Teens who 'age out' of foster care still need support

By Brenda Lawrence

Each year, nearly 1,000 Pennsylvania youths "age out" of foster care without achieving permanency, which provides them a clear legal status and the lifelong commitment of a caring adult.

Aging out often leads to dead ends: homelessness, incarceration, public assistance.

These are tragic stories for the individuals, and costly to communities, too. For everyone who ages out, according to the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative, there are $300,000 in social costs in that person's lifetime.

Why too many children don't find permanency is an issue still to be resolved. In the meantime, progress has been made toward giving older foster children better options and more opportunities.

Pennsylvania Acts 80 and 91 allow youths to stay in or reenter foster care until age 21 under certain conditions. Staying in addresses primary needs for housing, health insurance, and education. It provides financial, emotional, and social support systems youths need to continue to mature and develop.

These are compelling reasons, to be sure, but they likely won't resonate with someone in the way that Michelle Nauman will.

Until three years ago, Michelle was one among the many youths who leave the foster care system without gaining permanency.

Today, Michelle, 25, is a success story, despite a tumultuous trek through foster care that started when she was 2 and included a dissolved adoption. As a youth advocate for Family Design Resources, she encourages older youths to work within the foster care system to avoid many of the pitfalls she encountered.

Michelle said she understands "their frustrations, their anger, their wanting to leave foster care." But, she tells them, "I've been there. It's not smart, and I'm going to tell you why."

Michelle grew up in Lancaster County. When her parents were unable to take care of her, Michelle went to foster care, split up from her siblings. Understandably angry, she bounced around through various foster-care placements to an adoptive family that couldn't handle her outbursts.

She went back into foster care, seven or eight homes in all. She kept running away. One time she was gone for a week, or long enough that investigators expected to find her dead. The 32-year-old man with whom she had left brought her home, dropping her off at a covered bridge with a garbage bag containing her clothes.

She went to a six-month military boot camp, graduating with a leadership rank. To this day, she thanks her caseworker for sending her there. She said it changed her outlook on life; she had a reason to be angry, she said, but she was taking it out on the wrong people.

She went back to a group home and then into four more foster homes before she turned 18 and left the system. She got her high school diploma but soon discovered how hard it can be to have a part-time job, no car, no place to stay.

"With a lack of guidance and no one to tell me I was making poor decisions," she said, "I did what I wanted at 18 and found out on my 19th birthday that I was going to be a mom." She had a daughter and, within a year, a son. Shortly after that, her children's father went to jail. In desperation, she turned to her former foster family to care for her children.

At rock bottom three years ago, Michelle realized that she was following in her mother's footsteps. Her mother had three children but had lost each of them. An aunt and an uncle were in similar situations.

Michelle didn't want the cycle to continue with her kids. She started asking for help.

She slept on a friend's couch, got a job, saved money. She kept her daughter (her former foster family adopted her son). She met fiancé Scott, a committed partner and father figure to her daughter. Together, the couple has a 16-month-old boy.

Michelle tells foster youths to embrace who they are and the people that they can become.

"The past is the past, and you will never be able to change that," she said. "But the future is an open book, and only you have the pen to write that story."