More like family

When Patrick Powers graduated from a Spokane high school and left the state’s foster care system, his financial troubles began.

With no health insurance, Powers avoided going to the doctor until he developed pneumonia. Without free school lunches he received as a foster child, the outgoing teenager stopped eating regularly. By age 21, he had tallied more than $3,000 in medical bills while attending a vocational school to train as a sheet-metal worker.

“It wasn’t worth going to the doctor until I had to be hospitalized,” said Powers, now 23. “The state tries to make you feel like you have a home. But they don’t do anything to help you like a normal family would. Once you’re out on your own, the state just leaves you.”

The struggles of foster children who “age-out” of the child welfare system have been well-documented. Among a host of depressing statistics, they are more likely to be jailed, homeless or on public assistance than their peers, placing a financial strain on taxpayer-funded services. Each year, more than 300 teenagers age-out of Washington’s foster care system, but only about one-third earn a high school diploma or achieve general educational development known as a GED.

Once they exit the child welfare system, foster children lose access to support services and free health insurance, as well as their placement in a foster home.

But legislative bills introduced this session would reward those foster youths who finish high school and want to pursue higher education by extending their benefits. Bills in both the House and Senate would allow foster children to maintain their benefits while they attend a college or vo-tech institution until age 21. Currently, those foster children who finish their high school education lose their benefits at age 18; those who do not finish high school or get a GED can stay in care until they turn 19.

“We’re punishing foster kids who get their high school diploma or GED,” said Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, the bill’s sponsor. Dickerson added, “I’m a parent, and I know that most 18-year-olds are not ready to go out on their own.”

If all eligible foster children chose to remain in care, the tab could reach more than $3.5 million a year, according to state figures. State analysts assume that only about one-third of foster children will remain in care while they pursue a post-secondary education.

“We’ve got situations where foster parents and group homes are putting these kids’ belongings in a black bag on the street, and that kid is on their own,” said Jim Theofelis, founder and executive director of The Mockingbird Society, a Seattle-based nonprofit that advocates for foster children. “The state unloads these kids with no support.”

What happens next is dismal.

By the end of the first year after leaving foster care, more than 40 percent of females have had an pregnancy outside of wedlock – about twice the national average, according to a 2004 state study. One in five is jailed, and one in eight is homeless. According to a recent study of 650 foster children in the Northwest, they are twice as likely as U.S. war veterans to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“There are very real costs to failing kids as they transition from foster care,” Dickerson said. The bill would help those foster children who are “determined that they will overcome these barriers and make a success out of themselves,” she said.

The legislation stems from a class-action lawsuit – known as the Braam lawsuit – that accused the foster care system of failing to provide proper support services to children. In 2004, the Children’s Administration settled the lawsuit, which involved children who had been bounced from foster home to foster home. Included in the estimated $50 million it will cost the state to make the improvements was an agreement to extend services to foster youth until age 21.

But state officials have pushed for delays in the settlement’s timeline, arguing that the changes are too dramatic to enact at once.

“The Braam settlement is one part of a piece of work that needs to get done in Children’s Administration,” said Cheryl Stephani, the department’s director. “It’s not the only piece. But it is a very important piece.”

Casey Trupin, an attorney for the foster children, said the agency has had 18 months to prepare its plan.

“For them to be suddenly overwhelmed by this, it’s frankly disingenuous,” Trupin said. “The whole community has expressed a sense of urgency. But it’s the people who signed the agreement who aren’t showing any sense of urgency.”

Eve Vazquez, a 27-year-old former foster child, knows that weeks and months can matter to foster children.

Raised in foster care, she and her brother, Abe, found far different fates when they left the system.

When Abe, who suffered from depression, lost his health insurance, he no longer had free access to medications and counseling, Vazquez said. Five months after his 18th birthday, he killed himself. Vazquez believes her brother’s lack of medical care led to his suicide.

“It’s a very sad thing to go out there and be on your own,” Vazquez said. “Sometimes you feel like, ‘If only I had parents.’ “

Vazquez credits her foster mother, Dru Powers, with saving her from Abe’s fate. Today, Vazquez works as a caregiver and is working on a novel based on her life.

Still, Vazquez struggled. She carries about $12,000 in debt from medical expenses, including bills from months of testing she underwent at age 19 for endometriosis, an abdominal condition in which abnormal tissue growth can lead to severe pain and infertility. The illness, coupled with her lack of insurance, contributed to Vazquez’s decision to leave college.

“You have to be healthy to get an education,” she said.