Transition Age Youth with Foster Care Experience: Capability, Functioning and Educational Well-Being

Background and Purpose: Education remains a transformative asset for transition-aged youth (TAY) in foster care due to their disproportionate adverse outcomes in human development indicators compared to same aged peers in the general population. A high school diploma and college attainment are associated with greater earnings and higher employment – offering TAY the potential for improved self-sufficiency, better health and socio-economic outcomes. However, TAY with foster care experience face unique challenges including lack of social support and financial burdens. Sen’s Capability Approach posits that well-being is of primary moral importance and should be understood in terms of “capabilities” and “functionings”. Guided by this framework, this study examined two questions: (1) to what extent is connectedness with significant adults and receipt of financial assistance (i.e., capability) associated with educational attainment (i.e., educational well-being) among TAY with foster care histories? and (2) to what extent are these associations mediated by skill programs and employment (i.e., functioning)?

Methods: This study used publicly available, nationally representative data from the 2017 National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD). The analytic sample comprised 24,474 TAY at baseline across all 50 U.S. states and Washington DC, ages 11 to 22 years, in the third cohort of the outcomes data. Path analysis was used to examine possible pathways from both social connectedness with significant adults and financial assistance to educational attainment, and the potential mediational roles of skills programs and employment. Structural models were deemed acceptable if χ2/df ratio was < 3; root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) was ≤ .09, and the comparative fit index (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) were > .95.

Results: Findings suggest youth connected with significant adults tend to complete skills programs (β=.034, SE=.001, p<.001) and be less employed (β= -.014, SE=.001, p<.001) than those not connected, while completion of skills programs was associated with educational attainment (β=.432, SE=.061, p<.001). Receiving financial assistance was positively associated with completing skills programs (β=.331, SE=.073, p<.001) and employment (β=.286, SE=.047, p<.001) compared to non-beneficiaries, while being employed was in turn inversely associated with educational attainment (β= -.117, SE=.040, p<.05). The mediational pathways from connectedness to educational attainment, and from financial assistance to educational attainment were notably similar in terms of being significantly mediated by skills programs. However, pathways differed in terms of employment – which had an inverse mediational role between financial assistance and education attainment.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings offer a roadmap of several viable direct and indirect pathways from capability to well-being. Consequently, there is value in informing child welfare policymakers and practitioners that the various pathways of youth functioning in this study, on average, produce different educational attainment experiences. From a human capital perspective, the social connectedness-skills program pathway might offer higher returns in terms of youth long-term educational well-being. However, the financial assistance-employment pathway might be a favored strategy for addressing economic burdens of independent living among TAY. Potentially helpful approaches include programs that integrate both social and financial support for enhancing youth functioning and educational well-being.