The Development of a Lifescripts Workbook: Inspiring College Education for Aged-Out Foster Youth

Aged-out foster youth in transition from the child welfare foster system to emerging adulthood encounter barriers to obtaining postsecondary education. In this qualitative study, I interviewed four professionals actively involved in the transition process for foster youth in Fresno County, California, to discover strategies that would enable aged-out foster youth to achieve a higher level of success. In a previous study, Closing the Achievement Gap for Aged-Out Foster Youth: Transition Issues from High School to Community College, I identified three discontinuity factors in the provision of transition services to aged-out foster youth: the youth’s social reality, lack of connections in terms of both adult guidance and agency-to-agency connection, and college unpreparedness. The current research is a follow-up to that study, exploring transition issues facing the youth, supports, and services available to them, and the barriers that hinder the youth in pursuit of postsecondary education. Three needs emerged: (a) pre-campus planning that includes addressing transition issues, (b) proper supports and adult guidance “in the gap” of services between high school and higher education, and (c) the building of social capital that encourages greater purposeful opportunities to succeed in obtaining postsecondary education. As a strategy for addressing these needs, I created the Lifescripts workbook as a companion to the six-week Lifescripts program that assists foster youth in the gap between high school and the first-year college experience. The workbook provides a specific outline that enables foster youth to address transition issues, build social capital, and be inspired to plan for and attain college educational goals.
Keywords: Aged-out foster youth, transition-age youth, postsecondary education