Not Ready to Go It Alone

In the basement of D.C. Superior Court, Magistrate Judge Juliet McKenna sits next to Tiffany, a 19-year-old ward of the foster-care system.

"How about H&M?" McKenna asks. "It's a hip store and easy to get to."

Tiffany's lawyer, social worker, "life skills" coach and an attorney representing D.C. Child and Family Services are at the table while McKenna goes over the list of stores accepting city clothing vouchers.

Given the challenges facing the District's child welfare system, clothes may seem an unorthodox subject for the court, but for Tiffany, who lives in a world that often overlooks such practicalities, the discussion is long overdue.

During the past seven years Tiffany has been in 12 foster-care placements, in a psychiatric hospital for six months and in a group home with "too many personalities and too many rules." For the past year Tiffany has lived on her own under city supervision in what is known as an alternative planned permanent living arrangement.

Yet Tiffany's situation is anything but permanent. Each year about 100 of the 673 young people in the District's independent living program "age out" of foster care at age 21. While some take advantage of agency services and some of college, too many find themselves without the money, job skills or family connections to succeed. While many young Americans are living at home longer -- 56 percent of men and 43 percent of women between the ages 18 and 24 live with their parents -- former foster youth have no such safety net.

A new program designed to ease the transition between foster care and adulthood is the D.C. family court's Benchmark Permanency Program. " 'What do you want to do with your life?' takes on new meaning when you're going to be on your own in a few years," explains McKenna, the program's founder.

With the help of social workers, lawyers and community organizations, Benchmark hearings are guided by a signed agreement between the court and the young people that lays out the steps needed to maximize foster care services. The court also asks the young people to involve a trusted adult.

But sometimes, McKenna admits, a good mentor is hard to find. In a city packed with talented politicians, professionals and world-class thinkers, how is this possible?

Well, D.C. Child and Family Services needs to do a better job of facilitating mentoring opportunities. That means providing training and supervision to mentors and making sure that young people are paired with responsible adults who will stick with them. It also means better coordination with Benchmark and other projects that reach these young people.

Just as parents don't stop being parents when a child turns 21, the agency should consider providing affordable health care, especially mental health treatment, to young people in the first five years after they leave foster care. Although expanding these services would require more funding, the investment would help create stable and employed young people.

Until the city pays more attention to the needs of these young people, it will continue to emancipate them from foster care only to leave them trapped in lives of limited possibilities.