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As National Foster Care Month comes to a close, Juvenile Law Center hopes you will continue to listen to the voices of current and former foster youth to understand the realities of the foster care system, along with the actions you can take and support you can provide to help improve the child welfare system. 

As you've seen from the posts of our guest bloggers, youth in care have the same needs, hopes, and dreams of all youth, but often are not provided the support, resources, and care that all children deserve to make a successful transition to adulthood. One way to understand the needs and hopes of foster youth is by learning more about the work of Youth Fostering Change, our youth engagement group for current and former foster youth.

Pennsylvania just took a giant step forward with respect to its treatment of youth in the juvenile justice system while the United States Supreme Court recently took a giant step backwards in declaring the strip searching of adults—arrested and detained for even the most minor offenses—a valid practice under our Constitution. 

In Pennsylvania, one of the last pieces of legislative reform emerging from the Luzerne County juvenile court judges' scandal fell into place this week. Governor Tom Corbett signed Senate Bill 817 into law, prohibiting the shackling of children in juvenile court unless there are extreme or exceptional circumstances. The law, sponsored by Senator Lisa Baker, reinforces a juvenile court rule adopted last year by Pennsylvania's Supreme Court. The law and rules give Pennsylvania youth two layers of protection against what is nothing more than state-inflicted trauma. 

I did not age out of foster care. I was pushed out, and too many kids are pushed out of foster care each year before they are ready. Without a real plan and support, I have struggled. As a young woman who spent many years in foster care, I am used to facing challenges, but I think the child welfare system could do much more to help us face the challenges involved in becoming an adult. Rather than pushing us out, I wish the child welfare system and those who run it would stand up for us, fight for us. 

My name is Megan. I'm a 17-year-old senior in high school. I entered foster care at the age of seven. My mother was a drug abuser and I didn't know my father so I was placed in the custody of the child welfare agency. Since 2002, I've been placed in multiple foster homes and one kinship care home. Most of the foster homes that I've been in didn't have positive outcomes. I lived with my oldest sister twice. Moving constantly affected my education and schooling. When I was being moved I lost credits in one of my classes, so I had to retake a 10th grade class in 12th grade. I've been enrolled in nine different schools.

My name is Christopher, I am 21 years old, and I have never had a home. I do have your attention now, though, which seems to be a pale compromise for the first sentence. In 21 years I have lived in 13 different places, seven of which were during my stay in care. According to my current landlord, "Permanent Residence" is established by things like living in a place for two or more weeks and receiving mail at that location. I've had 13 of those, and when I sat down to type this I realized that this is precisely how I define home. It's not for the comfort level and certainly not for the people in it, but whether I've managed to be there for more than two weeks and can receive mail. 

I don't think I've had a real home in my entire life.

Love: unconditional, real, enduring, forgiving, forever, always, accepting. 

Maybe I love easily, and maybe I collect people. This is probably because I know what it is like to have no one. I know one thing's for sure: being a product of the system has expanded my scope of what family means. It has also twisted and made more elusive the word we all know: love. You see, I became a foster kid at the age of eight, and was expected to not be a foster kid anymore at the age of 21. I lucked out though; so often, the stories of youth aging out of foster care end with them connectionless and transient. They have nobody to look after them. I asked someone the other day, "How do we as a system not check up on someone who lived in our care for any period of time, not to mention those who have grown up in foster care for the majority of their childhood?" We have to start recognizing that even though we fight hard to not be a foster child's parent, who else are they going to call? Who else has been there for them?

My name is Samantha and I entered care at two years old. I was put into foster care because my mom had a lot of kids and was also on drugs. All the first foster homes I was placed in were really bad because of the treatment that the foster parents gave me. I was in five foster homes, one group home, two treatment placements, and a Supervised Independent Living program (SIL). I aged out of care at 21 and am now living in a transitional housing program. 

[Ed. note: This post is part of a series of blog posts Juvenile Law Center will be publishing during National Foster Care Month to call attention to issues facing foster youth who are aging out of the system]. 

Much of my childhood was spent in foster care in Pennsylvania. During that time, I moved approximately 25 times and went to five different schools. The experiences of growing up in foster care and the feelings of fear, worry, loneliness, confusion and depression that are associated with the realization that next year, next month, or next week you will be on your own transcend time. When I aged out of the foster care system in 1979 at the age of 17, I felt all of those feelings and more. 

Today marks the beginning of National Foster Care Month. Juvenile Law Center joins advocates, organizations, and citizens across the country in renewing our commitment to improving the lives of foster youth—some of our most vulnerable children. 

Each year, approximately 30,000 youth in the United States age out of care in the child welfare system without the support of family. These young people, talented and rich with potential, face enormous challenges and obstacles, and research overwhelmingly shows that they fare poorly as adults. These youth deserve a chance at success. Fortunately, the federal Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, signed in 2008, provides states the opportunity to follow through on our commitment to youth in the child welfare system--but states must take affirmative steps to implement the options that apply to older youth.

The historic legal arguments for and against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) have concluded. The future of the ACA now rests in the hands of the United States Supreme Court. Tragically, the legal and political wrangling over the Act's provisions has largely obscured the desperately needed benefits the Act provides to millions of American children. This is hardly surprising. With no political access of their own, children are the least likely among us to hear the echo of their voices in our country's legislative chambers.

Whatever the outcome, the Affordable Care Act unquestionably has taken a bold step in taking seriously the medical needs and interests of America's children.