Caring adult makes the difference for foster alumni

The oldest foster kids risk falling to failure
Dwight Lewis, Tennessean.com
Sunday, 09/24/06

Michelle Crowley is one of the lucky ones. Unlike thousands of others in her situation, she had help to keep from falling into homelessness, unemployment and criminal activity.
But again, she was lucky.

"My case worker either didn't know or didn't tell me about some of the services that were available for older youngsters who had been in foster care,'' Crowley, 24, told me over the telephone recently. "I didn't know about some of these services such as tuition assistance, housing, tutoring — a whole list of incentives — until I was 21.

"I was lucky because I had people in my life who cared about me, people such as Ann Whitefield, my principal at Nashville's Hume-Fogg Magnet School. She paid for me to have breakfast when I was in high school. And there was a teacher who picked me up in the mornings from the three different group homes I lived in to take me to school.

"There were a lot of people who cared about me. I had a lot of connections to people who helped me realize my potential. Being in foster care can make your living situation unstable. That can affect your situation in school. The leading predictor of success for a youngster in foster care, especially an older one, is a caring adult.''

I talked to Crowley after taking part in an audio news conference Tuesday on the subject of youth permanence. A meeting on the issue, held Sept. 13-15 in Washington, brought together child welfare commissioners and directors, judges, attorneys and care providers from 40 states, including Tennessee, where about 9,000 youngsters are in foster care.

Representatives from each of those states went home with a specific plan of action for improving the way their states handle the betterment of children.

During the audio news conference, officials from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which sponsored the event, said many young people "age out'' of foster care at 18 without having established any meaningful and enduring relationship with a family member or other caring adult.

"This is a group of kids who are more likely by a factor of several times to end up homeless, to end up dependent, to experience a young adulthood of unemployment, underemployment and poverty,'' said Doug Nelson, president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, longtime innovators in the field of child welfare policy and practice. "No group of young American youth are more likely to be incarcerated or spend time in mental health institutions. The rates of homelessness are unconquerably high.

"This is the group of kids among us who are at the greatest risk of failure. And we want to make it as clear as we possibly can to anyone who will listen that the costs of our failure with these children who come into state custody and then exit state custody, the cost to them in human terms is immense in a way that statistics can't fully show — cost to their health, cost to their happiness, the costs to their mental well being. "

Michelle Crowley had help along the way to keep her from falling through the cracks. She won a scholarship to college and is now working as an intern in a program that focuses on transitioning foster youth.

Unfortunately, too many others like her don't get that help. We can help turn that around by volunteering to work with youngsters in foster care.

Why not call the Tennessee Children's Services Department (615-532-5619) or the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth (615-741-2633) to say count me in? You can't imagine how much some youngster will appreciate it. •