Fostering Positive Outcomes: How Mentoring Can Help Children and Adolescents in Foster Care

Each year, over a quarter of a million children are removed from their homes and placed in foster care, usually as a result of abuse or neglect.1 Perhaps not surprisingly, as compared with other children, youth in foster care experience a range of mental health problems, including depression, aggression and withdrawal. They often suffer grief due to the separation from or loss of relationships with their natural parents. In addition, they may have difficulty adjusting to new and often changeable school and home environments. Children in foster care are also at heightened risk for educational and behavioral difficulties. A distressing 65 percent of the eighteen-year-olds leaving foster care have failed to complete high school.2 Further, as they “age out” of the foster care system they face a number of other risks, including unemployment, substance abuse, pregnancy and involvement with the criminal justice system.3

Far too many youth in foster care lack the adult support that is so necessary to help them through this difficult transition. In this Research Corner, I will examine the role of mentors in the promoting better outcomes for these young people.