Foster Youths Find Hard Times Don’t End at 18

Robbie Jenkinson doesn’t remember much about his childhood.

But he recalls the mobile home he lived in with his drug-addicted mother. Night after night he curled up on the urine-stained carpet under his bed when his mother left him alone to go out and get high. Sometimes he heard banging on the front door. Frightened of the drug dealers and ex-boyfriends who controlled his mother’s life, Robbie didn’t even leave his hiding place to go to the bathroom.

After that came the foster homes. Seven in seven years. Some of the foster families were good, some not so good. As he had done in the mobile home, he crouched in the shadows of the foster family lives until each of them had gone.

It was a long, terrifying journey, and it’s not over.

Next month Robbie celebrates his 18th birthday. In June he will graduate from Rio Mesa High School in Oxnard. The day after graduation he will pack up his skateboard and his supermodel posters and leave the only family he has known.

Officially, what is happening to Robbie is called emancipation. To Robbie, it feels like abandonment--one more time.

“I’m nervous,” said Robbie, a muscular, shy youth who avoids eye contact when he talks. “I’ve always had somewhere to go in foster care and now they’re just kind of like putting me out there. I’ll be on my own and have to find my own place and make my own decisions.”

Unlike kids from more stable homes, who usually can’t wait to get out on their own, foster teens rarely celebrate their freedom. When they turn 18, they have to leave their foster homes, often with no money, no job and no place to live. And few skills to get any of those things.

But that is changing. Last year a social service agency, Interface Children Family Services, opened supervised apartments in Thousand Oaks to foster teens about to leave the system in an effort to smooth the transition to independence.

This year the agency received $90,000 in new state funding, which it will use to offer classes for recently emancipated youths on how to do such things as balance a checkbook and shop. The rest of the money will be used to track down former foster youths, find out how they are doing and offer them help if they are in trouble.

On a broader scale, the Interface outreach program coincides with an unprecedented three-year study by the California Department of Social Services and UCLA, which will track hundreds of foster children once they leave the system. State officials say they now have no way of knowing what happens to the youths after emancipation.

However, there are strong indications many foster children replicate the chaos of their early lives when they become adults.

Several years ago UC Berkeley professor Richard Barth interviewed 55 young adults who had been in foster care in the Bay Area.

Although 75% of the youths were employed, 53% said they had serious financial problems since leaving foster care. And one-third received money through illegal activity, such as prostitution or drug sales.

Barth also found foster youths had a substantially higher incidence of drug use and criminal activity. More than half--56%--reported using drugs during and after foster care. More than one-third--36%--were arrested while in foster care, 31% had been arrested since and 26% had spent time in jail.

The foster youths Barth interviewed also reported having trouble settling down. Nearly 30% said they had either been homeless or moved as often as weekly.

“When it’s time to go, they have nowhere to go,” said Rhonda Neumann, who heads youth development for Interface in Camarillo. Some overcome obstacles and get jobs, join the military or go to college. But a number of foster youths in Ventura County have ended up homeless or in jail.

“They’ve been living in a system that prepared them for living in a system,” she said.

There are about 450 children in the Ventura County foster care system. Pulled from dysfunctional families, the priority has been finding them a safe home where they are fed and clothed each day.

Too often, however, the basic essentials are all these children get. Living with strangers who either feel sorry for them or mistrust them, they are given few responsibilities and allowed to make few decisions on their own.

The crisis comes when the foster teens “age out.” That occurs when they turn 18, unless they are in high school full time, in which case they can stay in care until age 19. In Ventura County, about 30 youths age out each year.

“If you don’t have that support, the deck is really stacked against you,” said Terry Warnock, chief deputy probation officer in Ventura County.

Michelle Evans left foster care in October 1997. Being on her own is harder than she imagined, she conceded one evening as she sat curled up on the couch in her Ventura apartment. Her neatly trimmed black hair fell against her round face and a black tank top exposed several tattoos.

After leaving the system she worked as a stripper and took drugs. But after awhile she decided she didn’t want to end up a “bum or a junkie,” and got a job as a waitress, then a bank teller. Now 19, she works at a marketing research company.

Basic Survival Skills Key to Later Success

Even though her life is on track, things are still hard. She has trouble paying for food and rent. “Nobody could ever prepare you for the pain and what it’s really like when you’re out,” she said.

Things began to change for foster teens after a New York boy formerly in foster care became homeless and his plight was exposed in a nationally publicized story. States began to devote more attention to making sure the youths learned basic survival skills before going out on their own.

In 1989 Ventura County began offering independent living classes to its foster youths 15 to 18 years old. The eight-week classes teach money management, how to use public transportation, how to get and keep jobs and find apartments.

This summer Interface will extend those classes to former foster youths until they reach age 21.

At a recent class the anxiety was palpable as 20 students seated in a circle at the agency’s Ventura office spoke about their plans after they leave foster care. Seven said they want to go to college and two want a job. Others said they plan to get their own places or go home to their parents. One said he just wants to “live life one day at a time.”

Interface hopes its transitional housing program will make the transition to independent living smoother. The program allows foster youths, ages 17 to 19, to live in paid-for apartments.

There are firm rules. The teens must check in and out, abide by a 10 p.m. curfew, attend school and hold a job. Every friend that visits must be introduced to the project manager. Drinking, smoking, drugs and overnight visitors are not allowed.

The apartments conjure images of college dorm life. Frozen pizzas, burritos and microwave dinners crammed the freezer in a two-bedroom unit occupied by two teenage boys. In one bedroom, empty soda cans and dirty dishes covered a faded wood end table next to an unmade bed.

“Rules kind of suck but it’s a lot more freedom,” one of the boys said.

Down the hall, two girls shared an apartment that smelled sweetly of dried flowers and scented candles. The girls’ neat bedrooms were filled with stuffed dolls, framed photographs, glow-in-the-dark stars and posters of rap artists.

Similar experiments in independent living have taken hold across the state. Studies show such arrangements save the state money. A teen in transitional housing costs the state a little more than $2,000 per month, while the cost of housing a teen in residential treatment or a group home can run from $2,800 to $5,500 monthly.

Some of the Interface teens struggle with independence after living in group homes where even cleaning products are locked in cabinets. One boy got back into drugs and landed in Juvenile Hall. Another girl was sent back to a group home after her boyfriend spent the night in her apartment.

But Neumann said most are better prepared for adulthood.

Teen Rejoices in His New ‘Total Freedom’

Jonathan Doyle is the first teen to “graduate” from Ventura County’s transitional apartments. “It was so rad to go from being totally restricted to having total freedom,” said Doyle, 19.

“I was never able to go to the bathroom or go into the kitchen without asking, so it was a total trip.”

Even after the experiment in freedom, the real world has been a test for Doyle, a tall, chunky teen who wears a wrinkled bandanna over his hair and sideburns.

In June, Doyle was arrested on suspicion of assault. He said he was playing around with a friend and accidentally broke the friend’s jaw. The only way he knew to solve problems in foster care was by fighting. Now he is learning to walk away.

“It always scares me that I could go to jail,” Doyle said. He knows it could happen “if I make the wrong choice in a split second, if I go off and hit someone who pisses me off, if I do something stupid.”

Doyle now lives with his 30-year-old girlfriend and her three children in Simi Valley, and he works construction full time. He said he wants to stay out of trouble so he can go to college.

Along with the transitional housing programs and the ambitious research efforts to track foster kids, advocacy groups are proposing legislation to give the emancipated teens an even better shot at success in the adult world.

California Youth Connections of San Francisco, made up of current and former foster youths, has sponsored three bills since January.

One would provide former foster youths with financial assistance up to $6,000 per year for room and board while they attend college. Currently in Ventura County, foster kids who attend college are eligible for scholarships up to $1,000.

Program director Diana Caskey estimates that about one-third of Ventura County’s foster clients go to college.

Another bill would extend Medi-Cal benefits to age 22. The last would allow foster teens to remain in the system until they complete high school, even if they are older than 19.

Richard Shah, who works in the county’s Human Services Agency, said the typical youth leaves home at age 25 or 26, but the state forces foster youths out at 18, even if foster parents want to keep them.

“These are the kids who have had the biggest problems and the hardest lives, and most don’t have support, or family to turn to,” Shah said. “There is a critical need and continuing education funding for these kids. They can’t work at McDonalds and survive.”

Robbie plans to join the Navy after graduation. Initially, enlisting was more his foster mother’s idea than his. But now Robbie is excited about being in the military. That way, he reasons, he won’t be totally on his own.

Leaving Foster Mother a Difficult Prospect

“They give you training, food, a place to live and they pay for your college,” he said. “And you can travel.”

Although he has somewhere to go, Robbie still doesn’t want to leave his foster mother, Susie Miller. “She’s the only mom I ever really had,” he said.

“How can you kick your kid out and say, ‘See ya’?” said Miller, who has been a foster parent for more than 150 children over the past 18 years. “It sets them up for failure. Some kids make it, but a lot of them fail. I’m not gonna let that happen to Robbie.”

Miller says she hopes to adopt Robbie.

In the meantime, Robbie has been doing everything he can to prepare for emancipation. A few months ago he quit the wrestling team to get a job at McDonalds so he would have some money when he left foster care. Foster kids can save up to $5,000, but most leave with only a few hundred dollars.

One afternoon he rode his skateboard to work to pick up his $137 paycheck, which he immediately handed over to Miller for safekeeping. Standing over an afternoon snack in the kitchen, Miller told Robbie he needed to save more. She was concerned because he had spent a lot of his last paycheck on roses for his girlfriend.

“Who else got a rose?” he teased.

Miller smiled, and answered, “I did. Robbie bought me a rose too.”

With only a few months left, Robbie said he is nervous about leaving. But he thinks he will be all right.

“When June comes around, I’ll have no one to look to but myself,” he said. “I’ve coped with the past, so I’m guessing I can cope with it. But I know I’ll have a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders.”

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How to Help:

Interface Children Family Services provides prevention, intervention, education, counseling, treatment and emergency shelters to children, teens and families throughout Ventura County.

The agency is looking for donations of movie passes and tickets to sporting and cultural events, as well as furniture, linens, towels, blankets and other household items to be used in transitional apartments for foster teens who become 18 and leave the system.

Adult volunteers are also needed to serve as mentors for foster youth moving into adulthood.

If you need help, call (800) 339-9597. If you would like to help, call 485-6114.