Teens in Foster Care Need Greater Focus

In December 2011, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children released its annual State of Child Welfare report.  While this report highlighted several positive trends related to children involved with the child welfare system, it also noted the commonwealth continues to face challenges serving older youth (teenagers and young adults) in foster care.  Almost half of the foster care population in Pennsylvania is composed of teenagers and almost half of these youth reside in group homes or institutions.  What is even more troubling is that these youth are much less likely to be adopted or enter legal guardianship than their younger peers.  Even though Pennsylvania had a record 2,300 adoptions from foster care in 2010, fewer than 9 percent of those adoptions involved teenagers. Similarly, these youth comprised less than 40 percent of children who entered legal guardianship that year.

When youth remain in foster care and never become part of a permanent family, they eventually “age out” of the foster care system. Nearly half of youth who “age out” will not complete high school and/or will be unemployed. About one-fourth will experience homelessness and/or incarceration. Pennsylvania needs to take steps to assure every youth in foster care has a permanent family to depend on and we have the strong foster care supports needed to help every youth successfully transition to adulthood.  The costs are too great to do anything less.