By Rachel Rosenberg, Maia O'Meara, Mya' Sanders, Child Trends, September 15, 2020
Nearly 18,000 young people aged out of the foster care system in fiscal year (FY) 2018. In other words, the child welfare system failed to reunify these young people with their parents or find them another legal, permanent placement through adoption or guardianship. Relative to their peers in the general population, young people who age out of foster care often experience lower levels of educational attainment and higher levels of unemployment or underemployment. For all young people, education and employment play an important role in their healthy transition to adulthood. Our new analysis reinforces what existing research has found: When young people receive educational aid and employment skills training, and other necessary services, they are more likely to be connected to employment and/or school.
Educational attainment is directly linked to young people’s future earning potential. Prior research indicates that young people with foster care experience who have a high school diploma or GED are twice as likely to be employed as those without these credentials, and that those with some college experience are more than three times as likely to be employed. It is developmentally appropriate for young people ages 18 to 21 (both within the general population and those with foster care experience) to either be enrolled in school or employed, but not necessarily both. However, examining education and employment outcomes separately does not allow researchers to capture the positive outcome of being either in school or working—which may be a more common outcome for young people than being both employed and in school. Indeed, in a recent study of youth in or transitioning from foster care, more than half were employed or in school but close to one third were neither enrolled in school nor employed.
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