Developing strategies for positive change: Transitioning foster youth to adulthood

• Group-Level Assessment identifies ways to help aging-out foster youth.
• Transitioning youth need a person to support and guide them.
• Promote early personal asset development to maximize positive outcomes
• Increase resource longevity to help emancipated youth navigate challenges
• Cultivate relationship-building skills so that youth have supportive relationships

Foster youth encounter numerous challenges before reaching adulthood, with lingering impacts in many aspects of their lives once they leave state care: academic, employment, financial, housing, mental health, parenting, and social. In Hamilton County, Ohio, emancipating youth encounter similar struggles, limiting academic success for some participants in the Higher Education Mentoring Initiative (HEMI). This study utilized a Group-Level Assessment (GLA), an action-based, participatory research process, to generate information from various foster care system stakeholders, including foster youth, about the specific barriers and contextual factors that impact transitioning foster youth locally. Five themes emerged from the GLA process along with two, critical capacities necessary for successful outcomes: individual support and personal development. Post-research local action group community endeavors and implications to help transitioning youth experience more positive outcomes are discussed.