August 16, 2017 The Skanner Page 7
BACK TO SCHOOL
‘Aging Out’ – and Into College
Program helps former foster students adjust to college life
By Christen McCurdy
Of The Skanner News
W
hen Robert McDonald moved
into his first apartment, it
took about a long time to un-
pack most of his boxes. He’d
moved so often growing up, he said,
that getting comfortable settling into a
new place was difficult.
McDonald grew up in and out of fos-
ter care,. His home base was Portland,
because his grandmother lived here,
but his family circumstances meant
he shuffled between foster homes in
numerous states, landing back in Port-
land as an adult.
McDonald also struggled, as an adult,
to find his path in life. He gave about 20
years of his life to addiction, he said,
before seeking out a path and career. In
2010 he enrolled at Portland Communi-
ty College. At first he was in the heat-
ing, ventilation and air conditioner re-
pair program but changed course due
to an issue with financial aid. Then he
made a discovery: he loved math, and
had a knack for describing it to others.
“I used to avoid math,” he said, laugh-
ing. McDonald has finished his associ-
ate’s degree and is now a full-time stu-
dent at Portland State. He continues to
tutor at PCC and to volunteer with Fos-
tering Success, a mentoring program
specifically for students who experi-
enced foster care at some point during
their childhood.
Fostering Success is a relatively new
program – coordinator Lisa Feinics
started in her position last August —
but Feinics said it developed gradually
as administrators at PCC realized for-
mer foster youth can use more support
at the college level.
In addition to working directly with
students to offer support and informa-
tion, Feinics trains faculty and staff to
become “champions” for former foster
youth, offering support and referrals
to resource. The network of champions
has been around for several years, but
her position was created to provide a
more direct point of contact for college
students coming from the foster care
system.
In Oregon, young people tradition-
ally “age out” of foster care at age 18 –
meaning state support for their foster
parents ends. In recent years the state
has expanded offerings for aged-out
youth, including supported housing
for youth up to age 21. Historically,
adults who’ve finished foster care have
been less likely than their peers to com-
plete a high school diploma or GED
– and more likely to experience home-
lessness, incarceration and addiction.
Former foster students who go on to
college are also less likely to finish. Ac-
cording to a fact sheet published by the
national Fostering Success program,
84 percent of foster youth aged 17 or 18
want to go to college but just 20 percent
enroll in college. Less than 10 percent
obtain a bachelor’s degree.
Feinics lived in a series of foster
homes as a child and went on to obtain
a PhD in neurobiology and behavior,
studying the effects of stress and drug
abuse on the brain. She worked in re-
search for a while, but felt pulled to
help children and teenagers with back-
grounds similar to hers. First, she start-
ed a nonprofit to give monogrammed
luggage to students in foster care –
“
A lot of people
assume that once
you get to college
as a foster youth,
the battle is won
and that’s just not
the case
whose belongings are usually bagged
in garbage bags when they move from
one home to another. Eventually, she
started working at a Fostering Success
program in Michigan — one of a small
but growing network of programs like
it nationwide — and then was hired by
PCC.
‘People assume the battle is won’
At PCC, Feinics has made contact with
about 60 students in her time at PCC.
Some have just recently aged out of the
system; others are in their 30s and 40s
and one student who approached her
was in her sixties.
The champion network was created
by staff in the financial aid office, and
many of the challenges foster care stu-
dents face have to do with money and
financial aid. Students who moved a lot
in their youth often have gaps in their
education, which means they need to
take remedial or foundational classes
to catch up to their peers.
“Developmental classes add years.
Financial aid will only pay for so many
years of undergraduate education,”
Feinics said. Other students may be
hamstrung by something like an un-
anticipated lab fee for a science class.
Fees as small as $20 can be difficult to
manage for students with little or no
income other than financial aid, she
said. And faculty and staff who hav-
en’t experienced poverty don’t always
respond sympathetically, asking stu-
dents if they can borrow from someone
to tide them over until their financial
aid disburses. Students without paren-
tal support usually don’t have that op-
tion, she said.
Feinics said while some students need
concrete, specific forms of support,
others just need to talk to someone who
knows what it’s like to have been raised
in the foster system.
“I sometimes say, ‘I can’t change the
past for you, but I can help you have a
better adulthood,” Feinics said.
Royce Markley is a 23-year-old Uni-
versity of Oregon student studying
psychology and creative writing, grew
up in foster care and who has chroni-
cled his experienced on his blog, Foster
Fight (www.fosterfight.com). Markley
started his education at Linn-Benton
Community College and said it took
him longer than he expected to com-
See FOSTER on page 8