According to Connections Home, “every year, approximately 700 children  will age out of the foster care system in Georgia, and 27,000 will age out nationwide.

“To put these numbers into perspective, the average public school in a suburban area contains around 656 students, and in the fall of 2020, the University of Georgia had 29,765 students enroll in their undergrad programs,” Connections Home proclaims on its website. “Imagine waking up one day to a school once full of smiling children suddenly barren, or a major university campus reduced to a few thousand stragglers. The students aren’t merely in quarantine or on break either — they’re just gone.” 

Doing better than most

Programs like Wellroot have earned Georgia praise from national child welfare advocates. 

“I think Georgia is doing better than many states in serving their eligible population of young people in transition from [foster] care,” said Todd Lloyd, senior policy associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which recently released a comprehensive state-by-state look at what’s being done to help young people exit foster care. 

Three in four, or 76%, of young people between the ages of 14 and 21 in foster care in Georgia received some sort of transition service — vocational training, help with housing or going to college or trade school —  at some point compared to 47% of the rest of the country, the report found.

“You guys [Georgians] are making a very strong attempt to make sure that those who are served — you’re already serving three quarters — are getting some life skills training,” Lloyd told State Affairs. “You’re serving a much higher percentage of your young people  than the national average.”

In fact, between 2016 and 2021, the latest available data, Georgia was among the top five states in the country providing life skills training for young people leaving foster care, the Casey report noted.

“You need practical life skills – such as money and time management – to navigate relationships, school work and life,” Lloyd said.

Yet, the Casey report noted Georgia needs to do better helping  young people get and keep health insurance, finish high school, stay out of jail and pursue college, trade school or other advanced education. “The outcomes are not similar to other states in those areas,” Lloyd noted. 

Case in point: postsecondary enrollment and incarceration.

“Nationally for the general population, 50% of 21-year-olds are enrolled in some sort of post secondary, half as many nationally for kids in foster care and half as much again for Georgia,” Lloyd said.

More than four in 10, or 41%, of young people in Georgia’s foster care system have experienced incarceration by the age of 21 versus 35% for young people in foster care in the rest of the country, the Casey report found.

Georgia has about 11,000 children in foster care, due to abuse, neglect, family drug addiction, violence, behavioral problems or other hardships. Georgia’s foster care system is stretched so thin that children spend about two years in the system — nearly three months longer than the national average of 21.7 months, according to The Council of State Governments Southern Office.  

Black children make up a disproportionate number of children in the Georgia foster care system. In 2021, Blacks accounted for 34% of the state’s population but 43% of the foster care population, the Casey report noted. 

“It is definitely very disproportionately Black,” Lloyd said. “And that is not uncommon. Unfortunately, there's a lot of racial disproportionality. One of the most evident connections as a driver of child welfare system involvement is poverty. You'll see that quite a few of your young people are entering [foster] care due to issues of neglect which are related to issues of poverty.”

This year, 539 young people turned 18 while in foster care in Georgia, according to Kylie Winton, a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Human Services. They either signed themselves into the department’s custody voluntarily for extended youth services or they left foster care.

All told, 5.7%  of the young people in Georgia foster care are between the ages of 18 and 21, Winton said. Although the state has extended foster care for young people to the age of 21, some are choosing to leave the system. 

More Georgia youth “age out” of the system than the rest of the country. The Casey report found that 59% of Georgia foster kids age out versus 52% nationwide.  Black and Hispanic youth disproportionately leave with no viable support, the report noted. Among 21 year olds, roughly 1 in 4 who left Georgia’s foster care system ended up homeless in 2021, according to the Casey report.

“I’m looking at this from a national perspective and, frankly, I don’t think we are serving kids exiting the foster system well as a nation,” said Bobby Cagle, a nationally recognized child welfare expert and former head of Georgia’s Department of Family and Children Services.

“If a kid’s very lucky, they’ll connect to some of the foster parents or they may have a mentor outside the system,” said Cagle, who now heads the child welfare division of Caresource, a nonprofit that provides public health programs such as Medicaid and Medicare.  “Many don’t have that. As challenging as housing is today for a family, just think of a kid that’s going out trying to find a house with no credit history and no real resources.”

Getting reparations

Had it not been for her fiance helping with her bills and guidance from Wellroot’s transitional living program, Eshontee Rowe could have easily been a statistic in Georgia’s foster care system. Instead, she was able to navigate the complex foster care system and become the first in her family to finish high school and graduate from college. 

Wellroot helped her find resources and other community agencies that led to her  getting government money available for young people exiting foster care. 

“Everything about Wellroot’s program screams independence and self-sufficiency,” said Rowe, who spent six years in the system after her mom decided that foster care would be the best way to get her the support she needed for her mental health challenges, she said. Before landing at Wellroot, she spent most of her teens shuttling between group homes.

“I was an articulate kid. I knew my rights. They thought I was being disrespectful for challenging them to make sure I got the services I needed. It caused me to be moved around a lot but ultimately I got what I needed.”

She recalled the time when she was living in a group home and in a dual-enrollment program taking high school and college classes.

“I couldn't come back to the house [because house rules prevented anyone from being at the group home during school hours]. So I found myself riding around on the buses all the time because once I left the high school and went to the college campus, there was no meal plan for me.”

Now 26, Rowe is using her steadfastness to help other foster children. She is a child well-being advocate in Atlanta who understands how the system works now. She likens it to reparations.

“Get your reparation,” Rowe said, adding that the federal money, by way of Georgia,  is available for young people leaving foster care to go to college, get an apartment and  “get those extra funding opportunities and services.”

About $538 million in state and federal money is spent on Georgia’s foster care system. The bulk of that — $498.5 million — goes to intervention and late intervention programs, according to Voices for Georgia’s Children, a nonprofit child policy and advocacy group.

Addressing the needs of young adults leaving foster care is just one of many challenges within Georgia’s child welfare system which has come under state and federal scrutiny lately.

Earlier this year, lawmakers learned many of the hard-to-place children in Georgia’s foster care system – those with mental health challenges and other difficulties – were living in hotel rooms and offices because there was no place for them to go. In September, Georgia Department of Human Services Commissioner Candice Broce told the Senate Study Committee on Foster Care and Adoption that the foster care system had reached a milestone:  No children were staying in hotels or offices, except in emergency cases.  

But a report by Channel 2’s WSB-TV in November found that children had been “placed in group homes, private homes and, in some cases, overnight stays at DFCS offices.”

Meanwhile, Georgia’s own U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff  launched a bipartisan investigation last February after allegations surfaced that children in the care of Georgia’s Division of Family & Children Services had been abused and neglected. The hearings have highlighted testimony from former foster kids, parents, and experts into the treatment of foster children nationwide. Ossoff is chairman of the U.S. Senate Human Rights Subcommittee.

In the midst of that controversy is what Rowe considers the overlooked group of foster kids: the teenagers 

“Unfortunately there are youth and kids in foster care that do not achieve what we call permanency,” Allison Ashe, Wellroot’s chief executive officer, told State Affairs.. They either don’t go back home to their families or become adopted or develop a permanent relationship with their foster parents. So they turn 18-years-old and they may have some connections in their lives but they don't have somebody that can really guide them through that transition into young adulthood. Those kids face a lot of challenges.”

The pandemic has had a decisive impact on Georgia’s foster care system: Fewer young adults are opting to stay in foster care after the pandemic and fewer people are willing to be foster parents. Officials at Wellroot report seeing a 50% dip in available foster parents since the pandemic.

“I think people get a little nervous about fostering adolescents because adolescents get a bad rap,” Ashe said. “But adolescence is really an extraordinary time of life for a young person. They’re really working on their identity formation and figuring out who they are and to be a foster parent to those young people is such a gift.”

Changes ahead?

In the meantime, state lawmakers are trying to address problems with the child welfare system. 

The Senate Study Committee on Foster Care and Adoption spent several months traveling the state this year listening to foster care kids, experts and agency workers on ways to fix the overburdened child welfare system. 

“We got a lot of information that was not common knowledge to the committee,” said committee chair Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-North-Central Cobb and West Cherokee. 

The committee released its recommendations in November. Those findings, which include a mix of proposed legislation, budgetary matters and other remedies, will go before the Legislature when it reconvenes in January.

Among the suggestions:

• Getting foster kids into a permanent setup, whether through rejoining their family or adoption.
• Provide free, easily obtainable state photo IDs to foster children to make it easier for them to be able to drive and get jobs.

State officials in Georgia’s child welfare system say they are putting more focus on young people transitioning out of the system.

The state has independent living programs such as the Georgia Resilient Youth-Centered Stable and Empowered program or GA RYSE, Winton said. It helps young people prepare for adulthood through referral resources and connections within the community. 

“We are working to strengthen services for youth transitioning to adulthood or aging out of the foster care system by partnering with youth advisory boards, agencies and community organizations,” Winton said.

https://stateaffairs.com/georgia/social-services/georgia-senate-foster-system-adoption-solutions/

Have questions? Contact Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].

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