The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that there are over 400,000 children currently in foster care in the United States. Most youth are in the system for at least a year, with 38% for two years or longer. The most common placement setting for children in foster care is nonrelative foster family homes; about half of youth exit…

Children and youth in foster care experience poor K-12 educational outcomes compared to their peers without foster care histories. Child welfare and school professionals hold shared responsibility for ensuring their educational well-being based on federal policies and role expectations. However, professionals often experience challenges in…

For school psychologists, social justice action involves protecting the educational rights, opportunities, and well-being of all students, "especially those whose voices have been muted, identities obscured, or needs ignored" (NASP, 2017). Facilitating social justice for students requires that school psychologists advocate for fairness…

Roughly 270,000 school-aged youth were in foster care at the end of fiscal year 2017. Youth in foster care may change schools frequently, which can negatively affect their academic achievement. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), enacted in 2015, reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and included provisions to improve…

This pilot study builds on national literature by describing the characteristics of Colorado youth who were formerly in foster care and later accessed homeless services as young adults. State-focused data are important as youth experiencing homelessness typically stay in their state of origin. It was not possible in this study to estimate the…

Children who experience foster care, write Youngmin Yi and Christopher Wildeman, are considerably more likely than others to have contact with the criminal justice system, both during childhood and as adults. And because children of color disproportionately experience foster care, improvements to the foster care system could reduce racial/ethnic…

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of academically successful Foster Care Alumni (FCAs) in Tennessee who enrolled in postsecondary education, either a trade school, a two-year college, or a four-year university, and graduated from that postsecondary institution. Youth in foster care faced barriers to their education in K-12…

The current study reports findings from a small randomized controlled trial of Project FUTURES, a post-secondary support and retention program for college students with foster care experience and self-identified mental health concerns. The FUTURES model is adapted from Better Futures, which was a post-secondary access program for high school…

Three out of four jobs now require education or training beyond high school, yet some students face formidable barriers to attending college. Disruptions to K-12 education, trauma, loss, food insecurity, and housing instability are known impediments to the educational success of youth who have been in foster care. These types of challenges may…

Purpose: This study examines foster care reentry after adoption, in Illinois and New Jersey. The provision of services and supports to adoptive families have garnered recent attention due to concern about the long-term stability of adoptive homes. Method: This study used administrative data to examine the pre-adoption characteristics associated…

The study examined the impact of child protective services (CPS) contact on out-of-school suspensions for 49,918 Wisconsin students (followed from ages 5-6 to 14-15; [school years 2010-2019; 74% White; 7% Black; 11% Hispanic; 8% other; 49% female]). A quasi-experimental design comparing recent CPS contact to upcoming (future) CPS contact shows…

This Research-to-Impact brief is the seventh in a series by Chapin Hall's Voices of Youth Count on understanding and addressing youth homelessness. Each year, nearly 4.2 million adolescents and young adults in America experience some form of homelessness. This brief focuses on the subset of young people who experience homelessness after spending…

Since the late 1990s, the federal government has increased supports that promote college success for foster youth (Okpych, 2012), such as the $5,000 education and training voucher that foster youth can use each year toward college expenses. A key piece of federal legislation supporting foster youth is the 2008 Fostering Connections to Success and…

Despite being among the most disadvantaged groups with respect to college access and success in the United States, youth formerly in foster care (YFFC) remain an understudied population in higher education research. Although they aspire to college at high levels, youth in foster care enjoy less postsecondary access and success than their peers who…

Every year in America, thousands of young people age out of foster care, often at age 18, without being connected to a permanent family and other critical resources and opportunities needed to succeed in life. Many of these young people experience troubling outcomes. They are more likely than their peers who are not in foster care to drop out of…