Experts Discuss Future Of Foster Care System In New Webinar, New Report

Foster care experts hosted a webinar Wednesday focused on helping young people in foster care make the often painful transition to adulthood.

The discussion revolved around a new report, “On the Threshold of Change,” which addresses the difficulties young people have when transitioning out of the foster care system in a rapidly changing world.
The report “centers youth voices” in describing the harsh realities facing today’s foster youth and essentially imagines what an improved, equitable foster system might look like in 2035.

Jennifer Rodriguez, executive director of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Youth Law Center, said that too often young people’s lives are ruined by the same systemic forces that she was forced to navigate when she left the foster system years ago.

“For me, exiting my final placement, I had an experience of really living on the edge in those first few years as I transitioned into adulthood,” Rodriguez said. “I was forced into homelessness, I was facing the desperation of being alone in the world without a family, I was trying to navigate how to get a job and an education that allowed me to build a life.”

At the same time, she was doing all these things without financial assistance or any kind of practical support and felt deeply alone in the world.

The report envisions a foster care system in which success isn’t defined by how many young people move on without being involved in the criminal justice system, are free of substance abuse problems or end up homeless, but how many move on to live fulfilling, even joyful lives.

It also features research on the effects of federal funds made available in 2008 to extend foster care to age 21, input from young people who have transitioned out of foster care and insight from experts in several different disciplines, including youth development, technology, the economy and “foresight” practitioners, who look for ways to better prepare for the future.

Its four main focus areas include equitable foster care transitions, which would include guaranteed basic resources, among other things; restorative care, including physical and mental health care, as well as “holistic healing and well-being;” relational design, which emphasizes family ties and deep social connections; and computational advantage, which includes using technological advances to connect youth with needed resources.

The report, which also involved the California Youth Connection and the Institute for the Future, notes that achieving its vision will require “changes in national, state and local policy, resource allocation, and practice.”