Foster care fails children, abandons them as adults. Why are we throwing away kids?

Tens of thousands of former foster children churn out of the system each year, many of them facing bleak futures as adults, a fundamental failure that demands action and raises the question: How can we let this happen?

The challenges for many young children in foster care are well known. But little attention has been paid to the abysmal long-term outcomes for vulnerable kids who eventually age out of the foster care system and then are cast out onto the streets unprepared for life on their own.

A year-long Star investigation uncovered a fatally flawed system that too often puts foster children on the path to prison or homelessness and seldom readies them for independent adult life.

Children in foster care fail in the classroom at jaw-dropping rates — only 35% of foster kids in Oregon earned a high school diploma last year. More than 4,000 former foster kids become homeless once they leave the system each year. And a Star survey of nearly 6,000 inmates in 12 states found that 1 in 4 said they had been in foster care.

The nation must address this problem, yet it is not well understood. Shockingly little has been done to track and respond to poor outcomes for adults who have aged out of foster care. Resources aimed at improving results are scarce.

Once many foster kids reach 18 years of age, when most are emancipated from parental and state supervision, they’re literally abandoned.

The results are devastating. Thousands of foster kids take to the streets each year, with too many falling into sex trafficking, drug abuse, homelessness and crime.

For thousands, foster care is a pipeline to prison. And the trauma of seeing their families torn apart and their childhoods upended continues to have implications for the rest of their lives.

“That’s all I ever wanted was for my family, to belong, to be a part of them,” Crystal Smith, 26, said. Crystal, recently an inmate, was taken from her mother at age 12.

An inmate on death row in Texas told The Star, “The state that neglected me as a kid, and allowed me to age out of its support, is the same state that wants to kill me.”

How does this happen? And more importantly, how can we stop it?

Understanding comes first.

For young foster children, instability and a lack of attention can be devastating. Dynamic new research suggests multiple foster placements can lead to underdeveloped brains and delayed learning. Some foster kids, terrified about losing physical and emotional support, show signs of impaired impulse control.

“The young child has no way of understanding what is happening,” one researcher told The Star, as if describing a nightmare. “Someone drives up in a white station wagon, straps them to the back seat and takes them over to someplace they’ve never been before.”

The nation must work much harder to understand the implications for foster kids and devote more resources to expand research into the effects on children’s brains.

Young adults emerge from the system after being shuffled from home to home, often separated from siblings or birth parents. Overburdened, underfunded caseworkers struggle to find good places for kids to live.

School teachers and counselors, particularly in poorer districts, must address the acute needs of foster care students without the resources to do so. Attendance suffers. Essential concepts in the classroom are missed. Academic performance slumps.

Each time a foster child changes homes, researchers say, school progress is set back four to six months. Those interruptions in kids’ education reverberate through the lives of adults who were once in foster care.

Far too often, foster children lead lives filled with challenges, punishment and pain. Although they have committed no offense, they’re treated more like criminals — not kids. And eventually, many of them live up to that billing.

States must do better than this. But how?

▪ More national research is needed to track foster kids for decades, across a range of long-term outcomes: health, employment, earnings, education, family life.

Case studies are a start. But comprehensive, in-depth studies must examine not only outcomes for adults who were in foster care, but also what therapeutic approaches can best ameliorate damage.

▪ A focus on families, not just foster parenting, must be renewed. The need for intimate family connections is critical to development, yet placement decisions are often haphazard. Some are racially biased.

Americans spend $30 billion a year on child welfare, yet most of that money goes to foster care and adoption services. Public providers must look for opportunities to keep families together while still ensuring that children are in a safe environment.

▪ When family separation is unavoidable, maintaining contact with biological parents and siblings, when possible, is essential. So is stability. Frequent moves have a disastrous impact on emotional and educational outcomes.

“Quality parenting ... involves foster parents and birth parents working hand-in-hand to prepare for the often probable return of children from foster care to their birth parents,” according to one guideline of the Quality Parenting Initiative, a foster care best-practices group.

Nine states use the QPI as a framework for foster care. Missouri and Kansas do not. That should change.

▪ Education reporting must be improved. Many states lack the basic information of foster care graduation rates, leaving those states incapable of accurately addressing resources to the problem.

Indiana reports high school graduation rates for foster children. Kansas and Missouri should do so as soon as possible. High graduation rates for foster kids should be a criteria for accreditation of school districts.

▪ And Washington must help. That means increasing funding — and pressure on the states — to provide services for young adults aging out of foster care. Health coverage and housing vouchers are a start. Supplemental educational opportunities, mental health services, mentoring and job training are needed, too.

To be sure, tens of thousands of families care for kids who have lost one or both parents, or who live in abusive homes, or who suffer from neglect. Parents who raise foster children with love and respect deserve our thanks.

The children who battle overwhelming odds with courage and grace each day deserve compassion and the tools to give them a fighting chance at standing on their own.

There can be no mistaking the nation’s responsibilities. These children and young adults are not to blame for the challenges life has thrown at them. We cannot abandon them.

This story was originally published December 15, 2019 at 5:00 AM.