From Foster Care to the Streets : A Call to Support Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ + Youth in Foster Care

The modern United States (U.S.) foster care system’s history is steeped in racism, violence, and oppression. Today, Black, Indigenous, and youth are overrepresented in the U.S. foster care system and youths, running away from foster care is perceived to be a more viable option than continuing to endure discrimination within the system despite the high risks of homelessness, unstable housing, human alternative perspectives for social workers to create a more just and genuine child welfare system.


A BRIEF OVERVIEW: THE STATE OF FOSTER CARE PAST AND PRESENT
The history of modern foster care extends back to colonial America and its practices of indentured servitude. The American indentured Law's concept of parens patriae, the idea that communities had some responsibility in protecting dependent, parentless children (Rymph, 2017). However, this protection was not free: these children were expected to learn and perform labor to fund their own care (Rymph, 2017).
By the mid-19th century, shifts in public perceptions of slavery and workhouses and were thought, at the time, to be a more humane and criteria for their selection processes and often denied children on the basis of religion, race, and ethnicity (Rymph, 2017).
In 1853, theologian Charles Loring Brace established the Children's to send parentless and impoverished youth out west on what would them adopted by rural farmers and their families. The process was of an emphasis on placing children out of their biological families, Brace and CAS are often cited as the foundations of modern foster care. By the early 20th century, the Progressive Era led to an array of new federal agencies including the U.S. Children's Bureau, which remains involved in foster and adoption today (Rymph, 2017).
The racist praxis of the child welfare system has been documented from child welfare services based on their race. Growing support for integration in the 1950s led to the child welfare system abruptly adopting harsh, punitive rules in foster care as a new way to punish Black youth, families, and communities (Cooper, 2013). A similar legacy of state violence perpetrated by the child welfare system haunts Indigenous youth and communities today. For over a century Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their families and sent to boarding culture while continuing the genocide of Indigenous communities (Cooper, 2013).
Today, Black youth constitute nearly one third of the total population of (Census Bureau, 2020; Children's Bureau, 2021). Similarly, LGBTQ+ in comparison to the general population ( Figure 2). Given the violent and oppressive history of the child welfare system, we can begin to are more likely to run away from foster care compared to white, cisgender, heterosexual youth. In fact, Black youth, especially Black girls, in foster care are almost twice as likely to elope compared to their These statistics paint a concerning picture: the modern foster care system is a harmful entity that actively targets Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth and children. For decades, these communities have seen social workers unnecessarily remove Black and Indigenous youth with historical and generational trauma away from their families and place them in culturally incompetent foster care arrangements (Brave Likewise, social workers have removed LGBTQ+ youth who have been them in care arrangements that perpetuate the very same invalidation and trauma (McCormick et al., 2017;Mooney, 2017).
For many youths, the abuse and neglect experienced before and during foster care are so unbearable that they choose to elope (McCormick decision can have on youths' wellbeing are numerous. Youth who elope from foster care are more likely to experience homelessness, sexual care system when thousands of Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth are willing to endure so much trauma and violence simply to avoid being in foster care.

WHY YOUTH ELOPE
Youth in foster care may choose to run away for a myriad of reasons.
biological family and friends. For simplicity's sake, we can group these driving forces as push and pull factors, respectively (King et al., 2017; the presence of some external force pulling the youth away from their care arrangement, such as the aforementioned desire to reunite with biological family members. In contrast, push factors allude to an internal force driving the youth away from their care arrangement-for example, abusive, authoritarian, homophobic, or racist foster parents and peers. While both factors play an important role in the decision to run away, Page, 2017). Discrimination and abuse faced by LGBTQ+ youth in foster care have been well documented (McCormick et al., 2017). Prior to being placed, it is not uncommon for LGBTQ+ youth to encounter social workers who lack an appropriate degree of cultural humility. As such, even before entering the foster care system many LGBTQ+ youths are met and resources. If that were not damaging enough, without incurring repercussions, foster parents may legally refuse to house LGBTQ+ youth varied, usually deleterious, experiences. Isolation, harassment, physical and sexual abuse, forced conversion, double standards in rules for straight peers, and a lack of acceptance are all common experiences for LGBTQ+ youth living in foster care on the basis of their gender identities and sexualities (Harris & Hackett, 2008;McCormick et al., 2017;Rymph, they feel safer on the streets with their chosen family than in foster care experiences with peers, caregivers, and social workers in foster care who lack an appropriate degree of cultural humility and/or are outwardly racist. For instance, research has shown that Indigenous youth in foster care are more likely to experience recurrent emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual abuse when compared to their white peers, especially when they are assigned to white caregivers (Landers et al., 2021). Similar studies have revealed that Black youth in foster care placements are disproportionately exposed to maltreatment compared to their white peers (Scott et al., 2011). In fact, Black boys in foster care experience these individuals depart from the child welfare system as young men with an even deeper distrust of mental health care providers than when they entered the system (Scott et al., 2011). These trends suggest that the foster care system is failing Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth

RISKS AND IMPACTS OF ELOPEMENT THE MICRO LEVEL
According to Bowlby and Ainsworth's attachment theory, children rely on a caring, intimate, and undisrupted relationship with their adult caregivers in order to grow up mentally healthy (Bretherton, 1992). With this in mind, it is natural to surmise that Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth who run away from foster care are unlikely to have formed healthy attachments with either their biological parents or foster parents.
Coupled with the trauma that precedes and endures through the foster care experience, Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth are subjected to in risky behaviors such as substance use and unprotected commercial sexual contact for survival (Fernandes-Alcantara, 2018). Additionally, youth who repeatedly run away face further risks of detachment from adult bonding, involvement in criminal and gang activity, and lack of point (Dank et al., 2017).
Because many of these behaviors are labeled as criminal by the state, the juvenile legal system. Statistics show that the majority of youth who spend time in detention facilities will be arrested, convicted, longitudinal study of 2,500 youth who were incarcerated in a juvenile In addition to setting youth up for adult incarceration, the juvenile legal Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth. Reports of abuse, violence, and substandard care are common in juvenile detention facilities, particularly for Black and Indigenous youth who are both overrepresented in the juvenile legal system (Abrams, 2013). Moreover, studies have shown that, like foster care, spending time in the juvenile legal system further deteriorates youths' mental health and impedes opportunities for educational attainment (Abrams, 2013).

THE MESO LEVEL
Impacted communities also feel the reverberations of elopement in FROM FOSTER CARE TO THE STREETS and increase their likelihood of adult incarceration, but they also pose already underfunded and under-resourced. Juvenile incarceration costs an average of $200,000 per child per year, with some states spending more than half a million annually to incarcerate a single youth (Justice Policy Institute, 2020). With more than 50,000 youth incarcerated, the U.S. may be spending more than $10 billion annually on juvenile incarceration (Sawyer & Wagner, 2020). In comparison, the federal kinship guardianship assistance-a $17 million cut from the year prior (Congressional Research Service, 2021). Transferring even a fraction of juvenile incarceration spending to kinship assistance programs for Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth could massively improve outcomes for youth while keeping families, and thereby communities, connected.
It is also critical to consider the impacts that foster care and elopement have on the families of children who are in the system. In its current state, we have seen that the U.S. foster care system does little more than tear families apart. Biological parents of children in state custody experience disproportionate rates of mental illness, particularly complex post traumatic stress disorder (Suomi et al., 2021). Studies have traumatic life experiences that one can endure and is often compared to experiencing the death of a child (Askren & Bloom, 1999;Masson & Dickens, 2015). Following the removal, parents are often subjected to worsening symptoms of preexisting mental health conditions, which This cycle of violence illustrates how the racist foster care system impacts Black and Indigenous parents and communities just as much as their children. By removing new generations of Black and Indigenous youth from their cultures, the foster care system continues the nation's legacy of punishment and genocide, thus preserving the race, gender, and class-based hierarchies that have served the nation since its advent (Roberts, 2012). In order to further understand the experience communities disjointed. Based on survey data collected from youth after service provision, each of the three main programs, in addition to the 1-800-RUNAWAY families (Administration for Children and Families, 2015). In the same youth which resulted in 21,000 transitions to shelters for the evening. Additionally, self-report surveys illustrated that the 1-800-RUNAWAY again in the future for additional support (Administration for Children & Families, 2015).

CRITIQUE AND CONSIDERATIONS
Although the RHYA has provided support to thousands of youth since legislation. Youth in foster care constitute a large portion of runaways, the legislation makes no mention of Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ FROM FOSTER CARE TO THE STREETS foster youth even though they are disproportionately impacted by in data collected from the program. For example, virtually no data was collected on LGBTQ+ youth who received services from the program (Administration for Children & Families, 2015). Data collection accounted only for transgender youth, neglecting to assess for how many youths served were lesbian, gay, bisexual, nonbinary, gender non-conforming, (Furguson & Maccio, 2015).
Another important consideration is the legislation's emphasis on education and job training. There is widespread acceptance that a mentally healthy. Quality education and job training provide important educational, developmental, and social milestones for children and a future-focused mentality surrounding job training over youths' immediate safety and wellbeing. Experiencing homelessness in youth By providing youth with stable housing, we can help to halt the cyclical pattern of poverty and incarceration, improve mental health outcomes, and empower youth with a sense of agency (Naccarato et al., 2008). runaway and homeless youth (Slesnick et al., 2008). For these reasons, toward counseling and housing.

FOSTERING CONNECTIONS TO SUCCESS AND INCREASING ADOPTIONS ACT
More recently, in 2008, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act (Fostering Connections Act) was passed in an sections that focus on connecting and supporting kinship caregivers, improving outcomes for youth in foster care, improving access to foster care and adoption within Indigenous communities, improving incentives well as other provisions (Fostering Connections Act, 2008). Some of the most prominent alterations in child welfare that have resulted from the age of 21 as well as heightening the focus on transition planning for youth who are aging out. The logic is that by encouraging kinship foster care and providing welfare services until the age of 21, youth will have a more supportive and protracted transition into independent living (Day & Preston, 2013).
In terms of implementation, varying degrees of intervention success can be seen on a state-to-state basis. The majority of U.S. states, including educational stability, services to support said stability, and transition coordination. Despite these successes, many jurisdictions have failed to particularly elements such as educational services (Perfect et al., 2013).

CRITIQUE AND CONSIDERATIONS
Like the RHYA, the Fostering Connections Act places a strong emphasis on job training and readiness to enter the workforce. This focus within the legislation highlights the inherent neoliberalism within U.S. law, based as it is on the idea that youth are responsible for circumstances by becoming a productive member of the workforce (Schelbe, 2011). Again, like the RHYA, the Fostering Connections personal responsibility and job training, and instead focus on housing 2008;Slesink et al., 2008). The legislation is also inconsistent with its promotion of kinship care. Although the core of the legislation is based on the idea that kinship care promotes improved outcomes, the resources for kinship caregivers (Koh et al., 2021).

STRUCTURAL AND CULTURAL CHANGES
The Fostering Connections Act has brought about meaningful change by promoting kinship foster care. Yet social workers will play an important role in advocating for further amendments to current legislation which will be crucial to providing Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ runaway foster youth with the support that they so vitally need and deserve. It is also important to acknowledge that any legislation is inherently a banduntil social workers collectively advocate for and implement large-scale shifts in the deeply rooted cultural norms and values within the U.S.
When moving toward large-scale, structural changes, it is important for social workers to reconsider how the American patriarchal nuclear family structure has contributed to the creation of such an oppressive foster care system. Decades of research suggest that the myth of the nuclear family is inappropriate, misleading, and detrimental to our understanding of family dynamics and appropriate therapeutic homophobic and misogynistic. It suggests that anything other than a cisgender, heterosexual marriage does not constitute a valid family unit, while reinforcing traditional gender roles: the husband as the provider, protector, and decision maker, and the wife as the domestic servant and childrearer (St. Vil et al., 2019). In contrast to the patriarchal nuclear family structure, Black and Indigenous communities have historically placed a strong emphasis on communal mastery to promote positive outcomes in child-rearing (Hobfoll et al., 2002). Even today it is common This is primarily due to the mechanisms of mass incarceration which remove parents from their children's lives and heighten caregiver responsibilities for the co-parent and their relatives (The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2016; St. Vil et al., 2019).
removal of Black and Indigenous children from their families (Hobfoll et al., 2002). For instance, studies have shown that youth placed in kinship foster arrangements-most often with women of color-have similar physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes to youth placed in non-kinship arrangements. This is true despite the fact that kinship foster parents are, on average, older, lower income, less healthy, and receive fewer services and lower payments from child welfare agencies 2021). In other words, women of color in a kinship foster parent role produce similar outcomes for youth compared to white, non-kinship foster parents even though they are given fewer resources by child welfare agencies. In applying a collectivist approach to child-rearing, we may be able to create better outcomes for youth and their families by keeping families united and supported.

IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
Social workers have an important role in transforming the foster care system. With our code of ethics in mind, it is imperative that we continue to advocate for cultural changes that abandon the three pillars of capitalist oppression: white supremacy, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy. While social workers should strive to eliminate the need for runaway, homeless, and foster care youth services through large-scale we can help youth who are already navigating through these systems right now.
From a clinical perspective, it is crucial that social workers who serve and outside of the child welfare system begin to operate from cultural humility, trauma-informed, and social justice lenses. The patterns of racism and oppression in the child welfare system are deeply woven into but rather working in tandem with them to provide resources and to most historically oppressed and abused communities.

FROM FOSTER CARE TO THE STREETS
CONCLUSION elucidated that the current U.S. foster care system has not strayed far from its oppressive origins. The foster care experience is commonly not a positive one for Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth. Racism, even social workers are common experiences for youth with these to risk further abuse, exploitation, trauma, and homelessness just to avoid their caregivers. Instead of meeting the crucially important social function for Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ youth: to continue the U.S.'s legacy of punishment and genocide. Healing racial and cultural trauma in Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ communities is often et al., 2021). By separating families and alienating LGBTQ+ youth, the U.S. continues to prevent collective healing, ultimately keeping Elopement from foster care may be a much deeper, more meaningful behavior than we think it is. Perhaps youth elope not just to escape the the communities that birthed them and initiate collective healing. Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ communities are resilient, but they should not helping to free their future, the youth.