What Happens to Youth Aging Out of Foster Care?

Under­stand­ing Aging Out of Fos­ter Care

All chil­dren, espe­cial­ly old­er chil­dren in fos­ter care, need and deserve a lov­ing fam­i­ly to sup­port their life­long growth. This desired out­come — called per­ma­nence — occurs for old­er youth in fos­ter care via one of three path­ways: adop­tion, guardian­ship or reuni­fi­ca­tion with their birth fam­i­lies. A less favor­able out­come is aging out (also known as eman­ci­pa­tion). In this option, youth grow too old to remain in fos­ter care and exit the sys­tem with­out a per­ma­nent family.

About 19,000 young peo­ple age out of the U.S. fos­ter care sys­tem each year. It’s a chal­leng­ing start­ing point and one that, accord­ing to researchers, can car­ry life­long consequences.

What Are the Effects of Youth Who Age Out of Fos­ter Care?

The tran­si­tion to adult­hood is a sig­nif­i­cant and chal­leng­ing devel­op­men­tal phase of life for all young peo­ple, but eman­ci­pat­ed youth must endure this phase with­out the sup­port of a lov­ing fam­i­ly and absent the famil­iar sup­ports of the fos­ter care sys­tem. For too many, the road ahead is far from easy. Com­pared to their gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion peers, young peo­ple who have aged out of fos­ter care are more like­ly to expe­ri­ence behav­ioral, men­tal and phys­i­cal health issues. They are also more like­ly to endure chal­lenges, such as:

• hous­ing instability; 
• job­less­ness; 
• aca­d­e­m­ic difficulties; 
• ear­ly par­ent­hood; and
• sub­stance use.

Learn about some of the risks fac­ing young peo­ple who have aged out of fos­ter care

Hous­ing Instability

The link between home­less­ness and fos­ter care is so well-defined that some peo­ple have called the child wel­fare sys­tem ​“a high­way to home­less­ness,” accord­ing to Nation­al Fos­ter Youth Insti­tute. Con­sid­er the data:

• Fifty per­cent of the home­less population has spent time in fos­ter care.
• Twen­ty-five per­cent of youth who had been in fos­ter care at age 17 and sur­veyed at age 21 said that they had been home­less at some point in the last two years. 
• Eleven per­cent to 36% of young peo­ple aging out of fos­ter care become home­less dur­ing the tran­si­tion to adult­hood. This is sub­stan­tial­ly high­er than the 4% of young adults (ages 18 to 26) who have report­ed ever being home­less, per the Nation­al Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Study of Ado­les­cent Health.

Home­less­ness is often accom­pa­nied by oth­er chal­lenges, too. For exam­ple: Com­pared to their sta­bly housed peers, young peo­ple who are home­less — even those who have not spent a day in fos­ter care — are more like­ly to exit school ear­ly, be unem­ployed and face men­tal and phys­i­cal health challenges.

Aca­d­e­m­ic Difficulties

Young peo­ple in fos­ter care are also more like­ly than their peers to expe­ri­ence dis­rup­tions in their edu­ca­tion, accord­ing to child wel­fare experts. These dis­rup­tions can be dri­ven by chang­ing fos­ter care place­ments, chang­ing schools fre­quent­ly or by grap­pling with the emo­tion­al trau­ma and stress of their circumstances.

Such insta­bil­i­ty comes at a cost. Nation­wide, kids in fos­ter care are more like­ly to strug­gle aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly. They also grad­u­ate high school lat­er than their peers — and are less like­ly to grad­u­ate at all. For example:

• One study of 17-year-olds in fos­ter care found that their aver­age read­ing score cor­re­spond­ed to read­ing at a sev­enth-grade lev­el.
• About 87% of all pub­lic high school stu­dents grad­u­ate in four years, typ­i­cal­ly at the age of 17 or 18 years old. By com­par­i­son, just 71% of youth who were in fos­ter care at age 17 had earned their high school diplo­ma or GED by age 21 (only 2% had earned an associate’s degree; zero had earned a bachelor’s degree or higher).
• Twen­ty per­cent of youth who were in fos­ter care at 17 and sur­veyed at age 21 had not earned an edu­ca­tion­al degree, diplo­ma, cer­tifi­cate or license of any kind, accord­ing to the KIDS COUNT^® Data Cen­ter.

Ear­ly Parenthood

Young peo­ple with fos­ter care expe­ri­ence are more like­ly to become ear­ly par­ents rel­a­tive to their gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion peers. Among young adults who were in fos­ter care at age 17 and sur­veyed at age 21, 22% had wel­comed a child in the last two years. By com­par­i­son, just 6% of the nation’s young adults, ages 18 to 24, are par­ents, accord­ing to the lat­est KIDS COUNT data.

Legal Sys­tem Involvement

The link between fos­ter care and legal sys­tem involve­ment is strong. Con­sid­er the data on this connection:

• Six­teen per­cent of youth who were in fos­ter care at age 17 and sur­veyed at age 21 had been incar­cer­at­ed in the last two years, accord­ing to the lat­est KIDS COUNT data.
• Eigh­teen per­cent of state pris­on­ers and 9% of fed­er­al pris­on­ers have spent time in a fos­ter home, agency or insti­tu­tion, accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Justice. 

Being incar­cer­at­ed has life­long con­se­quences. Legal sys­tem involve­ment reduces an individual’s like­li­hood of earn­ing an edu­ca­tion­al degree, hold­ing a steady job or even earn­ing ade­quate wages rel­a­tive to indi­vid­u­als who have not crossed paths with the legal system. 

Sub­stance Use 

Drug and alco­hol use is more com­mon among ado­les­cents with fos­ter care expe­ri­ence. A study pub­lished by the Jour­nal of Ado­les­cent Health notes that youth in fos­ter care are ​“slight­ly more like­ly” to use alco­hol when com­pared to youth with­out time in fos­ter care. The same study describes youth in care as two times more like­ly to engage in illic­it drug use, five times more like­ly to be drug-depen­dent and up to four times more like­ly to have oth­er sub­stance use disorders.

Unem­ploy­ment

The road to adult­hood includes gain­ing paid work expe­ri­ence as well as devel­op­ing finan­cial inde­pen­dence and rela­tion­al skills. Yet, many who age out of fos­ter care strug­gle with unem­ploy­ment — and earn low­er wages — rel­a­tive to their gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion peers.

For exam­ple:

• Just 56% of youth who were in fos­ter care at age 17 were cur­rent­ly employed part- or full-time at age 21, accord­ing to the lat­est KIDS COUNT data. 
• By age 24, youth who had aged out of fos­ter care report­ed aver­age month­ly earn­ings of $690 in Cal­i­for­nia, $575 in Min­neso­ta and $450 in North Car­oli­na. By com­par­i­son, youth nation­al­ly report­ed sub­stan­tial­ly high­er aver­age month­ly earn­ings at $1,535, per a 2008 study by the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices.

Sta­tis­tics on Aging Out of Fos­ter Care

Researchers con­tin­ue to study out­comes relat­ed to kids aging out of fos­ter care. The U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices pub­lish­es an annu­al report to con­gress called Child Wel­fare Out­comes. The department’s most recent report shares data from 2022 col­lect­ed across all 50 states as well as Puer­to Rico and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia. Its find­ings include: 

• Nation­wide, 9% of chil­dren who exit­ed fos­ter care — 18,538 youth total — did so through emancipation. 
• Kids who enter fos­ter care at age 12 or younger are less like­ly to age out of the sys­tem (just 16.5% eman­ci­pate) ver­sus kids who enter fos­ter care after turn­ing 12 (83.5% emancipate).
• Four states had more than 1,000 chil­dren age out of their fos­ter care sys­tems in just one year. Cal­i­for­nia had the most (2,887 eman­ci­pa­tions) fol­lowed by Ohio (1,328 eman­ci­pa­tions), New York, (1,321) and Texas (1,041).
• Three states report­ed few­er than 20 kids eman­ci­pat­ing from fos­ter care in just one year. Puer­to Rico had just one child do so, fol­lowed by 12 chil­dren in Wyoming and 14 chil­dren in Maine. 
• More chil­dren were in fos­ter care on the first day of the year (383,257 kids on Jan. 1) rel­a­tive to the final day of the year (368,529 kids on Dec. 31).

How to Help Youth Aging out of Fos­ter Care

Child Wel­fare Edu­ca­tion Gate­way has pub­lished a report aimed at help­ing fos­ter par­ents sup­port young peo­ple who are tran­si­tion­ing out of care. This guid­ance includes help­ing youth:

• open and man­age check­ing and sav­ings accounts;
• explore var­i­ous edu­ca­tion­al or voca­tion­al options;
• col­lect and orga­nize per­son­al doc­u­ments, such as a Social Secu­ri­ty card, birth cer­tifi­cate, cit­i­zen­ship papers and school transcripts;
• nur­ture peer net­works by par­tic­i­pat­ing in group activ­i­ties with oth­er youth who share their expe­ri­ences and interests;
• under­stand how to file tax­es and main­tain a good cred­it score; and
• deter­mine if they are eli­gi­ble for cer­tain tuition waivers, finan­cial aid options or edu­ca­tion­al and train­ing vouch­ers based on their involve­ment in fos­ter care.

Expand­ing Fos­ter Care Sup­port Beyond Age 18

Anoth­er way to help youth approach­ing adult­hood is to con­firm whether or not they are eli­gi­ble for extend­ed fos­ter care sup­port. Con­tin­u­ing fos­ter care ser­vices beyond age 18 is asso­ci­at­ed with a num­ber of ben­e­fits, accord­ing to Chapin Hall researchers. For exam­ple: Each addi­tion­al year in extend­ed care trans­lates to a young per­son being more like­ly to: earn a high school cre­den­tial, be employed, enroll in col­lege, grow their earn­ings and have a social sup­port sys­tem in place. At the same time, each year in extend­ed fos­ter care saw a young per­son low­er their risk of being arrest­ed or strug­gling with food inse­cu­ri­ty and hous­ing instability.

The Fed­er­al Fos­ter­ing Con­nec­tions to Suc­cess and Increas­ing Adop­tions Act of 2008 enabled states to be reim­bursed for some of the costs asso­ci­at­ed with extend­ing fos­ter care sup­port beyond age 18. As a con­di­tion of this exten­sion, youth must be work­ing, advanc­ing their edu­ca­tion, build­ing voca­tion­al skills or be con­firmed as unfit for work or school. Help­ing young peo­ple under­stand these eli­gi­bil­i­ty require­ments, which can vary by state, is key.

Nation­wide, 48 states as well as the Dis­trict of Colum­bia offer some type of extend­ed fos­ter care sup­port beyond age 18, accord­ing to a 2022 report by Child Wel­fare Infor­ma­tion Gate­way. In many cas­es, this sup­port can con­tin­ue until age 21 and may take a vari­ety of forms, such as: stay­ing in fos­ter care, liv­ing inde­pen­dent­ly with super­vi­sion or receiv­ing tran­si­tion­al liv­ing ser­vices. In 33 states, youth who age out of fos­ter care at 18 may request, at any time, resumé sup­port through fos­ter care until age 21.

Employ­ing Inno­v­a­tive Solu­tions to Sup­port Youth Exit­ing Care 

Child wel­fare lead­ers are also increas­ing­ly pio­neer­ing pro­grams and pilots in an effort to improve out­comes for eman­ci­pat­ed youth. Some of these inno­v­a­tive ideas include:

SOUL Fam­i­ly

In 2024, Kansas became the first state in the nation to pass leg­is­la­tion rec­og­niz­ing a new legal per­ma­nen­cy option — called SOUL Fam­i­ly — for old­er youth in fos­ter care. Intend­ed for youth ages 16 and old­er, this option enables youth to for­mal­ize a legal con­nec­tion to at least one car­ing adult while also main­tain­ing their fos­ter care ben­e­fits and their legal ties to birth family.

Learn more about the SOUL Fam­i­ly concept

Foun­da­tions for the Future Guar­an­teed Income Pilot

In late 2023, California’s San Fran­cis­co Human Ser­vices Agency launched Foun­da­tions for the Future, a guar­an­teed income pilot pro­gram for young peo­ple who have aged out of fos­ter care. Under the pro­gram, young adults will receive uncon­di­tion­al, reg­u­lar cash pay­ments of $1,200 a month as well as addi­tion­al sup­port­ive ser­vices — such as finan­cial lit­er­a­cy coach­ing and ben­e­fits coun­sel­ing — for 18 months.

Research teams will eval­u­ate the pilot to estab­lish its impact on the edu­ca­tion­al tra­jec­to­ries, earn­ings, hous­ing sta­bil­i­ty and well-being of the for­mer fos­ter youth involved.

Fos­ter­ing High­er Education

The Fos­ter­ing High­er Edu­ca­tion mod­el aims to help youth with fos­ter care expe­ri­ence both access and suc­ceed in high­er edu­ca­tion. The mod­el con­nects high-school juniors and seniors with tar­get­ed help — such as an edu­ca­tion advo­cate, oppor­tu­ni­ties for men­tor­ship and a spe­cial­ized cur­ricu­lum — to help them make the leap to college.

An ear­ly study eval­u­at­ing the impact of the Fos­ter­ing High­er Edu­ca­tion mod­el found that enrolled stu­dents ​“expe­ri­enced notable reduc­tions in per­ceived bar­ri­ers to edu­ca­tion” and ​“made sub­stan­tial gains in par­tic­i­pat­ing in post-sec­ondary prepa­ra­tion tasks” when com­pared to the con­trol group. 

Read about the col­lege readi­ness mod­el pilot­ed by Jim Casey Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Ini­tia­tive^® sites

Explore more child wel­fare and fos­ter care statistics