IOWA

Gov. Tom Vilsack signs the law to extend state foster care support for qualifying youths between the ages of 18 and 21.

New law a lifesaver for foster kids who turn 18

Randy Merrick lives alone. He's 18. He has sized up the homeless shelter, figuring he might have to crash there at some point. "I feel that I'm on my own a lot," said Merrick, who entered the foster care system at age 11 because his mother had a drug problem and couldn't care for him. "I'm OK with it, but I wish it wasn't like this: nobody to talk to, nobody to live with you, the constant thinking where you'd be if you hadn't gone through what you went through."

Like all foster youths who are neither adopted nor reunited with their birth families by the time they reach their 18th birthday, Merrick aged out of the system this spring, and he was no longer eligible for state foster care support. But after he heard about a pending state law that extends that support until age 21, he scraped together the $475 deposit for an apartment on Ingersoll Avenue and assured the landlord the state would pay his rent. "It's a relief," Merrick said of the new law, which offers a stipend of up to $540 a month for living expenses.

Gov. Tom Vilsack signed legislation for the Preparation for Adult Living program into law Friday. Youths must work or go to school full time, and they can't live with the parents from whom they'd been removed. Iowa's plan is one of the top five best in the nation, said Gary Stangler, executive director of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative, a national foundation that helps youth in foster care transition to adulthood. About 17 states offer financial assistance to youths who age out of foster care, and about a dozen states extend Medicaid coverage until age 21. Iowa is now one of only a handful that offers both, Stangler said. About 550 foster youths turn 18 every year in Iowa, and are at real risk of all sorts of bad outcomes as they struggle to stay in school, find housing and medical care, and try to support themselves, said Roger Munns, a spokesman for the state Department of Human Services.

Kids who aged out in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin fared sharply worse than the rest of the population their age, according to a study released last year by Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. They're three times more likely to experience mental health and substance abuse problems, and almost 14 percent had been homeless once in their first year after foster care. Merrick, who lived with two foster families and in a youth shelter three times, said the worst part was missing family traditions. When he turned 12 in a youth shelter, there was a little party where the kids played some kickball, but there was no cake. Last year, he missed his sister's high school graduation in Huxley because he didn't know when it was. "It's like living in a box," he said. "You don't know what's going to happen next."

One thing goes with him everywhere he moves: a photograph of his grandmother. She died when he was 11. Just before Merrick left the foster system, he was assigned a counselor at Youth Homes of Mid-America. He leans on her for advice, talking as much as twice a day. He buys his own groceries with cash he earns working at Burger King for $6.50 an hour and doing security at an events center for $7 an hour.

Des Moines resident Kim Wright is already 21 and isn't eligible for the new Iowa program. When she aged out, she went straight back to her mother. She said it was hard to find someone willing to rent to an 18-year-old. She ended up renting a room in a church friend's home. She married, then divorced. She got into debt on some bills. "I didn't get the living skills children get from their regular parents," said Wright, who entered the foster care system at age 16 and now lives with her toddler son in the Oakridge apartments. "I didn't know how to do laundry on my own, how to handle bills, how to budget money. I just got out here and it's like, 'I know I have to do it so let's take a crash course.' " If Iowa foster youths choose not to participate when they turn 18, they can change their minds, as long as they have not turned 21.

Jennifer Jacobs
3 June 2006

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060603/NEWS08/606030342/1010

home / Previous feature