Do Programs That Claim to be Empowering Actually Produce Empowerment for Youth Aging out of Foster Care?

Background: This quantitative study examines how participation in a youth empowerment programs (YEPs) is related to levels of psychological empowerment of young people aging out of foster care. YEPs consist of four main core components: 1) a positive adult facilitator; 2) a pro-social peer environment; 3) skill building or asset-building activities; and 4) youth involvement in program decision making. It is the fourth component – youth involvement in making meaningful decisions about the design, implementation, and or evaluation of youth relevant programs and policies – that is the active ingredient that sets YEPs apart from standard positive youth development programs.  Structurally, participation in YEPs takes the form of youth serving on committees, councils, boards, workgroups, or in staff positions. The main type of empowerment program offered to foster youth are foster youth advisory boards (Collins, 2004). There is no evidence yet that these programs produce their claimed empowerment. Allowing youth to make critical programmatic decisions in YEPs could very well produce psychological empowerment (PE), which is defined as perceived control, motivation to influence one’s socio-political environment, self-efficacy for socio-political skills, and participatory behavior. The purpose of this study is to explore these relationships more fully.

Methods A cross-sectional survey examined the level of PE of 193 foster care alumni (ages 18-25) who did (n= 99) and did not (n=94) participate in at least one type of YEP in Florida.  Between May 15 and September 3, 2013, a self-administered questionnaire was administered to young people in nine program sites across Florida. Data analysis was performed in SPSS Version 21 and consisted of univariate and multi-variate analysis. Regressions controlled for entry age, program age, gender, race/ethnicity, time in care, number of placements, and geographic location.

Results. The most common type of YEP were foster youth advisory boards (86% of the YEP sample). On average, the YEP group participated in their respective programs for 1.8 years whereas the non-YEP group had spent 2.54 years in their respective programs. Those who participated in a YEP experienced significantly higher perceived control (B = .25, p =.007), motivation to influence their environments (B = .30, SE B =.09, p =.001), self-efficacy for socio-political skills, and participatory behavior (B = .586, SE B= .136, p =.000), than non-YEP participants even when controlling for age at program entry, gender, race, time in foster care, number of placements, and geographic location.

Implications This exploratory study found that participation in a YEP is associated with higher levels of PE. The extent to which YEPs attract youth with higher pre-program levels of PE cannot be answered in this study. More rigorous research is needed, especially in the form of randomized controlled trials and longitudinal studies, to examine if participation in a YEP contributes to empowerment. One surprising finding was that foster youth advisory boards were not the only empowerment program offered to young people.