Foster Care and Education Educational Article Review

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(2006). Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 28, 1459-1481.

The study in this research piece evaluated the adult education, employment and financial successes (or failures) of 659 adults (20 to 33 years of age) who had gone through intermediate and long-term foster care stays in their youth. These kinds of studies are important for present and future agencies because a fuller understanding of shortcomings -- and strengths -- in policy and judgment can lead to better care and more productive lives for alumni of foster care. When visited and surveyed, many of the 659 individuals (alumni) had completed high school not in formal education but via a GED; hence one-third of the 659 had incomes at or below the poverty level and "more than one in five" had been homeless following foster care (Pecora, et al., 2006, p. 1459). The Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study investigated the lives of alumni who were under foster care (in one of three agencies) from 1988 to 1998; alumni had to have been placed for 12 or more months between the ages of 14 to 18. Over half were "people of color"; 15.7% were Native American or Alaska Natives; and 5.8% were Asian or Pacific Islander; the average age was 24.2 years and 60.5% were women (p. 1465). Case records were read by "raters…with no knowledge of the hypotheses of the study" and "trained interviewers" from the University of Michigan conducted the interviews. Of the 659 alumni, 479 were actually interviewed. There is not room on this page for all the results, but "nearly one-third…reported 10 or more school changes from elementary through high school" (p. 1469).

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The data (p. 1470) reveals that: 89.1% had access to tutoring but only 48.1% uses tutors; two out of five alumni received "some education beyond high school" but only 20.6% of those received a degree or certificate and only 1 in 50 received a Bachelor's degree (that is 2.7% of alumni; 24.4% of the general population completes a Bachelor's). How many said they were prepared for "independent living"? 56.9%.

Eggertsen, Lars. (2008). Primary factors related to multiple placements for children in out-of-

home care. Child Welfare, 87(6), 71-91.

This study leads with the assertion that multiple foster care placements are detrimental to "brain growth, psychological adjustment, and mental development" (which the American Academy of Pediatrics reported in 2000) (Eggertsen, p. 71). Eggertsen's research also claims multiple foster care placements contribute to an individual's "instability… [and] behavioral disturbances" and leads to "impaired school functioning." The question most apt in this context is, how can an adult -- who has been placed in multiple family settings during an unstable childhood and adolescence -- be expected to succeed in educational and career pursuits? Brain growth is a vital part of psychological and physiological development, but when the brain is not fully mature and functioning normally the child may be headed for a troubled adulthood, according to the literature.

This study involved 6,432 children (3,183 females; 3,140 males) who had been placed in foster care homes during the years 2000, 2001, and 2002 in Utah. The average age of participants was 8.17 but they ranged up to 20 years of age (p......

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