Aging Up: Successful Foster Youth Highlight Flaws in Nation's Care Systems

What saves these young people from homelessness?

WASHINGTON -- It’s hard for Sixto Cancel, a lifelong foster kid, to fight the feelings of guilt that will occasionally creep up when he thinks about his life journey.

Last week, the 20-year-old Afro-Hispanic college freshman traveled to the nation’s capital, by invitation of congresswoman Karen Bass (D-Calif.), to attend the presidential inauguration and talk foster care system reform with other lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Cancel, an outspoken national advocate for foster youth, is one of the 424,000 children and young adults currently in the nation’s foster care systems–or are soon to age out of care upon reaching their 18th birthday–where, after surviving the challenges of foster care, they come face-to-face with the challenges of young adulthood, often made worst by traumatic upbringings.

At the outset, many of these young people don't receive the services and care that would reduce the almost inevitable likelihood of free falling towards unemployment, homelessness and general aimlessness once they have aged out of the system. That's why national advocates and lawmakers are seeking reforms and just the right formula to duplicate Cancel's improbable success.

Connecticut's foster care system supports foster children until age 23. Cancel receives voluntary assistance of $22,000 per year to budget between school and living expenses. He now lives in Richmond, Va., where he attends Virginia Commonwealth University, and supplements his income by working for Rising Tides, a nonprofit that promotes self-sufficiency for aged out foster youth. His 10 brothers and sisters, several of whom are still in Connecticut’s foster care system, are on his mind as he absorbs Washington, D.C. and all of its pre-inauguration pageantry.

During a lunch meeting with former foster care youth and Rep. Bass at a cozy Chinese restaurant, mere blocks away from where he would watch President Barack Obama's historic second inauguration the next morning, Cancel tugged his rimless glasses from his face, placed them on the table and wiped away tears from his eyes.

“I feel like sometimes there is a guilt, there’s a huge guilt, with seeing the work I do and seeing my brothers…” Cancel choked up; not quite finishing his thought.

“It’s survivor’s guilt,” chimed in one of his young colleagues.

Cancel, and fellow foster care survivors Daniesha Tobey-Richards and Elbert Belcher, say the most critical areas of need for foster youth–particularly those who are nearly out of care–are: permanency, normalcy and well-being.

“Aging Out” Of Foster Care: A Survivor's Tale

DeSean Irby had the rug pulled from under him when he became of age.

When young people “age-out” of foster care, when they turn 21, they must learn to care for themselves, often with no familial or other support. While there are few statistics on young people who age out, and who are no longer under a city or state's care, it's estimated that one in four of the 20,000 foster care youth who age out of the welfare system each year nationally are in jail within two years. One in five become homeless, and only half graduate from high school. Each year more than 900 youth age out in New York City.

DeSean Irby is one young person who aged out, and is living on the streets. Here is his story.

[ALSO READ: Aging Up: Success and Flaws In U.S. Foster Care]

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9 Famous Black Foster Kids

Actor and musician Jamie Foxx. Adopted. Getty Image

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Adoptees and former foster children have grown up to do big things

There are currently 424,000 children and young adults in the nation’s foster care system; any one of them could grow up to be the next Jamie Foxx, Alonzo Mourning or Victoria Rowell.

Quick facts about the nation’s foster youth:

-- 48 percent of them live in nonrelative family homes.

-- 26 percent lived with relatives.

-- The others live in varying arrangements, including institutions, group homes or supervised independent living.

-- 51 percent had the goal of reuniting with their biological parents, and were successful.

-- 25 percent had the goal of adoption, but only 21 percent actually were. Eleven percent were emancipated.

-- 41 percent of them were white, 29 percent were black, 21 percent were Hispanic and 10 percent were of other or mixed races.

-- The percentage of black children in care decreased between 2000 and 2010, while the percentages increased for white and Hispanic children. Black children are still in care at a rate disproportionate to their total population.

SOURCE: Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Boy, 12, Charged With Murder of Foster Care Toddler

Detectives say girl beaten repeatedly at family’s foster home

A 12-year-old boy in Fort Washington, Md. has been charged with second-degree murder in the beating death of a toddler who was staying at his home as a foster child, the Washington Post reports.

Aniyah Batchelor (pictured above) had been staying at the boy’s family's home, where she was beaten to death, according to police.

Police did not release information on a motive in the attack, but say Batchelor was beaten repeatedly. The foster parents were not home at the time of the incident, which police say occurred Tuesday.

[ALSO READ: Foster Home Girls Lured Into Prostitution Ring]

From the WaPo story:

Without providing a specific timeline of events, Parker said the foster father “was summoned home” late Tuesday morning, after the beating, and found Aniyah unconscious. He called 911 at 12:09 p.m. As an ambulance headed to the house — a neatly kept brick-front split-level with red shutters and a small front lawn — the father tried to revive Aniyah with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Parker said.

The girl was pronounced dead at a hospital. After an autopsy Wednesday, Parker said, the Maryland medical examiner’s office concluded that the girl was a homicide victim and that the cause of death was blunt-force trauma.

The boy has been charged as a minor, is not being identified by name, and is being held at the Cheltenham Youth Facility.

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