Fostering as a family for the past six years has given us a front-row seat to the foster care system. One particular reality has stuck with me the most: what happens when foster kids turn 18 and “age out” of the system, often leaving care without a family to call their own. Watching this play out, even from a distance, made me want to understand it better. Specifically, the lived experience behind them. This blog is where that curiosity has led me: a desire to gain knowledge of aging out, born from our family’s time in foster care, and an attempt to make sense of what comes next for the kids who age out of a system meant to protect them.
Foster care is a system where minors are placed in homes with a licensed family. The minors required to be removed due to multiple circumstances such as abuse or neglect (aecf.org). The children are then nurtured by their foster family until they can either return to their biological family or become adopted by their foster family or a different family. Tragically, most foster children are not adopted after they turn 18. Once they age out of the foster system, 1 in 4 of these young adults are adopted. The rest of them have to figure out how to support themselves all on their own. 1 in 2 of these past foster system kids will develop a substance dependence (fyi.org).
Sources:
Foster Forward 
Leave a comment