Peers Prepare Teens for Life After Foster Care

All things considered, Mike McKenzie was one of the lucky ones. He had bounced around the foster care system since infancy.

Finally, when he was 14, he was put in the care of the man who became his father, Pete McKenzie, 72, of San Clemente. In that household, with five brothers, two others from foster care, he became a permanent part of a family, with a role model whom he credits for shaping him into the person he is today.

“He was exactly what I needed,” McKenzie said of his dad. “I don’t know what I would be in life without having him in it.”

McKenzie, now 31, says his father’s willingness to take in abused youngsters and nurture them is a big reason he became a volunteer and then an employee of the Orangewood Children’s Foundation, eventually co-founding the Peer Orangewood Support Team, which prepares teenage foster children to enter the world as adults.

“He was responsible for sending me to a boys camp when I was 15, and ever since that experience, I’ve had a desire to work with kids.”

The fact is, however, tat not every foster child is adopted, and those youngsters can often leave the system saddled with problems related to self-esteem and relationship-building.

The peer support program received $15,000 this season from the Los Angeles Times Holiday Campaign, which raises money for nonprofit organizations in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

The grant will go toward employing former foster children as mentors and as teachers.

“There isn’t much of a safety net for foster youth after they exit foster care,” McKenzie said.

The support program relies on the experiences of former foster children.

They know all too well how challenging life outside the foster care system can be if the newly emancipated youth is unprepared, McKenzie said.

The mentors, who conduct discussions and about 130 workshops on independent living skills throughout the year, are all former foster children. They are college graduates, doctors, therapists, teachers, businesspeople and workers in the nonprofit arena, McKenzie said.

Over the last 10 years, 100 former foster children have served as mentors in the support program, he said. At any one time there may be about 25 working with the young people, ages 16 to 21.

Even though foster children leave the system at 18, Orangewood allows them to participate in the support program until they are 21 to help them succeed in the outside world.

“The peer mentors are one of my favorite groups of people,” McKenzie said, “because of their ability to give back And they give a tremendous amount back to the foundation in terms of their time, sharing their own stories.”

What makes them especially valuable, he said, is that they are living proof that even though the youngsters are reeling from self-doubt as they approach the age of emancipation, they can say with confidence, “Yes, you are going through a hard time, but you have a lot of potential, and you’re going to make it.”

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