Yesterday, I posted a link to the Midwest Outcome Study by Chapin Hall.  When those of us who work with young people discuss this study, we find nothing surprising.  The 23 and 24 year olds have about a 50% unemployment rate, 6% college graduation rate, and about half have been homeless.  This in spite of the fact that the majority of them have reconnected with their families, have permanent connections and most feel they have an adequate support system.  

The majority of them also reported they could have used additional life skills training, especially in money management, housing, etc..  This is consistent with what I have seen nationally for the last eight years reviewing thousands of Ansell Casey Life Skills Assessments.  These outcomes are very consistent with the recently published outcome study funded by Casey Family Programs and others.  The Chapin Hall study targets the kind of results we get since the Chafee Program was put in place in 1999.  So we have been funding programs to address these issues for eleven years, and these are the Midwest results so far.  

I believe if we had done this study prior to Chafee, the outcomes would have been worse.  One recommendation made by the study is to extend time in care, (it is called foster care, but for many young people it is institutional care) until age 21.  The most consistent factor in improved outcomes is the length of time a young person received support.  States can now do this with federal support, but most haven't because it requires matching funds, and I doubt that many in leadership perceive a need.

Most of our leadership grew up in a time when it was possible to transition to life on our own at age 18.  We could get a job and work our way through college.  Grants and loans were available that would supplement our costs and help us succeed.  That is no longer true.  The average age of becoming self sufficient for young people who aren't in the child welfare system is about 26 or 27 in our country now.  So the idea that these young people should be able to age out of care at 18 and succeed is simplistic, and unintentionally sadistic.  The economy has become much more complicated, requiring more refined and specialized skills, and, given a 6% college completion rate, these young people are being left out of that economy.  

Extending foster care until age 21, while allowing increased flexibility past 18, would be a start at reversing these painful outcomes.  We also have a long way to go in working with these young people to develop capability.  If extension of foster care is the only approach, it will only make a marginal difference.  The data is also clear that Permanency, in the guise of reconnecting with families is also an inadequate strategy.  

Most of the young people had reconnected with their biological families, but still had the same poor outcomes.  In my experience, families which neglected and/or abused these young people as children are often too chaotic to be major positive supports to them as young adults.  In addition, the issues within those relationships are very complicated and painful.  There has been a very naive faction within the Child Welfare professional community which has advocated that this reconnection would be a major solution, and it isn't.  In fact, with extremely violent families there can be tragic outcomes.  

So, states need to consider extending foster care until age 21 as soon as it is possible from a budgetary standpoint.  However, we need to realize that young people need a number of other quality services in addition to this change in policy.

For future discussions, the life skills assessments I have reviewed over the last eight years indicates that youth in juvenile justice systems have far more life skills issues than those in foster care, and there seems to be no study on the horizon which will help us look at those outcomes.  I believe that youth who end up leaving juvenile justice systems each year at 18 have greater issues than youth in Child Welfare.

Much of my coaching work, at one level, all of it, over the years has been related to live transitions.  We recognize that we have natural transitions in our life, some common ones are;

• graduation from high school, 
• perhaps college or job training, 
• commitment to a marriage or other relationship
• becoming parents
• career changes, including periods of unemployment
• economic upturns and downturns
• children leaving home
• relationship shifts
• retirement

Each of these changes in our lives challenge an existing way of understanding ourselves and the world.  As we successfully negotiate different life changes, we face a bit of the challenge of "transcendence or despair".   

At the same time we are going through external transitions, we progress through internal developmental transitions throughout life.  Our perceptions of ourselves and others, our roles, and our perceptions of life evolve.  All this has become more challenging as we have become less connected to other generations in our lives.  

Throughout most of history, as we went through these shifts, we had other close family members and friends who had successfully negotiated these transitions, and could nudge us through using the wisdom from their own lives.  This has changed for many of us and has been doing so since the second world war.  We have become more isolated by generation, and the pace of life has increased, resulting in less effective natural coaching relationships.  

Furthermore, we train our young people through all their school years to rely more on their peers for support and bonding than for older generations.  We isolate them for the majority of their daylight hours in groups of others their own age, with only one adult around at a time.  That adult has a very goal focused role which discourages a more global coaching function.  The majority of teachers, coaches, and other adults in a young person's life hasn't had time for broader relationships for many years now.  In addition, healthy coaching relationships have been sabotaged by the prevalence of sexual predators in our society, and the need to keep a healthy distance from young people so that parents and others don't get the wrong impression.

So it seems we have evolved to where we need personal coaches.  Up until recently, people going through these natural transitions only had therapists available to help with these issues, and it often wasn't that successful.  Therapy is a problem focused process, and transitions are meaning and goal focused.  Over 70% of the CEOs of fortune 500 companies have personal coaches.  President Clinton hired Tony Robbins for that purpose.  

One of the major roles of coaches is to help people transition through life stages in ways that increase the meaning in their lives and help them develop meaning.  There are questions we help people explore during each change:

• What does it mean when I (graduate high school, graduate college, decide to marry, become a parent, see my children leave, retire)?
• What am I ending or giving up in this process?  
• How am I, or will I be different after this?
• What goals do I need to set to help myself move forward in a meaningful way?
• What, if any steps do I need to take to start achieving those goals?
• What have I learned in this process that produces wisdom and/or a deeper spiritual meaning in my life?

Think about yourself and those around you and notice how others negotiate changes, and how you can more proactively navigate yours.

http://chapinhall.org/research/report/midwest-evaluation-adult-functioning-former-foster-youth

Beginning this fall, the Health and Human Services Administration will begin requiring that states begin surveying young people in the child welfare systems regarding their Transition Outcomes under the NYTD survey process. The federal government, a number of foundations, and the states have worked for several years to develop a set of outcomes, survey questions, and suggested practices for evaluating how young people do in their transitions from child welfare systems to young adulthood.  The surveys of 17 year olds are to begin this fall, and the same youth will be surveyed at 19 and, 21. If states fail to participate in this process, they will lose 5% of their Chafee Program funds for transitioning youth.

There are a number of challenges in completing this process.  It is complicated, expensive, and the data standards are rigorous.  In some states, the expense of the survey will likely be close to the 5% savings achieved by completing it.  It also represents a five year commitment to track some very difficult people to track. For these reasons, and a number of others, some states are deciding not to complete the outcomes survey process.

However, during this recession, a number of states have made serious to drastic cutbacks on the funding for youth in transition.  In a number of states, I am hearing that states are returning to discharging eighteen year olds from the system to homelessness.  Most notably, California has been in the news recently over the cuts made in that state.  A prominent Governor stated in a speech I attended that his state took responsibility for the children in the Child Welfare system in his state until eighteen, in spite of federal law very specifically spelling out additional requirements.

For that reason alone, we should urge our states to participate in the National Youth Transition Database surveys.  States take on the role of parent when they remove young people from their biological families.  They assume an inherent responsibility to, not just keep young people safe until eighteen, but to develop capable adults and make serious efforts to transition them successfully to financial self sufficiency.  This survey process will measure how states are doing in that process.

Any family in this economy who decided that they were done being parents at eighteen, regardless of their children's abilities to survive on their own would be considered negligent by most their peers.  The recent change in the insurance reform bill to continue insurance coverage until age 27 recognizes that young people aren't ready to be self sufficient until well into their 20s, even when from intact families.  The evaluation process beginning this fall will allow us, as citizens to see how our states are doing as parents to the children for whom they have assumed responsibility.  This type of transparency is critical for the long term "welfare" of our young people in care.  Organizations which have removed children for neglect and abuse should not be allowed to neglect those same children as they age out of care, and we, as citizens should know if that is happening.  If you agree, please contact your state and ask it's intention in participating in the NYTD process.