Older Foster Kids Need Families, Too

Tuesday, November 24, 2015 at 6:28 AM

By Mary Kuhlman, Indiana News Service

Experts are encouraging people to adopt more teens in foster care during National Adoption Month.

(Indianapolis, Ind.) - Transitioning into adulthood can be difficult for many teens, especially those who age out of foster care without being adopted. Experts say those teens lack the family support system to help them become independent. Researchers at the Chapin Hall Policy Research Center at the University of Chicago find that, as adults, they're more likely to be unemployed, rely on public assistance and become involved with the criminal justice system and women are more likely to have children out of wedlock. So, national project director Kathy Ledesma and colleagues at AdoptUSKids are using November, National Adoption Month, to urge families to adopt older kids in foster care. "Eighteen percent of the children and youths who are waiting for adoption are between the ages of 15 and 18 years old," says Ledesma. "And if you take that down even further, a third are age 13 or older. So, the need is greatest for this group." Adoption statistics show people are less willing to adopt when kids are between the ages of 15 and 18. Ledesma says teens in foster care often are stereotyped. "The biggest one is that teens are in foster care because they did something wrong and they didn't," says Ledesma. "Something went wrong in their family. So, they're in foster care through no fault of their own." According to the Kids Count Data Center, in 2013, more than 700 kids in Indiana foster homes, between ages 11 and 20, were waiting to be adopted.