Support and Advocacy for Foster Care Students

Each year, the United States has over 400,000 youth in the foster care system. While many of us in education have interacted with foster care youth and their social workers, we lack knowledge specific to the mental health issues specific to youth placed in the foster care system. Comparing foster care youth with their peers reveals the specific challenges faced by this population. This presentation will provide a brief overview of some of the main issues faced by foster care youth throughout their development. Research points to issues with attachment for foster care youth (Gardenhire et al., 2019; Miranda et al., 2020; Schofield et al., 2019), yet also offers attachment opportunities with teachers–which has been linked to success in school. Teachers, administrators, and staff will be provided to ways to work with different attachment styles of foster care youth to help them build and maintain trusted relationships. Other issues include disordered eating, coping strategies, lack of success transitioning to college, self-advocacy, disruption, missing records, and foster family relationships. School counselors, teachers, administrators, and staff can all work to better the opportunities and futures of their foster care students through acknowledging and addressing simple and effective methods for communicating and interacting with foster care youth. Attendees will take home practical methods for positively interacting with foster care youth according to their specific needs. By building strong support systems within the school, all students can be more successful