serendipityoucity

Ever wonder what happens when your parents - the state - stops being your parents? Once you turn 18 or "age out" - your parents the tax payers - stop paying the people who fostered you (normally a long list of them living all over the city) so you get to pack your things up in a plastic bag and move out! That’s what happens! 

No one checks in on you, registers you for university or college, invites you home for weekend dinners, asks about your new flame, no one wonders how you are doing and certainly no one is looking out for your well being.  Suddenly you no longer have a family doctor, dentist, optometrist, social worker, therapist or guidance councilor. You also do not have a neighbourhood to call your own, because you have lived all over, therefore no sense of place, you have few friends because you kept changing schools and you have no peer group.  You do not have an education trust fund, or any cash for that matter and no one to hit up if you are ever short, to do your laundry or feed you.  There is no social frame of reference.  The institution called society is your family but family has to scale down to a few individuals, but none are dedicated to you.

Shelters, rooming houses, prisons, half way houses, cheap bachelor apartments, social housing, couch surfing accommodations, the streets are the kinds of places where the 16 - 18 year olds who age out of the system find themselves.

Canada produces thousands of these social refugees.  They are mostly under the radar, rarely rise to prominence, and if they do they do not speak of their past, most do not navigate in your circles so you never get to meet them. Les defavorisés.

I just read this article Offering Help for Former Foster Care Youths this morning which discusses the creation of foster youth boards being set up by foster kids in the US.  The US produces 24 000 aged out foster kids every year!  Can you imagine that?  Our societies abandoned their families and then drop them!  

These youth groups are becoming a strong lobby seeking support for foster care veterans. Very impressive and I wonder if there is a Canadian equivalent.