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Rise Above for Youth is a nonprofit child welfare organization serving youth transitioning from foster care, homelessness, and juvenile justice ages 14-24 in Mississippi.  Our goal is to provide comprehensive support  to youth by guiding them in addressing their physical, emotional, and social needs.  Through our programs, we offer tools to promote ongoing self care, self sufficiency, and to improve the current outcomes (see below)  for our nations forgotten youth.
 

THE PROBLEM

 

Of the 500,000+ children in the foster care system in the United States, 26,000 young people (between age 18-21) emancipate or “age out” each year.  The documented outcomes for these youth are as follows:

 

Housing:

·         Within 18 months of emancipation 40-50% of foster youth become homeless.

·         Nationally, 27% of the homeless population spent time in foster care.

·         A history of foster care correlates with becoming homeless at an earlier age and remaining homeless for a longer period of time.

·         65% of youth leaving foster care need immediate housing upon release

·         According to Mississippi’s current state ILP Coordinator, no housing programs currently exist for emancipating youth.

 

Education Status:

·         83% of foster children are held back by the third grade.

·         75% of children and youth in foster care are behind grade level.

·         46% of former foster youth complete high school (compared to 84% of the general population).

·         Based on high birth trauma and many life challenges, 50% of foster youth experience developmental delays, which is 4-5 times more than the rate found among children in the general population.

·         70% of teens who emancipate from foster care report that they want to attend college, but less than 50% complete their high school graduation and fewer than 10% of who graduate from high school enroll and college, and of those less than 1% graduate from college.

 

Employment:

·         Emancipated foster youth earn significantly less than youth in the general population, additionally due to their specific circumstances current and former foster youth progress more slowly into the labor market.

·         50% of emancipated foster youth experience high rates of unemployment within 5 years of emancipation.

·         1/3 of former foster youth have incomes at, or below, $6,000 per year, which is substantially below the federal poverty level of $7,890 for a single individual.  

 

Parenting Status:

·         Forty-two percent (42%) of foster youth, including 60% of women, become parents within 2.5-4 years after exiting care.

·         Parents with a history of foster care are almost twice as likely to see their own children placed in foster care or become homeless than parents without this history.

·         Females in foster care are six times more likely than the general population to give birth before age 21.

 

Health:

·         Former foster youth are found to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at 2 times the level of U.S. war veterans.

·         33% of all foster care alumni have no form of health insurance.

·         Youth transitioning from foster care have disproportionately high rates of physical, developmental, and mental health problems.

·         Children in foster care are more likely than other children on Medicaid to have a mental health or substance abuse condition.

·         Nearly 50% of foster children suffer from chronic health conditions such as asthma, visual and auditory problems, dental decay and malnutrition.

·         50-60% of children in foster care have moderate to severe mental health problems.

 

Incarceration:

·         There is a lot of crossover between youth in foster care and youth in juvenile dependency court in fact foster youth with multiple placements are 5-10 times more likely to become involved with the juvenile justice system than youth in the general population.

·         25% of former foster youth will be incarcerated within the first 2 years of emancipation.

·         Youth in foster care are more likely to be detained than non-foster children, as judges perceive their lack of caregiver representation as an indication that the youth are less stable and less supervised than their non-foster peers.