Bringing Awareness to College-Going Foster Youth: A National Campaign

• In Event: Visual and Audio-Based Media as a Research Technique to Explore Issues of Equity and Social Justice

Abstract

In light of national efforts to improve college access for historically minoritized groups, colleges and universities have seen increased enrollment among young people with experience in foster care. Although approximately 20,000 young people age out of the foster care system each year, their college enrollment rates are significantly lower compared to their non-foster care peers (Watt, Norton & Jones, 2013). A growing number of federal policies and programs, such as the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 and the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program, seek to increase college enrollment and completion among this population. In this video demonstration, I call attention to the need for a national campaign across various stakeholders—including child welfare services, K-12 education, and higher education—to improve college access and completion among college-going foster youth.

For college-going foster youth to be most successful in their postsecondary experience, they need access to numerous basic needs and resources. Goldrick-Rab, Richardson, and Hernandez (2017) define basic needs and insecurities as essential life necessities students need for survival (e.g., housing and food). They define housing insecurities as the “inability to pay rent or utilities or the need to move frequently, and/or homelessness; residing in a shelter, an automobile, an abandoned building or outside.” Food insecurities consist of “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the ability to acquire such foods in a socially acceptable manner”. Goldrick-Rab and colleagues work in California concluded that 20% - 40% of students encountered food insecurities and as high as 50 % of students were dealing with housing insecurities; 30% of them having been identified as foster care alumni. A particular aim of the documentary is to highlight the insecurity of basic needs among students with a history of foster care. The documentary presentation highlights broader basic needs and insecurities, such as transportation, clothing, financial literacy and empowerment, counseling services, health care services, safe spaces, and access to positive role models and mentors.

There is an increasing amount of scholarship emphasizing the numerous barriers and challenges faced by this emerging student population (Amechi, 2016; Batsche, Hart, Ort, Armstrong, Strozier & Hummer, 2014). Foster youth (and alumni of the foster care system) often have varying levels of family privilege compared to their non-foster care peers in college. Seita (2005) defines family privilege as, “benefits, mostly invisible, that come from membership in a stable family.” Furthermore, foster youth often face other complex obstacles including, but not limited to mental health concerns, poor K - 12 education experiences, and fewer financial resources for postsecondary education (Cochrane and Szabo-Kubitz, 2009; Geenen, Powers, Phillips, Nelson, McKenna, Winges-Yanez, Blanchette, Croskey, Dalton, Salazar & Swank, 2015). These students navigate complex systems to access and achieve success in higher education without little acknowledgment or understanding by institutions of the barriers they may face in pursuit of postsecondary education. The documentary includes first-hand insight of higher education scholars and practitioners working to rectify the issues and concerns faced by college-going foster youth.

Author

• Mauriell H. Amechi, Foster Youth Empowered