To The End Of June : The Intimate Life Of American Foster Care (9780547999531) - Plot & Excerpts
This is called “aging out.” In New York, there are over six thousand adolescents under ACS supervision. At fourteen, these kids get to set their own “permanency planning goal”—meaning they, rather than their caseworkers or guardians, get to map their futures. If their biological families aren’t an option, they have two choices: they can continue trying for adoption, or they can give up on the whole family idea and opt for “independent living” as soon as they reach legal age. In 2009, ACS reported that 7 percent of the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds wanted to try for independent living; the rest were still vying for adoption or to return home. By the time they turned seventeen, though, they’d given up hope: only 6 percent were still asking for adoption; most of the rest had shifted their goal to independent living. Most foster kids I know do not use the term independent living. They call it getting “discharged”—as though foster care were military service. And every year, the thousand or so youths “discharged”
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