Yet another report tells us that supporting foster children beyond their 19th birthday would pay off in the long run, in both human and fiscal terms.
The latest report was commissioned by the Vancouver Foundation, the Fostering Change campaign and the Simon Fraser University School of Public Policy. Called Opportunities in Transition: An Economic Analysis of Investing in Youth Aging out of Foster Care, the report says the cost of supporting foster children in B.C. for six additional years would be about $99,000 for each person, but the benefits would far outweigh the cost.
Striking out on your own in the adult world is difficult enough for a person from a stable, supportive family. Many young people depend on their parents for financial and emotional help, which helps them extend the transition period until they can cope on their own.
For youth leaving foster care, the transition is abrupt. At the age of 19, they lose their social workers and government support for housing and expenses.
That can be — and too often is — traumatic, and in recent years, several young people have taken their own lives soon after “aging out” of the system. For most of the rest, life continues to be difficult. Fewer than a third graduate from high school, compared to 84 per cent for the rest of the population. An even lower number go on to post-secondary education; many survive on low-paying jobs or rely on social assistance.
They face high rates of poverty, addiction, homelessness and incarceration. They tend to experience much poorer health than the general population.
“The costs of adverse outcomes for youth aging out of care are very high — between $222 and $268 million for the cohort of 1,000 youth aging out each year — plus significant intangible costs,” says the report written by SFU economist Marvin Shaffer and family-policy researcher Lynell Anderson.
The report proposes extending support to B.C. foster children up to their 25th birthdays at a cost of about $15,000 a year for 19-year-olds. That support would gradually taper off as the young people become more capable of supporting themselves.
That echoes two 2014 reports, one delivered to the legislature by children and youth representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond.
“Few parents … would mark their son or daughter’s 19th birthday by walking them to the front door of the family home, shaking their hand, wishing them good luck and then ushering them outside,” Turpel-Lafond said.
“But that’s essentially what happens to many youth in the care of B.C.’s Ministry of Children and Family Development.”
The other report, prepared by a team from the University of Victoria School of Social Work, came to similar conclusions. The UVic report noted that the Ministry of Children and Family Development offers an array of adult services when youth leave foster care, but it means tangling with a confusing system, a challenge to most people and a near-impossibility for vulnerable youth.
Young people leaving foster care have already had to wrestle with huge disadvantages. Those disadvantages tend to multiply when they are cast adrift, and the cost to society is high in so many ways.
An Ontario study that examined extending support to youth in care from age 21 to 25 suggested that for every $1 spent, the government would save or have returned in income taxes $1.36 over each person’s lifetime.
It’s not about saving dollars, though; it’s about saving lives.
