Teens in foster care learning to drive
Plan helps build independence
When he turned 16, Martavius Lowery watched wistfully as his friends and classmates got their drivers licenses — and often, not long after, cars to call their own.
But the Longwood teen — “Marty” to his friends — was in foster care. He had no way to take a driver’s education course, which wasn’t offered at his high school; no one to pay for his auto insurance; and certainly no one eager to buy him a car or even co-sign for a loan.
“Growing up in foster care, you don’t get as many opportunities as other kids,” says Lowery, now 20. “But that’s changing.”
Especially, it turns out, in Central Florida, where advocates for current and former foster youth are leading the nation in toppling barriers to getting a license and buying a car.
“When we started three years ago, of the roughly
2,000 kids in the state’s foster care system who were 16 to 18 years old, only about 20 of them had a driver’s license,” says Glen Casel, CEO of Community Based Care of Central Florida, the nonprofit agency that contracts with the state to manage foster care for Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties. “How are you supposed to grow up and be independent if you never learn to drive?”
Casel’s agency helped write and implement the 2014 Keys to Independence Act passed by the Legislature, which launched a three-year pilot program that lawmakers will likely make permanent this session. Among other things, the act covers fees for each step of the journey toward a license — the four-hour drug- and alcohol-awareness course, the learner’s permit, a private driver’s education course, the license itself and the automobile insurance that is particularly expensive for this age group.
The average total: about $3,500 per teen, most of it for a year’s worth of insurance coverage.
Lowery was among the first to enroll.
“The driver’s ed they had — the instructors actually come to your house, and you drive their car,” he says. “And then the insurance — that was a really big barrier for me. The insurance was, and still is, about $1,700 every six months. And they helped me pay that.”
The law authorized the state to spend up to $800,000 a year for the program, but actual expenses have been less than half that amount so far, largely because some parts of the state have been slower to enroll kids.
“When you talk about letting a kid drive, that seems like an easy decision to me compared to all the others we make for these kids — really serious lifeand-death decisions about whether they should be removed from their parents in the first place,” says Gerry Glenn, chief legal counsel for Community Based Care. “But with driving, everybody freaks out. Actually doing it, actually allowing teenagers in foster care to be like teenagers everywhere, has taken a cultural shift.”
Part of a larger trend for normalcy — allowing foster kids to participate in extracurricular activities, take out-of-town trips, hold jobs and have a voice in their futures — the Keys to Independence Act has been one of the most comprehensive in the country. Most other states have laws covering only part of the equation: the fees or the insurance or a waiver of certain requirements.
By the end of last year, nearly 1,300 foster teens had been enrolled in the Florida program; about 150 had gotten a driver’s license; another 255 had gotten learner’s permits; and 74 had been insured.
Of the insured, there has been one accident — in a parking lot. No one was hurt.
Alan Abramowitz, executive director of the Florida Guardian Ad Litem Program, which advocates for kids in foster care, is optimistic the legislation will pass. On Thursday, it won a unanimous vote in the state Senate but hasn’t yet come to a full vote in the House.
“Everyone understands that, if you’re in state care, and you’re going to turn 18, we owe it to you to be able to be independent,” he says. “We want you to have a job or continue your education, and in Florida, you pretty much need a car to do that.”
Historically, former foster youth have faced daunting odds after they reached adulthood — with high rates of unemployment, homelessness and incarceration. In part, advocates say, that’s the result of having no job skills and no transportation.
So some see Keys to Independence as an economic-development strategy.
“In Florida, not having a drivers license is a huge barrier to employment,” Glynn says. “Here, where tourism is a key component of employment, if you go to any of the major resorts, you’ll see employees driving around in golf carts. They’ll be carrying food, people, laundry — all in golf carts. You are not allowed to drive a golf cart on company property without a driver’s license.”
In fact, Community Based Care has taken the driving effort a step farther. A year ago, in partnership with IBERIABANK, it set up a car-loan pool where the nonprofit agency co-signs the loan.
“This way, our kids don’t have to go to those buyhere, pay-here places that charge 25 percent interest,” Cassel says. “And it lets them establish credit.”
Again, Lowery was among the first to sign up, refinancing a loan he had gotten on his own — at 20 percent interest — for one with 5 percent interest.
He now works full time for a security company and is saving money to attend college in the fall. And late this week, he traded in his 10-year-old Honda Civic for a 2015 Kia Optima.
“My new girl,” he says proudly. “Now I’m able to get a loan on my own, and I’ve learned a lot about what to sign and what not to sign. The program really opened so many doors for me.”
“The program really opened so many doors for me.” Martavius ‘Marty’ Lowery, 20