Our foster care system has many gaps in meeting the needs of these youth and young adults.
Below are some insightful words of individuals who grew up in foster care, as compiled in Emancipating from the Care of Strangers by Waln Brown and John Seita:
“At least when you are in foster care somebody knows you’re alive, like your foster parents and caseworker. But once you age out of the system, you’re on your own and all alone. And unlike other teens with loving families to guide and support them, you’re unprepared for the future because you were too busy inside the system trying to stay alive and not go crazy – or you just plain gave up.”
— John William Tuohy
“I knew very little about making my own decisions and even less about planning for the future. I had spent my youth doing what a litany of foster parents and social workers told me to do, or getting into trouble when I dared to exhibit independence. No attempt was made to teach me how to go about making wise decisions; rather, I was punished or rejected by the adults in my life when I stepped out of line. Using my missteps as ‘teachable moments’ were missed opportunities by my foster care givers. They were not ’parenting’ me in the sense of preparing me to mature into a happy, healthy and successful adult. The child welfare system provides for the physical needs of the young people in its care, but mostly neglects our psychological needs. That’s why I and other recently emancipated foster youth base our decisions more on emotion than logic and why, by extension, so many of us are not mentally prepared to make real-life decisions on our own. Certainly, that was true for me. The helpless mindset that ruled the first nineteen years of my life kept me prisoner to a life I continued to hate the next nineteen years.”— Dr. Capri Cruz