Texas Puts Up Barriers That Keep Young Adults Out Of Extended Foster Care Programs Designed To Help Them

Illustration above: Illustration of a person sitting on a bench at night. Credit: Christine Ongjoco for The Imprint

BY SANDY WEST AND JEREMY LOUDENBACK, THE IMPRINT FEB. 21, 2023

This story is co-published with The Imprint and is a condensed version of a full article from that outlet.

State and federal laws are supposed to protect foster youth until they turn 21. But Texas all too often erects unnecessarily burdensome hurdles.

In August, an 18-year-old begged her caseworker with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to pick her up from Houston’s downtown bus station and take her somewhere safe.

But the Harris County child welfare worker said she couldn’t help. So the foster youth went home with the bus driver, who offered her one night off the street.

Next, the child welfare agency referred the teen to a domestic violence shelter, where she spent two weeks. And as Christmas approached, the teenager’s attorney, Tara Grigg Green, received another update. With freezing temperatures expected in Houston, her client and her boyfriend were sleeping in a graveyard. On some nights the teenage girl had been sexually exploited in exchange for stays in a hotel.

“We would hear from her sporadically for a few weeks, calling from a different number every time,” said Grigg Green, executive director of the Foster Care Advocacy Center. “But we didn’t have meaningful and reliable contact with her until she was in the graveyard and needed a place to stay.”

In Texas and nationwide, state and federal laws are supposed to protect foster youth until they turn 21, a hedge against rampant homelessness, hunger, sexual exploitation and incarceration. The push to extend foster care beyond age 18 is designed to support teenagers “aging out” of the system who have no adults or family to rely on, providing them with financial assistance, housing and casework support.

But an investigation by The Imprint found that Texas all too often throws up unnecessarily burdensome hurdles and then fails to provide the federal entitlements for housing and basic needs that these older foster youth are owed.

Texas is home to one of the nation’s largest child welfare systems, with roughly 28,000 children in 2021. But it has far fewer young adults in foster care than states with comparably sized child welfare systems, including Illinois, Florida, Ohio and New York.

University of Chicago researcher Mark Courtney, who has spent the bulk of his career studying the well-being of older foster youth, reacted to The Imprint’s findings by saying that extended foster care in Texas appeared to be “very uninviting.”

“It appears the state is either offering very little that youth see as useful to them [or] making it very difficult to stay in [extended foster care],” he said.

“This was preventable”

Numerous studies show that youth who age out of foster care experience higher rates of homelessness, lower educational attainment and more involvement with the criminal justice system than their peers.

The 2008 Fostering Connections Act, aimed to change that trajectory through federal funding to support foster youth ages 18 to 21. There are requirements, however. Participants who cannot show a medical exemption must be in school, working or training for work. They must also make regular court appearances so that judges can confirm their participation. In exchange, states provide housing as well as supportive services to help former foster youth navigate adult living.

A 2021 study by University of Chicago researchers found that young people who remained in extended foster care in California through age 21 had stabler lives compared with their peers who left government custody at age 18. Two years later, they had $650 more on average in their bank accounts and were 19% less likely to have been homeless between the ages of 21 and 23. They also had greater odds of completing a high school credential and attending college.

Twenty days before Grigg Green’s client turned 18 in March, she received an application for “supervised independent living,” or SIL, via email. That program is a preferred option among older foster youth because it allows them some measure of independence, with minimal caseworker oversight but no daily supervision. The alternatives for youth in extended care are living in restrictive group homes, college dorms or with foster families, which — after growing up in the system — many youth say does not suit their needs as young adults.

Grigg Green’s client — who is not being named to protect her identity as a victim of sexual exploitation — signed a contract agreeing to the requirements of extended foster care. But like many youth overwhelmed by the process, she never completed the SIL application.

As a result, the only housing she was offered was a bed in a residential treatment center, which was staffed 24 hours a day and run on a strict set of rules. Because the Houston teen rejected that placement, she was dropped from extended foster care, which would have amounted to three years of steady support, her lawyer said.

At that point, she moved to Austin and lived temporarily with her boyfriend’s family. When the family put her out in late August, she took the bus back to Houston and called her caseworker.

Young adults in Texas foster care are routinely told there is no availability for state-licensed independent housing. But 88 SIL units sat empty in late January, according to a state spokesperson. Just 303 of the 391 total beds for the program were filled.

“You have got to be kidding me. There was a solution to this? This was preventable?” Grigg Green said. “You knowingly left a child at a bus stop to let them be trafficked because you said there are no placements?”

Lack of trust and restrictive rules

Texas youth advocates point to a variety of problems contributing to the under-enrollment in extended foster care: a shortage of developmentally-appropriate housing options, unnecessarily strict policies and an unwillingness to honor the intent of the federal Fostering Connections Act, which created the program for young adults.

Marissa Gonzales, a spokesperson with the Department of Family and Protective Services, said there is an adequate supply of supervised independent living placements that matches the level of need, with 46 providers and 391 housing units throughout the state.

She said that applications are carefully scrutinized before youth are offered housing placements and that the independent living model is not appropriate for everyone who applies.

“Some youth have more intense supervision needs than SIL allows and may receive other types of ongoing support more appropriate than SIL,” she said. “Staff view applications from a trauma-informed perspective, taking into account only the most up-to-date information about each youth.”

“We’ve put a special emphasis on decreasing the wait time for approvals of applications in recent months,” she added.

Gonzales described denials for an SIL as rare and said there have been only seven in the last year. She said some applications have been categorized as “pending” due to missing information or incomplete paperwork but that “staff have been working to get them processed.”

For more than 35 years, Texas has also provided its older foster youth with the Preparation for Adult Living program, or PAL, which offers training in finances, housing, transportation, job readiness, life skills and decision-making.

Child welfare experts say one key to increasing participation in extended foster care is missing in Texas: making it as seamless as possible to transition from the foster care system that serves children into the system serving young adults. Although extended foster care has federally mandated participation requirements, child welfare experts say the intent of the law is to offer guidance and support, allowing young adults to learn from mistakes without automatically being disqualified.

Ivy-Marie Washington, a former foster youth and now a child welfare advocate, said she spent a brief time in Texas’ extended foster care system while in college. But she soon realized that the support came with too many strings attached. In order to qualify as a full-time student, she also had to work, keep up onerous paperwork requirements and continue with therapy.

For her, it was easier in the end to drop out of the program and find her own way.

Washington, now 27, said a lack of trust in the state’s child welfare system and restrictive rules — like curfews and restrictions on who young people can bring into their state-licensed housing — drive many young adults out of extended foster care.

“Texas wants these young people to do absolutely everything they say from the moment they open their eyes to when they close their eyes at night,” she said. “No adult — especially someone who has just spent the last 10 years being told what to do — wants to do that.”

What’s more, in states like California, young people are automatically entered into extended foster care when they turn 18 but can choose to opt-out — as opposed to in Texas, where youth have to actively seek entry.

In states such as California and Ohio, many teenagers can choose their own housing — be it with a relative, friend or shared space — and as long as it meets basic licensing standards, they can have their rent and associated costs paid by the state. This flexibility avoids lengthy waiting periods for beds in state-run programs.

In Texas, by contrast, youth are only allowed to live in housing licensed by the state, such as foster homes, group homes, college dorms or Supervised Independent Living.

The Department of Family and Protective Services “works collaboratively with the young adult to secure housing prior to their 18th birthday,” spokesperson Gonzales said. The agency also hosts university tours and youth summits “designed to listen to young people and help them make informed decisions about choosing extended foster care or other forms of aid.”

She noted that those who do not opt for extended foster care still get help from staff “to make sure they get all the transitional living support and benefits for which they’re eligible,” including other public welfare benefits and low-income rental assistance.

But they no longer have access to child welfare attorneys, caseworkers and court-appointed special advocates.

Ruth White, co-founder and executive director of the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, said the Texas approach is shortsighted and runs contrary to the federal program’s goals of ensuring that teens aging out of the system are well-supported: “They said: ‘Do what’s developmentally appropriate.’ They didn’t say: ‘Do whatever you feel you’re comfortable with.’”

Less flexibility in Texas 

Some young people do get extended help in Texas, but they describe it as a battle. Kristopher Carter said he felt unable to manage his own life in extended care and was pushed into studying for a career in heating and air-conditioning repair that didn’t interest him. He felt stifled and controlled rather than supported and encouraged, he said.

Carter was shuffled through multiple foster care placements as a young teen and given psychotropic medications to manage his behavior instead of therapy to deal with childhood trauma resulting from abuse. He’d been miserable in the system, yet he still believed extended foster care was the safest path into adulthood.

“I knew I didn’t have anywhere to go, and I wouldn’t have anyone to support me,” he said. “I needed it because I just wouldn’t survive without it.”

But the state’s rules seemed inflexible — once enrolled, Carter felt he couldn’t change careers or live in another city without losing the state’s support.

As his 21st birthday approached in October, his adviser with the Preparation for Adult Living program helped him secure housing vouchers to ensure he had a place to live when he aged out of extended care.

Yet when he asked his caseworker or the adviser for help searching for an apartment or formulating questions to ask potential landlords, he said he was often dismissed.

“I didn’t want to go into something just blindly,” Carter said. “They would just really get a rude tone and pretty much continue what they were saying before, without adding any new detail.”

Finally, with the help of the city of Austin’s housing authority, he got an apartment a few months before he turned 21. He also found a therapist — on his own — who’s helping him work through his childhood trauma.

Other Texas youth never even entered extended care — but now wish caseworkers had encouraged them more and made the system easier to navigate.

When Jonathan Alexander was nearing his 18th birthday, the last thing he wanted was to continue life as a foster youth. Removed from his mother’s care when he was 2-years-old, shuffled through several kinship placements and more than 10 foster homes, group homes and shelters over the next 15 years, he was “just done,” he said.

“I’m like, ‘I have already been in foster care for 4,000 years. Who wants to stay two more years in foster care?’” Alexander said.

At 17 and still desperate for a connection to family, he left his foster care placement and tried living with his mother. But that was short-lived, and he very quickly found himself on the streets, sometimes running with the wrong crowd.

“I had to learn the hard way,” he said.

If the state had made it easier to get trauma care and supportive housing — if it had helped him understand there were benefits to extended care — he says his opportunities in early adulthood would have vastly improved.

Now 29 and a father, Alexander is studying to earn his GED certificate. He’s active as a Youth Action Board member at Collective Action For Youth in Houston, where he is sharing his story and helping guide young people to better futures.

If such support had arrived earlier for him, he said, “I wouldn’t have had to worry where I was going to sleep at night. I would have had the right tools to be able to take care of myself, to show me the right direction.”

Sandy West is a freelance journalist based in Houston. She can be reached at [email protected]. Jeremy Loudenback is a senior writer for The Imprint. He can be reached at [email protected].