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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]One would expect that with teens there would be some kind of program that would teach them basic life skills and get them ready to live on their own.
I hear that despite all the benefits they qualify for, only 2% go to college.
Could that be because they are moved around so often during high school years or just nobody teaching them to even apply?
Do they get to learn how to drive?[/quote]

Step back and think about all the years of life skills teaching that a foster child who has spent a decade or more being shuffled between foster homes and an unstable bio family will have missed.
Start with emotional regulation.  A neurotypical child in a stable home learns those skills gradually through toddlerdom through elementary school.
Very basic stuff:  Don't hit people.  Don't scream at your teacher.  
Then get into things like:  Be on time.  Call if you can't get somewhere.  
Kids who grow up in dysfunction miss out on a lot of these very basic principles, which are best instilled in small children who are at a malleable age and want to please adults.  Teaching those skills to teens is a lot harder because they are at a developmental stage which is hard-wired to want to rebel against instruction.  
Then add in the reality that a large percentage of kids in foster care are struggling with the effects of pre-natal alcohol and drug exposure that cause learning disabilities and emotional dysregulation, not to mention emotional trauma.

[/quote]
Surely most have not been in foster care for a decade?
All kids are not taken into care as preschoolers
[/quote]
Sure. There are a couple of teens out there whose parent or grandparent dies and they end up in foster care for a short time as a teen.  But for most, even if they weren't always formally in foster care, it's very very likely that their home situation was unstable with drug use, abuse, homelessness, etc, since forever.

I grew up with foster siblings.  I remember the infant in the full body cast because his mom's boyfriend threw him down the stairs; the 4 yo who went home on weekends to an apartment without electricity or a refrigerator and would come back having not eaten anything for 2 days; the 10 yo boy who would hold his head and just rock and rock because his parents had found that CPS couldn't tell if they abused him if they hit him on his head because the bruises were covered by hair (turns out he had a skull fracture); the 3 yo who would jump off of things to try to kill herself over and over, including throwing herself down the stairs and off of windowsils; and an Asian baby of immigrants who was gravely ill but who had been abandoned at birth so the hospital decided to stop treating him because he couldn't pay so they sent him to foster care with instructions to call the ambulance when he died.[/quote]
Are you for real?
Hospital cannot refuse to treat a child.
All your examples sound exaggerated, bordering criminal.
[/quote]
Totally for real.  It was foster care in rural Texas in the 80s.

It was Dallas Children's Hospital that refused to treat the baby.  They assumed he had a fatal genetic disorder but didn't want to pay for the very expensive test.  So they sent him to foster care expecting him to pass within the week.  It got complicated when he was still alive at a month and then at two months and they actually had to figure out what was wrong with him. My mom and the social worker tracked down his parents and reunited the family.   The parents desperately wanted the baby but were illegal immigrants and were afraid of being deported if they couldn't pay the medical bills.  My mom helped those parents navigate the system for years to get the kid the needed surgeries and therapies (outside of the system, as they became family to us).

The infant in the cast did have parents in jail.  Hence the reason he was in foster care.  The boyfriend did go to prison for injuring him.  My mom was a witness at trial testifying to the baby's pain and suffering.

The kid with the skull fracture had his parent's rights terminated once they found out what was happening and I believe he was moved to an adoption placement.  He had a lot of issues so I don't know if he was ever actually adopted.

The 4 yo who wasn't fed got sent back to the apartment without food or electricity once her mother completed a parenting class.  My mom fought hard against it, but the judge wouldn't listen.  She probably had a really hard life. [/quote]

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