Executive Summary
The federal Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (Fostering Connections Act) was, to a large extent, based on the belief that allowing youth in foster care to remain in care past their 18th birthday would improve their outcomes as adults. Research conducted prior to the passage of the Fostering Connections Act provided early evidence on the impact of extended foster care (EFC) on youth outcomes, finding that time in EFC promoted educational attainment, increased earnings, and decreased instances of homelessness and criminal justice involvement (see, e.g., Courtney & Hook, 2017; Dworsky, Napolitano, & Courtney, 2013; Hook & Courtney, 2011; Lee, Courtney, & Tajima, 2014). An earlier report from the ongoing California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH) found EFC to be associated with improved educational attainment, increased financial assets, reduced receipt of need-based public aid, and decreased homelessness, economic hardship, and criminal justice system involvement (Courtney & Okpych, 2017). The present report builds on that prior research by examining outcomes from the third interview wave of CalYOUTH, which took place when study participants were 21 years old or older.
Methods
We used two analytic approaches to evaluate the impact of extended foster care (EFC). These approaches are based on the two main types of data available in the California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH). The first approach leveraged data on a large sample of over 40,000 youths from California’s Child Welfare Services/Case Management System (CWS/CMS), linked to other administrative data on college attendance, employment, earnings, and needbased public food assistance. The sample included young people who had been in child-welfare supervised foster care for at least 6 months (180 days) sometime after their 16th birthday, between the years 2006 and 2015. This includes youth who reached the age of majority in care both before and after the 2012 implementation of California’s law extending foster care to young adults, the California Fostering Connections Act, also known as AB12.
The second analytic approach drew on data collected from our three waves of interviews with a representative sample of California foster youth. Young people in the longitudinal study (n = 727) were all potentially eligible for extended foster care under AB12 (i.e., their 18th birthdays came after January 1, 2012). They were eligible for the study if they were between 16.75 and 17.75 years old at the end of 2012 and had been in the California foster care system for at least 6 months. We restricted our analyses of the youth survey sample to just the 616 young people who completed the first and third interview waves, conducted when the youth were, on average, 17 and 21 years old, respectively. Most of the two dozen outcomes assessed in this report using youth survey data came from the third round of interviews with the young people.
In both analytic approaches, EFC was evaluated by estimating the impact that a year in extended care had on each of the outcomes. We used an advanced statistical procedure (an instrumental variable approach) to estimate the impact that each year in care past age 18 had on the six outcomes assessed in the administrative data sample. We used several types of statistical models with the youth survey sample, depending on the measure of the outcome. The models we used with both the administrative data analysis and the youth survey analysis to assess the relationship between time in extended care and youths’ outcomes statistically controlled for a wide range of youth characteristics available in each dataset, as well as characteristics of the county in which youth were placed.
Findings
Results from the administrative data analyses and the youth survey analyses found statistically significant (p < .05) relationships between extended foster care and several outcomes. Specifically, each additional year in extended foster care:
- Increased the probability that youth completed a high school credential by about 8%.
- Increased their expected probability of enrolling in college by 10–11%.
- Increased the number of quarters that youth were employed between their 18th and 21st birthdays (about half of a quarter for each year in extended care).
- Increased the amount of money youth had in back accounts by about $404.
- Decreased the amount of money received in need-based public food assistance by more than $700.
- Decreased the odds of experiencing an additional economic hardship (e.g., not being able to pay utility bills) experienced between the ages of 17 and 21 by about 12%.
- Decreased the odds of being homeless or couch-surfing between the ages of 17 and 21 by about 28%. Also decreased the number of times youth had been homeless and the number of days youth had been homeless during that period.
- Increased the odds that youth described a professional (e.g., caseworker, therapist, counselor, etc.) as a source of social support by about 42%. Also increased the odds that youth felt they had enough people to turn to for emotional support, tangible support, and advice/guidance.
- Decreased the odds that youth became pregnant (females) or impregnated a female (males) between the ages of 17 and 21 by about 28%.
- Decreased the odds that youth had been arrested between the ages of 17 and 21 by about 41% and decreased the odds that youth had been convicted of a crime during the same period by about 40%.
Several outcomes were not significantly associated with the number of years in extended care. These included college persistence and number of semesters completed (among youth who entered college), earnings, food insecurity, physical and behavioral health, and victimization.
Supplemental analyses found that the impact of extended foster care differed by gender and by race/ethnicity for some outcomes. For males in college, more time in extended care increased the numbers of semesters they completed by age 21 by about half of a semester for each year in extended care. A significant association was not found for females. More time in extended care was found to increase the number of quarters females were employed. The findings suggest that females also saw a greater reduction than males in the amount of CalFresh benefits they received by age 21, although estimates varied between the administrative data and youth study data. The risk of becoming pregnant and having a child was significantly reduced by amount of time in EFC for females but not males. Differences by race/ethnicity were less consistent between data sources on the outcomes that were available in both the administrative data and the youth study data. For example, in terms of CalFresh benefits, white youth was the only group in the administrative data for whom time in extended care was not associated with a reduction in benefits receipt. However, a significant reduction in benefits receipt was found for white youth using the youth study data. Further exploration of possible differential impacts of EFC by gender, race, and ethnicity is an area that warrants more attention from future studies.
Conclusion
To date, the accumulation of evidence from CalYOUTH suggests that extended care has a range of positive impacts on youths’ lives, though not on all outcomes we studied. A potential contributor to the absence of some hoped-for effects of extended care is how recently, in practical terms, California embarked on providing care to young adults. Put simply, providing extended care in California and in other states that extended care to young adults in recent years remains a work in progress. Future analyses will examine outcomes as youth become older to determine whether the observed benefits of EFC last as youth move further into early adulthood. Future analyses will also use administrative data to assess outcomes for young people who aged out of care later in the evolution of extended care in California as policymakers and practitioners learned from their early efforts to support foster youth transitioning to adulthood. We will also take a more nuanced approach to examining specific outcomes, including analyses that will seek to shed light on the mechanisms that connect extended care to young adult outcomes. Research also needs to be conducted in other states that have passed EFC laws, since characteristics of the population, policy contexts, and resources may differ across states in ways that can affect the impact of extended care.
