My name is Caitlin Crowell, and I am here representing a coalition working for foster children who are aging out of care. These are youth who are no longer allowed to be in the foster system, but for whom the state has failed to establish a permanent home-- they have “graduated” out of care, and out of being cared for.  

In Erie County, that is thirty to fifty youth each year exiting without “permanency” -- and without anyone to help them as they continue to learn to become independent.  Sometimes the kids say that turning 18 means graduating into homelessness.  

We-- Fostering Greatness, HomeSpace, and Partnership for the Public Good-- appreciate those legislators who have made time to meet with us about this important issue, and we invite everyone to contact us with questions.  We are asking the county to add a new budget line of $400,000 to fund programs specifically serving these youth: to develop mentoring programs, to engage older youth who no longer have access to services, and to develop a resource hub these alumni can use to locate and navigate services.

We ask the county to fund this work because federal funds limit the services that can be provided and cut off youth access to these services at arbitrary ages.  County funding will allow us all to be flexible, and to respond to the specific needs of this vulnerable population. Currently in Erie County there are no programs that exclusively serve this population, and the results for these youth are disastrous.  

Youth who age out of care without achieving a permanent family-- either their own or an adoptive family-- are 2.5 times more likely to be incarcerated-- in fact, 70% of children in the juvenile legal system have also been in the child welfare system.  They are 3 times less likely to finish high school; almost half of all former foster youth are unemployed. One in four of them will become homeless within four years of exiting care.  For black and brown children the outcomes are even worse; they are 24% more likely than white children to “age out” without being adopted.  These outcomes persist despite the fact that foster care alumni are tremendously resourceful-- they have generally had to find or make their own resources, after all.

Practically and economically the county should fund programs to help foster alumni achieve independent adulthood.  The alternative, statistics show us, is much more costly, and it comes out of homelessness programs, the criminal legal system, physical and mental health care institutions, emergency assistance funding… not to mention lost economic benefits from an underemployed population.

This is a matter of how we care for others, especially those for whom we have responsibility.  When we talk about foster care, we often like to say that “the government is not an ideal parent.”  That is true-- but even worse is when the government takes over parenting and then just . . . stops. Kids in foster care are wards of the state-- the government is in charge of raising them. The government is in fact who took them out of their families, and who made the decision to assume the responsibility for them.  And it’s incumbent on government, on us, to ensure that they have the tools and the means and the education necessary to transition to independent grown-up life.