Juvenile Law Center (JLC), with the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has built an excellent new resource for the field in its National Extended Foster Care Review, a website that breaks down each state’s foster care guarantees after the age of 18.
Fittingly, the site was launched on the 10th anniversary of Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, a law signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. Fostering Connections, among other things, amended the Title IV-E foster care entitlement – the largest conduit of federal child welfare funds to states – to include matched reimbursement for any state that established a federally-approved extension of foster care until the age of 21.
The bill was born of research that put numbers to what most parents know through experience: that even teens with all the advantages in life are not ready to become fully independent adults at age 18. For foster youth, the outcomes for those “aging out” at 18 are grim, with high rates of homelessness, incarceration and unemployment.
[For more on this story by John Kelly, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...care-aging-out/31133]
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