When foster kids Grow Up

Boston Metro: "When Khalika Rouse turned 18 as a foster care teen, she was facing a world with no support, no money and no place to go.

"It's scary. You need somebody there by your side," Rouse, now 20, told Metro. "I have no family in Boston." She was afraid of being homeless and having no relationship to her former foster care families. So she decided to stay under state care and joined a program at the Home for Little Wanderers for adults called "aging out" of the system.

In Massachusetts children can stay in the system until they are 22 if they are in school. Two years later, Rouse has finished beauty school, lives in an apartment in Boston and takes job training programs -- all with the help of the Home for Little Wanderers' Community Living program.

According to recent national statistics, Rouse is one of the lucky ones.

This week, the Home for Little Wanderers was given $215,000 from four charitable foundations to study the issue of "aging out" in Massachusetts and to work to build stronger programs so teens like Rouse don't fall through the cracks and end up jobless, homeless or worse.

"What is the net underneath our kids when they do turn 18?" said Joan Wallace- Benjamin, executive director of the Home for Little Wanderers. "The data is showing us they are ending up in homeless shelters or in the criminal justice system."

A 2005 report done by a Seattle-based foster care advocacy program found that 54 percent of former foster care children have mental health issues and 33 percent have no health care.

This type of data collection has not been conducted in the Massachusetts area, making it difficult for providers to determine where the vulnerabilities are in the system, Wallace- Benjamin said.

"In Massachusetts, about 500 kids age out of the system a year. ...It's not an impossible number," Wallace- Benjamin said. The data collection should take close to a year, she said. "
CHRISTINA WALLACE