Chapter 5: Inclusion Needs of Youth in the Foster Care System Through Strategic Mentoring: A Social Justice Perspective

This chapter examines current educational disparities for youth in the foster system from a social justice lens. Children and youth in the foster care system across the nation experience perpetual emotional pain, poverty, and displacement. These invisible children are distinguishable by their numerous transitory placements and the issues indicative of their disparity, which include high dropout rates, poor literacy skills, and transition to adulthood with limited independent living skills or social support systems. Foster youth often transition from the system into homelessness and sex trafficking rather than to college and jobs. Underlying the educational experience for foster youth are policies, practices, and trends that serve as exclusionary measures, in which educational the needs of the children are often left unaddressed as overburdened government systems attempt to respond to basic safety needs. Needs of attachment, self-worth, self-efficacy, and self-regulation, which underlie their motivation and expenditure of effort for successful academic pursuits, are left unmet. Examination takes place of the underlying human factor, the substance from which children typically grow up and navigate through the educational system. Recommendations are made for foster youth to be engaged with culturally responsive, trained mentors, who scaffold the children’s needs through educational advocacy, educational support, life skills, and social-emotional development. Through mentor engagement, foster youth may more effectively navigate their educational journey, resolve their sense of individual identities as learners, and gain a sense of voice, which assists them in moving beyond their oppression toward successful outcomes and offers hope for their futures.