My sister recently told me a story of when she went to pick up a client at the psych ward of a hospital. Her client “Bobby,” walked out of his room and saw another young man with his parents. This other boy was curled up in the fetal position with his eyes fixated on the ceiling. His appendages were stiff and gnarled, his face expressing the torment of his mind. The boy’s parents, my sister said, looked terrified at their son’s apparent psychotic break.

Bobby looked down at the boy and started giggling. My sister was confused by this odd response from a large, almost frighteningly buff 18 year old.


“Why are you giggling?” she asked.


“Because I know just how that kid feels.”


My sister has opened my eyes to something we failed to study in any of my social policy courses in grad school—the plight of emancipated foster youth. We studied adult homelessness and children in the welfare system, the foster care system, and the policies that affect all of those vulnerable populations. But emancipated foster youth seem to fall into a gap not easily analyzed by policymakers. And I don’t mean just U.S. policymakers.

When I worked in the Caucasus—Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—two instances of unique homelessness stood out to me: that of children, and the elderly. Though there are compounding factors contributing to the problems of both of those populations, one thing was certain: no one knew what to do with them.

No one knows quite what to do, exactly, with emancipated youth. This is for a few reasons:

One, their legal status shifts significantly. They are no longer children. They are no longer wards of the state. They are no longer obligated to receive some sort of assistance or protection from anyone.

Another issue is their developmental status. They are considered adults—both legally, and in some ways, socially. Unfortunately, however, many youth emerging from years within the foster care system (and accompanying abuses and problems) are not mentally developed enough to take on the responsibility of adulthood. If drugs or alcohol have been part of their lifestyle at all (and this is usually the case), their developmental and mental status has been stunted significantly. My sister says many of her clients consider themselves “sober” when they are “only” smoking weed.

Yet another issue, that my sister has brought to my attention significantly, is their mental health needs. In particular—medications. Most children within the foster care system receive some sort of mental health medical care. If they aren’t self medicating (through drugs or alcohol) they are often medicated for other reasons. According to a study done by the CA. Dept of Mental Health, on the percentage of youth being served by county mental health facilities in California, 3.85 % of all youths in CA (aged 14-17) receive care. However, of individuals aged 18-21, 1.84 % receive care (www.childsworld.ca.gov).

What is happening with this massive drop-off of mental health care?

There isn’t sufficient evidence in the studies I examined to give an accurate answer. But anecdotal evidence points to the lack of supervision, the neglect of mandates, and the insecure status of emancipated youth.

My sister says when kids aren’t forced to take their medications anymore, they just stop. Many of them don’t even know why they were taking them in the first place. Many of the youth she works with were homeless—they just didn’t have the inner or outer resources to transition into adult, functional living after the foster care system. And if a youth is enrolled in a program for such vulnerable, emancipated youth,(like hers) it is often difficult to get them the kind of psychiatric care they need if the program itself doesn’t offer it.

“Bobby” needs his psych medications. But since the program in which he is enrolled at the moment only has a psychiatrist for children, he can’t get them re-filled. Left without his medications, he could go through another psychotic break and wind up just like the young boy he so identified with in the psych ward. I’m certain my sister won’t let that happen—she’s a feisty one.

However, the amount of bureaucracy and confusion involved in dealing with the mental health needs of children emancipated from the foster care system is startling. It’s an area with where research is scarce, resources are slim (but growing), and vulnerable individuals are suffering.

In the Caucasus the elderly are primarily homeless because the social structure of the Soviet system dropped out from underneath them. The children are primarily homeless for the same reason---the orphanages are no longer required to take them, and their lifetimes of abuse and neglect have left them incapable of functioning in a fractured society. They are also denied a functioning justice system—contributing to the confusion of what to do with these “floating” youth.

Oddly enough, as wealthy and functioning as we are comparatively, the United States has the same problem.

This isn’t one of those odd things Honda and I see that make us laugh. It’s one of the ones that just make me sad.