopping area. It was warm so there were a good amount of people out clothes shopping and running around. As we were walking through the parking lot I heard a screeching noise that caught my attention; so I looked in that direction. It was coming from a truck that was passing by. That's when I saw a couple of people I haven't seen several in years... My bio parents.

 Here’s a quick background of the story so you know where I'm coming from. They technically aren't my biological parents. My biological father is an alcoholic. My mom left him when I was young and married a man that eventually adopted me. They had my brothers. Not too long after the adoption and my 2nd brother’s birth, my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer and passed away when I was 11. A year later my adopted dad remarried. My step mom started the abuse by convincing my dad and others that we were troubled children. Abuse continued for my brothers and I for 3 years before we were taken into foster care. A year after entering care my dad signed his rights away as part of a plea deal that also included that he spend 90 days in jail and would allow my step mom to get off scott free. That's what some of us would call "taking one for the team".

 My parents never really admitted that they did anything wrong. They pushed a lot of the abuse accusations on me, saying that I exaggerated things or that I misunderstood the punishments and how things were. It was insulting. As many people that have been abused or know someone who was abused there are lasting effects. I have some anxiety issues and PTSD. My brothers are teenagers so I’m starting to see the issues they are going to have. As you can imagine this makes you pretty upset with the people that are responsible for your trauma. Even though I don't feel sorry for myself, when I get in one of those awkward foster kid situations (family events, holidays, needing life guidance) it makes me angrier with them.

 When I seen them coming down the street I was shocked. I literally said out loud "Oh my God it's them" and just stared. For some reason I wanted to make sure they seen me and they did. I really didn't know what to do. I was in shock for a minute not really having any feelings our thoughts. Then I got a rush of adrenaline. I knew this would happen one day. They don’t live too far away and a lot of people come to this town from nearby towns to go to the mall. I had played the scenario over in my mind thousands of times. Sometimes it involved them apologizing and them being different. I knew that wasn’t happening so most often it involved a physical altercation. I kind of wanted a physical altercation to be truthful. I kept thinking about how I wasn’t a kid anymore and how everyday for the rest of our lives we will be reminded some by what our parents did to us.

 I stood there just staring. I could tell They were in shock too and they stared back at me. I watched them as they drove around the parking lot and circled back around. They were looking at me and obviously circled to get a closer look. They pulled up not to far away and I could see them staring. My dad was smiling. It was that same smile that he used to give me as he looked down on me which my blood boil. I wanted to do something to really get their attention. Part of me was hoping they would come close. As they drove by  about 20 feet from me I just stood there. Something in me just couldn't move. It wasn’t worth the trouble that I would have been in. No amount of revenge I got that day would have been equal to what they put us through. I don’t think I would have really felt better in the long run.

I have a feeling that moment will be one that I play over many times. I question that if I did the right thing for myself. Would confronting them really make me feel better? Did I miss out on an opportunity to do any healing? I’ve thought about it a long time.  I think the best thing to do is do the best for you. That is how you get your revenge, you turn it into motivation. As children of abuse we have been controlled and dominated by others. We were made to be afraid and think that we needed them. I was always told that I couldn’t make it without them. It’s been hard, but I’ve made it with out them.