Michigan foster kids struggle under system that gives ‘nothing’ after aging out

When Brianna Carsley, who spent most of her life in and out of foster care, graduated from Oxford High School in 2023, she’d already been accepted at Michigan State University and been awarded multiple scholarships.

“I threw myself into school because it was all I had,” Carsley told Bridge Michigan. “It’s how I coped.”

To help her pay for the full cost of college, she applied for and received additional resources from the state of Michigan, including a scholarship and voucher created to help people who spent time in foster care.

However, at 18 and living in a new part of the state on her own for the first time, Carsley struggled. Then a long-running health issue and complications from a switch in medication, plus difficulty in finding a doctor near campus, became too much and she medically withdrew from school.

“It’s kind of unfortunate,” said Carsley, now 20, “because when I moved in and got my dorm key I was so excited and couldn’t wait to start classes.”

A survey of Michigan foster youth over a four-year period, part of a national assessment , found that only about 1% earned a postsecondary degree – bachelor’s or associate’s – by their 21st birthday. The number who reported being enrolled in school decreased from 93% at age 17 to 26% at age 21.

This comes nearly two decades after a legal settlement forced the state to overhaul its child welfare practices. The state continues to operate under a consent decree with federal monitoring of how it handles the care of its roughly 9,000 foster youth. The state “did not meet the required performance standards in 19 of 24 areas monitored for compliance,” according to the July report .

The settlement agreement in that lawsuit was reached in October 2008, meaning that it’s been in place for about as long as many of the foster youth who are aging out have been alive.

Rep. Kathy Schmaltz, R-Jackson, advocates for improving conditions for young people exiting foster care — often lacking the support networks available to young people who grew up in more traditional households.

“We let them age out and they have nothing,” Schmaltz told Bridge. “They don’t have a support system. They don’t have housing. They don’t have relationships. And we expect them to be successful.”

Schmaltz co-sponsored legislation with Sen Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, that was signed into law and requires that a significant amount of federal money received for a foster child be preserved for their future needs. In the past, the state has used that money as reimbursement for the cost of care. Under the new law, those funds can be used for, among other things, education or job training.

Nationally, researchers have found that only about 10% of people who spent time in foster care received a two- or four-year degree by their mid- to late 20s, a rate that’s five times lower than the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion.

The reasons some people who went through foster care have difficulty adjusting to college and earning a degree might seem small, experts and advocates told Bridge, but can be enough to derail their postsecondary education.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for the state’s child welfare and foster care systems, didn’t make anyone available for an interview for this story.

In a written statement, spokesperson Erin Stover said the department “is committed to ensuring young people who have experienced foster care have access to the resources and opportunities they need to pursue their educational goals. … We encourage young people who have experienced foster care, along with caregivers, educators and community partners, to learn more about these opportunities and connect eligible students with available support.”

Maddy Day, co-founder of Fostering Academic Achievement Nationwide and a former director of Fostering Success Michigan, described the state’s education resources for people in the foster system as a leaky pipe with many places young people can fall out — even before they reach college.

Former foster youth, particularly those who age out of the system, can be challenged with navigating independence because, Day said, they have not been prepared for a life outside foster care. She said Michigan’s foster care system doesn’t provide someone for a young person to call for advice or whose experience in college they can lean on.

“When you are 18 and leaving foster care you don’t have anyone who is doing that or anyone who is looking after you,” Day said.

The challenges aren’t unique to Michigan. Some states, like Texas, have passed laws that require public colleges and universities to have liaisons on campus to assist former foster youth who are enrolled. However, experts in Texas told Bridge that the state’s legislation didn’t fund these positions or training, which has limited the success.

Michigan doesn’t require public colleges and universities to have campus liaisons for former foster youth, but schools like Western Michigan University and the University of Michigan have programs designed to help.

Day said there are real concerns about pursuing but not receiving a postsecondary degree, including the financial cost.

“The identity piece is really important for many young people,” she said. “They see college as a way to define themselves differently than others have perceived them or how they were raised. To fail at that comes at real personal cost.”

The Fostering Academics, Mentoring Excellence (FAME) program at MSU is one of about two dozen support programs at colleges and universities in the state dedicated to helping former foster youth on campus.

The program is one reason that Carsley, who applied to MSU from metro Detroit, picked East Lansing for her college experience. She said a worker there was kind and the program had a food pantry and some financial assistance programs, but it lacked the community she needed, particularly when her health worsened and she didn’t know where to turn.

“I was really desperate,” she said. “I had worked my ass off to get into MSU.”

It was someone in the campus program for former foster youth who helped Carsley settle on a medical withdrawal from school rather than simply leaving, she said.

Given the choice between more money to help stay enrolled or a greater sense of community and support, Carsley said she’d prefer the latter.

Karie Rozen is the director of Fostering Success Michigan, a nonprofit that works to increase access and success in higher education for students with experience in foster care. She said some campuses have robust programs to help students, but there aren’t enough.

“My dream is that every campus across the state would have a good environment for young people who have experienced foster care – like points of contact that could support them on that campus – because they all need it,” she said.

To get to that point, Rozen said the state needs to take a more active role in supporting former foster youth, invest in and partner with organizations already doing the work to build the needed infrastructure and ensure that resources are available and accessible.

It’s what experts told Bridge is missing for the young people who want a degree after high school.

Michigan does provide financial support. It’s one of about 26 states that offer tuition and fee waivers for former foster youth. Seven states, including Minnesota and Iowa, go a step further and cover more costs of attending college.

Texas, like Michigan, has tuition waivers for former foster youth. In 2015, the state enacted its law requiring all public colleges and universities to have at least one dedicated liaison for former foster youth.

Kayli Lord is the statewide foster care support coordinator at Education Reach for Texans, a nonprofit that works to train campus liaisons, among its other initiatives. Lord spent time in Texas’ foster care system herself and said that seemingly small problems can create enough of a crisis for someone to leave school.

“We’re talking about years and years of constant little things and big things,” Lord said. “It’s a huge thing to be removed from your home and not know where you’re going.”

The foster liaisons on campuses can help former foster youth manage the little things that come up during college life or sidestep issues they don’t see coming.

As an example, Lord said she recently spoke with a campus liaison who contacted students who had reported on financial aid applications that they’d spent time in foster care, but who weren’t receiving a tuition waiver. Those students took out loans like any other, Lord said, and the liaison helped the students switch the loans to tuition waivers, which don’t have to be paid back.

“That is life changing,” Lord said.

But that help isn’t uniform across Texas.

A recent report found that half of Texas campuses have not posted the contact information for liaisons on their websites, which is required by law. Many of the school employees designated as liaisons do that work as a “side gig” on top of other responsibilities or don’t receive the training needed to understand the situations former foster youth come from.

“A liaison who knows the reasons (someone is struggling) can really be the thing for these students to not only get enrolled in college,” Lord said, “but stay long enough to graduate.”

Saba Gebrai is the director of the Park West Foundation in metro Detroit, which works with at-risk youth who age out of the foster system.

Gebrai, who helped Carsley before and after she attended MSU, said on the whole, colleges and universities don’t understand what their former foster youth students have gone through before stepping onto campus, or even when they’re applying.

She recounted the story of a high school student whose abuse and neglect included not being allowed to go to school. Once she was removed by the state and began attending school again her grades increased, and her GPA rose above a 2.5. But the college she applied to didn’t provide housing because her overall high school GPA was too low.

Gebrai said she tried to explain the situation to the school’s leadership but they didn’t change their stance. Instead of starting college as soon as she could, the student was “deflated” and decided to wait a year.

Getting former foster youth enrolled in college straight from high school can help prevent homelessness, Gebrai said.

Nineteen percent of the 19-year-olds surveyed for the National Youth in Transition Database — the same survey that found Michigan’s grad rates for foster youth are lower than the national average — reported that they had been homeless at some point over the prior two years. The rate was 24% for 17-year-olds and 16% for those 21.

Experts and advocates told Bridge that not all solutions need to be on campus.

Gebrai said Michigan should mandate that children in foster care be enrolled in school as soon as possible following a switch to a new home to reduce any gaps in their education, even if it’s just a few days.

Day, the co-founder of Fostering Academic Achievement Nationwide, said Michigan used to have positions for education planners who worked with foster youth during their K-12 schooling and acted as a liaison between the foster care and education systems. She called the positions “innovative” but they were eliminated several years ago, which she called a big loss.

Carsley will soon turn 21. In the years since leaving MSU, with the help and encouragement of a friend, she earned two nursing certificates. Between jobs, she’s also taking community college classes for an associate’s degree in nursing.

She was recently diagnosed with a nervous system disorder, which she believes stems from trauma experience during foster care. She continues to struggle establishing her independence.

“It’s all too much. It’s exhausting. And it’s just me,” Carsley said. “I don’t want to keep bothering my friends because they’re all I have. I go to church and pray.”

This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.