To recap where we are at with out current plan for the house, we are planning to build a house big enough for our family, plus an apartment in the basement that we can rent out to teens aging out of foster care, and also have a couple of bedrooms available for independent living.
So what is independent living in foster care? It might be helpful to explain a little bit about what that means and how it’s different.
Once a child in foster care reaches the age of 14, they get a little more say over what happens to them. For example, they get to consent to their permanency plan, to decide if they want to be adopted or not. There are often financial advantages in not being adopted, since there are lots of programs that a motivated teen can take advantage of to help pay for things like college and living expenses. They can choose to stay in foster care until the age of 23 in Michigan in order to take advantage of those opportunities.
A youth who decides not to be adopted can get into a program for independent living, which means the goal of foster care is not so much to find them an adoptive family, but to prepare them for adulthood on their own. Sometimes these teens can choose to live in an independent living situation, which means renting a room with someone instead of living in a licensed foster home.
The ideal situation for a teen in the IL program would be to live with a family who may or may not be licensed foster parents, but who will help the teen develop the skills they will need for adulthood. The will need help with budgeting, finding and maintaining jobs, navigating college and career choices, learning to find a place to live and being a tenant, as well as practical skills such as cooking, cleaning, and keeping a bank account.
Ideally, all of those things can be accomplished with the help of a family who serves a little bit less as a parental authority and a little bit more like a support/mentor.
As we know, there are many kids in this age range who are not living in the ideal situation. They may be living in places that aren’t ideal at all, or are actually detrimental to their development into responsible adulthood. Sometimes they end up back with the parents they were removed from, sometimes they end up with friends or a relatives couch, or just about anywhere someone will let them stay. This is because there aren’t a lot of homes that are open to independent living teens in the foster care system.
Our goal with the new house is to have some rooms available for IL teens so we can be a family that is close enough to be a support and to be a family when they need one, but to hold loosely enough to let them have some space and independence while they are learning those skills (within reason, of course).
We met with the unit at DHHS who oversees the IL program in Muskegon last week, and we’ve got some pretty big plans to help the kids they are serving. There are a lot of things that we can do as a community even in the short term that would make a big impact on these kids. So while we are building the house, we’re also hoping to build some inroads for our foster care support community and the IL program in other ways. If you are a part of our local foster support teams, you’ll be hearing more about what that looks like soon.
We leave every meeting that involves foster teens with a renewed urgency to get our project moving and make some of this space that is desperately needed in Muskegon. I will have more progress on that front to update you with very soon!