"Failing Forward": Supporting Foster Youth Through Connection, Innovation, and Community

Absolutely.

I mean, when I think about one of the things that hasn't changed and in fact has gotten more challenging over the years that really required innovation and different thinking, it would be this notion that somehow any young person at 18, 19, 20 would be prepared to fully leave the support space.

of ideally a family, but in this case, a system.

And let's face it, children and youth don't live in systems, right? They live in communities and in families.

And when young people are leaving that kind of system and emancipating to adulthood, even if in the best of circumstances when they're with their families of origin, that's a challenging time.

And there's, you know, a big gap between the readiness that a young person has to take on all of these responsibilities and what those responsibilities really entail.

I mean, when you think about if you graduate from high school and you get your first job, Most entry-level jobs in Rhode Island are not paying a housing wage.

You know, you'd have to work two full-time jobs to even come close to pay for an apartment.

So if you had to do that on your own, and then add to that the fact that in Rhode Island, less than half of the young people who are in our foster care system are graduated from high school on time.

So we're not even starting at the level with a diploma or GED for most young people.

So there's so much work that needs to be done to support young people with their education, with their workforce development, and then this big challenge of housing.

It was always challenging.

I mean, we ran the YES program for DCYF way back when.

So YES stood for Young Adults Establishing Self-Sufficiency.

And back in 2007, when the state of Rhode Island decided to roll back the age that young people aged out of foster care from 21 down to 18, the General Assembly put in a capitated block grant to fund this YES program.

And at that time, we worked with the Rhode Island Council of Resource Providers.

And young people got referred to us at 18.

It was before there was voluntary extension of care and a VEC unit.

And those young people got up to $600 a month in assistance.

That was it.

And they got probably about six to eight hours a month of case management support.

They were closed to the department.

They were closed to family court.

That was the only assistance that was available.

And we worked with a network of landlords to find landlords who would rent these young people and set them up into those apartment situations.