Helping Foster Care Teens Cross Safely into Adulthood

Each year, thousands of young people are thrust from group homes, institutions and foster families onto the streets of New York City. Under the rules of the foster care system, they've simply "come of age" and are expected to fend for themselves.

Like most young adults, these kids have hopes and dreams for the future - and the talent and will to achieve them. But for many, the future is anything but certain. They're often released from foster care without so much as a place to live, or any idea of how to go about getting a job or an apartment. The result: Half will end up unemployed, one-third homeless, and a quarter arrested or incarcerated. While the foster care system provided them with food and housing, no one showed them how to plan for the future.

Survival Skills and a Safe Harbor

Youth Advocacy Center is changing this bleak picture by providing former foster kids with ways to transition into a productive adulthood and become "self-advocates." In after-school seminars, they learn how to address the challenges that await them. They're shown how to inventory their strengths and weaknesses; set career goals and map a route to reaching them; research and analyze prospects in their chosen field; identify possible allies and enlist their help; and present themselves positively and confidently.

Self-advocacy techniques enable these young people to sell their abilities to potential employers, negotiate promotions, secure proper medical care, and respond appropriately to setbacks and other negative situations.

Learning to advocate for oneself is an elemental but critical life skill - one that's easily taken for granted. But for young people set suddenly, abruptly adrift from the foster care system, the skills of self-advocacy are a virtual lifeline.

"The teacher at YAC took great interest in me and encouraged me to pursue my passion and never give up. Again one of the many things rarely heard in foster care."

-Alison Hall, Age 17

http://www.youthadvocacycenter.org/

Contact Youth Advocacy Center, Inc.