Help for Youths Transitioning from Foster Care

By JESSICA MARQUEZ

Eighteen is the age where you are officially an adult. You can vote, you can buy a lottery ticket, you can open a bank account and do other seemingly cool things. But, for an eighteen-year-old in foster care, that means they’re going to age out of the system.

Around 11,000 children are in foster care in New York City. Fifteen percent of them wind up homeless after they phase out; they are left to fend for themselves with no money and no idea of how to tackle life.

“That discharge meeting, it is one of the most fearful things,” said Foster Care Unplugged Founder Melody Centeno on the steps of City Hall Thursday morning. “They’re not looking forward to 18.”

A proposed New York State Senate bill can help change that. The bill, sponsored by Brooklyn Senator Kevin Parker, aims to create a program that provides skills to foster care children that will help them adapt to life outside the system. Such skills will include how to use money, how to cook, clean, and take care of yourself.

If the bill is turned into a law, it will help 21,000 foster care children, supporters said.

“We’re really pleading with our governmental leaders to take up this to legislation, to pass it in the Senate, make it law,” said Parker. “So that we can give some hope to our young people.”

“Aging out shouldn’t be an option with no resources for these youth,” said Centeno.

Centeno herself knows the experiences of foster care firsthand. She entered the foster care system at age three and ended up living in ten foster homes. However, Centeno had help from the American Dream Program at HeartShare St. Vincent’s Services. It’s due to this program that Centeno ended up achieving much more in life than homelessness.

“If it wasn’t for that program, I probably would have been aged out and homeless,” Centeno told supporters.

Her colleagues echoed the sentiment.

“These children need support or else everything that they held on to and every dream that they had at night goes out the window,” said Nicole Russell, the Precious Dreams founder. “It leaves because without help…these children are alone and alone is only so far you can go.”