Purpose of the Group The purpose of this group will be to enhance life skills for youth (15-21 years) in treatment foster care at the Martin Pollak Project, Inc. in aspiration of ensuring youth obtain readiness for life after care (aging out) and/or transitioning to independent living agencies. This group is relevant to my agency due to an overwhelming amount of older youth being in our care that lack basic life skills that prevent them from independence. Through this group the youth needs of basic life skills will be meet by providing training and resource to them that will teach them how to sustain themselves independently such as health skills, house skills, finance skills, and employment skills. Sponsoring Organization The group will
Randall Thigpen is a case manager professional interviewed for this assignment. The introduction and purpose of the interview was done through the phone, but the questionnaire was sent via email. Randall’s official title is Placement Desk Coordinator. Randall provides services to foster care children in the Arapahoe county DHS in Colorado. Although the Randall does not have a nursing degree, eight years of experience working with foster care children was valuable when providing information about the population of interest. Some of the responsibilities include finding a home for children who are removed from their home and their parents or caretakers are regarded as not fit to take care of their children. Other job responsibilities include the supervision of other case workers and to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the child in foster care through continuous assessment of the current placement and adjustments as necessary. The following questions were developed and sent to the foster care professional.
A Critical review of Richards, G. (2014). "Aging Out" Gracefully: Housing and Helping Youth Transition Smoothly out of the Foster Care System. Journal Of Housing & Community Development, 71(4), 18-21.
In the John Burton Policy Brief on AB 12 the realities of education for foster youth are highlighted, “The rate at which foster youth complete high school (50 percent) is significantly lower than the rate at which their peers complete high school (70 percent),” (2011, p. 2). This affects chances for higher education including college degrees. This has a significant impact on the community as “aged-out” youth without services have more chance of risk for: homelessness, poverty, unemployment, going to jail, prostitution, substance abuse, early parenthood and untreated health conditions. Samuels and Pryce state that foster care has not always been a positive, developmentally appropriate experience. Youth who are
Future planning include developing support systems for the youth and their families to use when they transition back to the community. If the child cannot return to his/her family and they are younger than 18 they are placed in a foster care center. The foster care building is located in the Seegers Center. The Seegers Center is in charge of working closely with the child prior to discharge to help facilitate the transition into a new home. When a child is close to turning 18 and stabilized they are placed in a treatment program that is a less restrictive. The less-restrictive environment helps the individual ease his/her transition into the community. They help them look for a job, housing, and learn to cook. Independent living is supposed
You are going to be a mentor for a new social care worker as part of their induction process. Part of your role is to help them prepare for the review after their probation period.
when they are on their own (Mech, 1994). These are some of the problems faced by 20,000 foster children who age-out of care each year. History In the early 1980's, older adolescents in foster care and young adults who had been discharged from foster care become a source of great
Immense government expenditures are used in the assistance of these individuals, but often fail to translate to success and independence following emancipation. The iFoster jobs program aims to fill this gap and connect educated and trained former foster youth with respectable employers in need of qualified individuals. The iFoster organization has laid out a roadmap that illustrates its process of connecting these individuals with employers and has shown success with 250 youths thus far. First, iFoster networks with employers and assesses their needs and what they look for in employees. Then, they set a youth training program tailored to those needs. The individuals are then trained and provided with resources including courses, professional clothes for interviews, transportation, etc. These individuals are then assessed and analyzed for the job that best fits their qualifications and preferences. The individuals receive support through the interviewing and hiring process and receive ongoing support following beginning work. Regular check-ins and communication with the employers ensure that these youths are excelling at work and that their needs are being
Specific Speech Purpose: To inform my audience about the nature, problems, and proposed solution of the Foster Care System.
One way Maurice William’s faces problems in the foster homes is to have a meeting with every foster parent under their program every three months. In this meeting, all issues are discussed in great length and an appropriate procedure to deal with each specific problem are agreed upon and implemented so that the problems do not come up
In this week application I going to describe the professional or societal issue that I selected for this first week assignment which is Children in foster care: A vulnerable population at risk. But the problem is biggest when children faces those who ‘age out’ of foster care what are does pro and con of facing another part of the world along. How those children get affected with the change in their lives and how independent they could be to start a big a change like and how challenges they will faces. I would describe the professional or societal issue and I will also explain how the issue arouses my passion as a human services professional. One way to manage the goal in terms of social change, leadership, and advocacy related to the foster care children age out. I will also going to explain how will achieve each goal and how might impact the profession and society those children.
By providing a secure and stable home for teens , it teaches them responsibility and further equips them with stability in overall life decreasing homelessness rates. Extending foster care services supplies former foster children with stable homes if they are in need. According to Foster Focus Magazine, “65% of youth leaving foster care need immediate housing upon discharge”() Housing after foster care is an immediate issue that comes with aging out. Over 50% of desperate former foster youth are searching for a home to begin their life independently. Statistics show that, “many foster youth are placed in homes with complete strangers that sometimes are just as dysfunctional, if not more, than the homes they were removed from.”() Unfortunately there are children in foster care that often get bounced from home to home never really knowing when they are safely sheltered. Some children find it better to live on the menacing streets of state's, where they are homeless, than to be in a home
I bet you've never seen what happened to kids in foster care. Some children need different care than others, and might live a better life if they could get care that meets their needs. This information allows this paper to state that foster care systems have some major issues that need to be fixed. This can be supported because the children in foster care that are running away, the many deaths and abuse of children, their futures being affected, and lastly, i'm going to talk about a way to solve some of these problems, or at least how you can prevent them. First topic is going to be about the children that run away from foster care.
Each year, an estimated 20,000 young people "age out" of the U.S. foster care system. Many are only 18 years old and still need support and services (. Several studies show that without a lifelong connection to a caring adult, this older youth are often left vulnerable to a host of adverse situations. Compared to other youth in the United States, kids who age out of foster care are more likely to not have completed high school or received a GED, they often suffer from mental health problems, many are unemployed and live in poverty, and nearly 40% become homeless.
As of 2016 there were nearly a half million children in the foster care system, with roughly 25,000 “aging-out” each year (Ahmann, 2017). Most adolescents “age out” of the system with no one to mentor or serve as a caring parent figure. Foster youth are in dire need of long-term adult role models to guide them to achieve success. According to Ahmann, 50% of foster youth left “the system” without a high-school degree, as well as with having higher rates of PTSD, and depression (p. 43). Ahmann presented that research has proven teenagers, in general, that have quality relationships from adults able to provide support, do better than those that do not. If research has shown efficacy in supportive adult figures in a teen’s life then one can conclude that foster youth would also benefit. Foster children are at a disadvantage a soon as they enter “the system” so giving them resources proven positive is vital to their future success.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, every year close to 25,000 youth age out of the foster care system and are faced with cold hard realities of adulthood. This does not include the youth who leave the system, which is estimated to be another 30,000. Most adolescents anticipate their eighteenth birthday, as it brings on a new found sense of independence and most importantly a time of celebration. However when foster children reach eighteen, they begin facing the challenges of transitioning to adulthood. These children disproportionately join the ranks of the homeless, incarcerated, and unemployed. These youth are unprepared for the independent life they are forced to take on. The average age that young adults who have never experienced foster care leave their family home for good is 24, and 40% return home again at least once afterwards (Margolin, 2008). With these facts being stated, we yet expect youth who has dealt with rejection after rejection to leave “home” of the state custody permanently and fin for themselves. These youth sometimes have fewer than $250 in cash, only one-third have drivers licenses, and fewer than one-quarter have the basic tools to set up a household, let alone the skills to know what to do with the tools (Krinsky, 2010). Youth exit care with no more than a garbage bag of their belongings, finding themselves alone at the age of eighteen, with little reason to celebrate what is supposed to be an exciting milestone