Across the country, a child is removed from their home and placed in foster care every two minutes. Not all children in foster care have endured the same level of maltreatment, but they all experience some level of trauma when they are uprooted from the only home and family they know in addition to the trauma of abuse or neglect that led to the removal.
Restrictions implemented during the pandemic often meant that foster youth could not see their biological family. And services that were put in place to help families reunify stalled as service providers grappled with how to provide services in a remote setting. The heavy emotional toll COVID-19 exacted on children in foster care led to many foster youth experiencing increased anxiety and depression during the pandemic.
Social distancing and remote learning led to feelings of isolation. While many foster youth have mental health needs, the pandemic restrictions caused a sharp reduction in access to those support services.
As a Court Appointed Special Advocate, I work with local service providers when advocating for youth in foster care. The mental health providers in our community report the current wait time to begin new services is at least six months. There are anecdotal reports of some youth waiting for services since March 2020.
We all know it is going to take the country time to recover from the pandemic. But for a youth in a mental health crisis, waiting six months or more to get help has the power to negatively impact them for a lifetime.
Placement in Foster Care Has Negative Impacts on Education
Youth in foster care often fall through the cracks of the education system. In fact, data from a 2018 national survey show that foster youth are twice as likely to have truancy issues or face out of school suspension, are three times as likely to be expelled, and tend to score significantly below their peers on standardized tests. And, while most foster youth say they want to attend college, only 3% earn bachelor’s degrees.
The challenges of remote learning during the pandemic were even more significant for youth in foster care. Many did not have a computer or access to internet. The presence of a supportive adult to assist with remote learning was also missing for many foster youths.
We know COVID has affected the education of most children, but it is too early to understand its full effects. Statistical models have been developed to assess the potential impact of COVID-19 on educational outcomes. These models predict that learning loss will be more significant for youth who did not have a conducive learning environment, such as a quiet space with minimal distractions, the technology devices needed for remote learning, high-speed internet, and parental academic supervision. This learning loss is likely to translate to a 15-20% widening in the gap in educational outcomes like those seen in the 2018 data noted above. High school dropout rates are also expected to increase by up to 9%. That translates to an estimated 1.1 million students in ninth through eleventh grade.
Helping Students in Foster Care Succeed
There are important steps that we must take as we return to in person learning in the fall to ensure the gap in educational outcomes seen in foster youth does not widen:
- We need to focus on policies and practices that are specifically designed to identify and meet the educational needs of youth in foster care. One example is the Blueprint for Change. The Blueprint provides a framework for both individual advocacy and for system-wide reform. The Blueprint helps promote educational success for youth in foster care by establishing eight goals for success along with benchmarks for each to track progress.
- The judicial oversight of youth in foster care must include an assessment of needs and support optimal educational outcomes. Several states have already adopted judicial rules that do just that. For example, Pennsylvania has adopted Rules of Juvenile Court Procedure that requires consideration of the child’s educational needs at every step in the judicial process surrounding involvement in the child welfare system. Tools and checklists are also available to assist judges in ensuring the educational needs of foster youth are met.
- Collaboration is critical to supporting children in foster care. One of the provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act (“ESSA”), which was enacted in 2016, requires schools to work with child welfare agencies to ensure the educational stability of children in foster care. Several States, including Illinois, now require local education agencies to appoint a foster care liaison who, among other things, collaborates directly with the child welfare agency regarding the needs of foster youth. As schools plan for the fall, building on these collaborations will be important to ensure the educational needs of children in foster care are met. Other adults, such as the foster parent, the child’s attorney, child advocates, and biological parents as appropriate, should be included in discussing the individual needs of a particular youth.
- Finally, we must ensure that schools are trauma informed as we prepare for a return to school in the fall. A trauma informed school means that school staff understand trauma and its impacts so they are able to recognize and respond appropriately. The main goal is to prevent re-injury or re-traumatization by acknowledging pre-existing trauma and its triggers and avoiding stigmatizing students through punishment. Two states that have incorporated trauma informed practices in their schools are Massachusetts and Washington. In other areas of the country, including Illinois and Wisconsin, the State Board of Education is promoting the use of trauma informed practices by including resources on websites.
Addressing Educational Disparities with The American Rescue Plan Act
The American Rescue Plan Act (“ARPA”) signed by President Biden in March of this year, includes over $170 billion in education funding. Most of that funding is earmarked for safely reopening the in-person operation of K-12 schools and addressing the impact of COVID-19. While school districts have flexibility in how they use most of their allocated funding, some of the money will be used for learning recovery grants, summer enrichment programs, and after-school programs.
The U.S. Department of Education’s COVID-19 Handbook, Volume 2: Roadmap to Reopening Safely and Meeting All Students’ Needs provides recommendations that address the social, emotional, and mental-health needs of students. The recommendations also include strategies for addressing the achievement gap that has continued to widen in the wake of the pandemic. Because the recommendations are generally directed towards building equity for underserved communities, they also apply to youth in foster care.
With the infusion of significant federal dollars from the ARPA, we have a real opportunity to close the education gap for vulnerable youth, including those in foster care. Every child deserves a chance to succeed. Our future as well as theirs depends on it.
Joanne Curley is a Court Appointed Special Advocate and a student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She wrote this blog post as part of Loyola’s Education Law Practicum.
