Martha Shirk

“For as many as 25,000 other children who reach their eighteenth birthdays each year, the emotions are similar. But there is a defining difference. These are young people who step through a doorway into a world full of unknowns, without the connections and supports that other children take for granted. Something has happened in their lives that forever makes them different: Usually through no fault of their own, they were taken away from their families and placed in foster care.1 They entered a bureaucratic system peopled with strangers who had complete control over where they lived, where they went to school, and even whether they ever saw their families again. The supports in their lives were not people who loved them, but people who were paid for the roles they played—caseworkers, judges, attorneys, and either shift workers in group homes or a succession of often kind, but always temporary, foster parents. In most states, on the day that a child in foster care turns eighteen, these supports largely disappear. The people who once attended to that child’s needs are now either unable or unwilling to continue; a new case demands their time, a new child requires the bed. There is often no one with whom to share small successes. And with no one to approach for advice, garden-variety emergencies—a flat tire, a stolen wallet, a missing birth certificate—escalate into full-blown crises.”
― Martha Shirk, On Their Own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System

“Although white children and African American children land in foster care in roughly equal numbers, African American children are disproportionately likely both to enter foster care and to remain there until they become adults, a troubling phenomenon. African American children account for only 15 percent of all children in the United States, but they accounted for 27 percent of those entering care in 2003 (the last year for which national data are available) and 35 percent of those in care.8”
― Martha Shirk, On Their Own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System