Foster Care to Streets: A Beaten Path, Study Finds : Fewer runaway youths elect to return home and more are escaping severe problems there, such as drug or sexual abuse.

A nationwide study of runaway youths has found that more than a third had been in foster care in the year before they took to the streets. In California, the percentage was even higher, topping the nation with 45% saying they had been in foster care in the last 12 months.

Survey director Deborah Bass said these findings were the “most disturbing” to emerge from a study of 170 runaway shelters. The average age of runaways is 15.

More than one out of five youths who arrive at a shelter in the ‘90s come directly from a foster or group home, with 38% nationally saying they had been in foster care at some time during the previous year, the study found.

And in a new phenomenon compared to past surveys, almost 11% of the youths said they were homeless and living on the streets before coming to shelters.

As in previous studies, the ranks of the runaways include children born of prison inmates and victims of child abuse and drug and alcohol abuse.

While their numbers may not necessarily be on the increase, their reasons for running away are more severe than ever before and fewer are electing to go back home, according to the study by the National Assn. of Social Workers.

The study, conducted from January to April, 1991, with a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the first of many now being done on runaways. The last major study, conducted by the department about a decade ago, estimated that 1 million youths run away from home each year.

BACKGROUND: “The study found that these youths are troubled; they’re not running away on a lark. They run away because of physical and sexual abuse at home,” said Lucy Sanchez of the social workers’ group.

Two-thirds of all runaways who seek shelter have been physically or sexually abused by a parent, according to the survey. The rate of abuse reported by the 14 shelters in California was even more alarming than the national average, with 96% of runaway youths reporting abuse by a parent.

About one in four runaway youths in the nationwide survey had experienced violence by other family members.

More than one-third of the runaways surveyed had an alcoholic parent. About a quarter come from homes where at least one parent abuses drugs.

About 25% of the youths were in trouble with the justice system, and 25% admitted to being either an alcoholic or drug abuser themselves.

More than 80% of the shelters reported that the problems faced by runaway youths have changed significantly over the last five years. The most frequently cited changes were:

* More parental drug and alcohol abuse, and more substance abuse among the youths.

* More homeless families and long-term economic problems.

* More mental health and school-related problems.

“It used to be kids ran away from home because of conflict with parents. But today, runaways are coming from families that are dysfunctional,” said an HHS official in Washington. “And from the field the word is that there are more kids on the street, more kids seeking help, more kids turned away, particularly in Southern California.”

About half of the youths who run away go back home. The other half often go to relatives, friends, into foster care, group homes, and in some states to transitional living facilities to help them learn how to live on their own.

IMPACT: A report in the New York State Journal of Medicine in 1989 estimated that “conservatively speaking, there are about 200,000 (street kids)--a subpopulation of the United States that is not even recognized to exist. They are not even counted among the population of the homeless.”

Generally, these youths have little education and few work skills. A significant proportion of the girls arrive at runaway shelters pregnant, and about the same proportion of boys admit to substance abuse. As opposed to 20 years ago, most runaway youths today come from dysfunctional families and many have chronic or severe long-term emotional problems.

Runaways who become street kids are subject to a wide variety of medical problems and health-compromising behaviors including suicide, depression, prostitution and drug use, according to Dr. James T. Kennedy, author of a chapter on “Runaways in Under the Safety Net: the Health and Social Welfare of the Homeless in the United States,” edited by Philip Brickner.

“We knew these kids had a lot of problems, but we were surprised at the percentage that had such long-term problems. We have to question whether the existing programs meet these kids’ needs,” Deborah Bass said. “What it says to me is that we need to do a lot more research about the foster care system and its relationship with shelters.”

Another expert suggested that the ideal answer would be to turn dysfunctional families into functional ones.

“But from our end, the best we can do is catch these kids before they become like their parents,” she said.

“And that’s what’s so striking about the report. Whether we want to face it or not, our foster care facilities are failing. They are not addressing the long-term problems of these kids.”