Foster Care: From Surviving to Thriving

According to the National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention, only a mere three percent of the more than 500,000 children placed in foster care each year will attend and graduate from college. As one of the 500,000 foster children in the United States and one of the 8,828 foster children in the state of North Carolina, this information was quite disconcerting. Refusing to succumb to that unfortunate statistic, I feverishly began to research, hopeful to find another option... Through my research, I discovered numerous programs and opportunities to aid foster children in North Carolina who are “aging out” of the system. From life skills classes to assistance with paying for college, I found my future as a former foster child was far from the hopeless, obscure path it once seemed. Why did my social worker, aware that I would soon age out of the system, not advise me of my legal rights and opportunities for success as an emerging independent? I would not have been aware of these programs short of first conducting thorough research...were the ninety-seven percent who did not attend and graduate from college victims of helpless oblivion as I was prior to my search?