Today’s Guest Blogger is Micheline Mutombo Floyd Harris.

I extracted my article entitled Foster Youth Perceptions on Educational Well-Being from the Families in Society Journal. The article was published in 2015, and focuses on the educational disparities between foster care youth and youth in kinship care in the state of Vermont. The article highlights school mobility as the primary cause of low academic achievements of youth in out-of-home placement. However, this essay is an unprecedented study involving foster care youth’s shared experiences and perspectives on their involvement in education results as it relates to influencing policies and practices aiming to improve their educational well-being.

The article’s main strength emphasizes the grassroots study approach, which highlights foster youth’s engagement in a research project about themselves. Students make the claim that they need greater support in their education and that school mobility disrupts their ability to perform adequately and to build healthy relationships. In this article, the youth are given a voice and an opportunity to make social changes. The article also provides a link to an eighteen-minute film called “No Decision About Me Without Me: School Stories of Youth in Custody” that addresses youth’s thoughts about being continuously displaced. The article also establishes convincing data evidence justifying the serious concern regarding the educational outcomes of youth in foster care: “Over a six and a half year period, youth reported changing foster placements more than seven times and changing schools more than eight times.” Lastly, the article describes the necessity for youth’s participation in research projects in order to receive funding to support youth programs.

In contrast, the article has its limitations. Unfortunately, it perpetuates myths about permanency and adoption as they are not mentioned as potential solutions to resolve youth’s school mobility issues. The article contributes to the belief that youth between the ages of 15 to 21 are unadoptable. In actuality youth ages 18 to 21 can decide to remain in foster care (if they choose to) (MN Department of Human Services, 2010). Research has shown that in the face of adversity, humans can display a capacity for resilience. Foster youth can perform academically as well as youth in kinship care. Finally, though the article provides an attention-grabbing topic, only 102 foster youth participated in the study survey; the sample is not representative of all foster youth in the state of Vermont.

Nevertheless, the article is relevant to the general population considering the current political climate of the child welfare system nationwide. The two things people can take away from the article are: 1) the foster care youth’s perspectives on the challenges they face in their education, and 2) youth in foster care need housing stability in their lives. The Fostering Connections Act offers “assurances that the placement of the child in foster care takes into account the current educational setting and proximity to the school; an assurance that the state agency has coordinated with local educational agencies to ensure the child remains in school.” There are great policies in place, but there can be challenges to following them.

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