See more photos from the Holiday Open House event.
More Arkansas youths aging out of foster care are finding housing and vocation training than the national average, but also experience more placements, spend more time in institutional or group homes and have fewer family reunifications than average, according to a report released last week.
The Fostering Youth report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation compiles data from all 50 states on the transition from foster care to adulthood.
Jennifer Ferguson, deputy director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, said the results show growth in some key areas for Arkansas, but also show areas where Arkansas lags behind.
The Fostering Youth report is one of the first national studies of the child welfare system wherein all 50 states can compare data, which Ferguson said can serve as a metric for how well Arkansas foster care system is working in comparison to similar states, as well as to the national averages.
“When it comes to answering the big question — ‘How well are we doing compared to other states?’ — it’s difficult,” Ferguson said. “It’s always a little hard to compare data to other states. There was no point of reference.”
The Arkansas data is from 2016, which Mischa Martin, director of Arkansas’ Division of Children and Family Services, said is not exactly representative of the current state of foster youths in Arkansas, but is still a good indicator of where the energies of the department should be focused.
“We were really at the height of the crisis,” Martin said. “We had 5,200 youths at our highest point. We have 4,437 now. That’s significantly down and allows the staff to focus on not just finding a home for these kids, but the right home.”
Youths are considered to begin the transition stage at 14. The report shows that 18 percent — 1,532 youths in the foster care system — were ages 14 or older in Arkansas. This number is similar to or lower than much of the surrounding region, with Louisiana’s 19 percent, Mississippi’s 21 percent, Missouri and Texas’ 23 percent and Tennessee’s 40 percent. In Oklahoma, only 13 percent of foster children are in the transition age.
The report shows 60 percent of those youths aged out — or left the foster care system on their own after their 18th birthday — compared to the national average of 51 percent.
“The goal is for aging out not to be a reason for leaving foster care,” Ferguson said. “The goal is to have some sort of family connection to it. You want them to have some sort of family connection. Employment services can help, but they’re still young adults who need family.”
The report does not include data for aged-out Arkansas youths who are in foster care after their 18th birthday, despite the national data concerning the age group. Eric Gilmore, c0-founder of Immerse Arkansas, which aids many young foster children with housing and life planning, said this gap leaves the data set incomplete.
“That complicates the picture,” Gilmore said. “To say that a kid has good housing or employment while they’re in foster care is one thing, as opposed to when they exit. I do think that as a state we’re working really hard on these things, and I just hope to see those number get better and better.”
Half of all transition-age youths are placed in group homes, institutions or family-like settings three or more times nationally, but in Arkansas that rate is 58 percent. Moving from home-to-home before leaving foster care can inhibit youths from making those connections, Ferguson said, and it’s been a problem in Arkansas for a long time.
“[Living in group homes] limits their real-world experiences,” Gilmore said. “From doing laundry to cooking meals to being able to have a job as a teenager — if you’re in a group setting, some of those things become really difficult.”
Not having a family-like setting leaves youths without necessary life skills to be a functioning adult and, Ferguson said, can delay the teens from making permanent connections that will last past foster care.
Martin said the goal has been to move away from group-home or institutions since long before the 2016 uptick, and that in recent years, the department has had success with the effort.
Between August 2017 and August of this year, the number of youths in group homes dropped by 40 percent, from 111 to 67, according to the most recent data from DCFS.