Switched-On Magazine

It is said that when you reach adulthood, you will have to start taking care of yourself and adopting more responsibilities. Though this is true, many young people continue to depend on some support from their parents even after they turn 18. They look to their parents for financial, residential, and emotional support. For youth who have been under foster care, often this is not the case.

In most states, when youth who have been under foster care turn 18 years of age (which is called emancipation), they are likely to lose the support they had as foster children. It leaves them to care for themselves rather abruptly after turning eighteen, and though legally this is the age when youth become adults, it does not mean that youth of this age can necessarily live like adults. Most youth even after turning 18, after all, continue to seek some support from the parental figures in their lives.

Many youth in this situation are forced to find jobs to support themselves immediately when they turn 18, and these jobs are often those do not pay well enough to provide enough money for all the necessities a person needs. What happens is that youth jump from one home to another, struggling as they are to support themselves finally, thus continuing the cycle of unstable residential life.

For those few that are able to go to college, the lifestyle of balancing support for yourself and school is even more difficult to manage. Only a small fraction of former foster children are able to complete school to the point where they can find better-paying jobs because they have to sacrifice any academic concerns to support themselves financially in their current conditions.

Foster families were formed so that children and adolescents whose families are broken can have the support they need at a young age, albeit one that is temporary. They are there to provide some sense of home and guidance, and also emotional support. Taking away that support so abruptly makes a youth's transition to adulthood all the more difficult. The transition to adulthood needs to be eased for youth who find themselves in this situation, especially in a time when it is difficult to even find jobs that can support them.