Perspective: Fostering normalcy for foster kids

When my daughter was 16 and was offered a job as a lifeguard, her boss told her she’d need to have her own bank account in order to be paid. No one gets checks anymore, just direct deposit. So I took her to our local bank branch and helped her open an account. This process is not so easy for kids who are in the foster care system. Because you need a guardian to co-sign accounts for anyone under 18, foster kids are often left out.

NorthCountry Credit Union in Vermont recently decided to fix this problem, offering the ability for caseworkers or other guardians to help kids who are in the foster care system get checking accounts, complete with a debit card. Matt Callahan, a case manager for the Transition House (a residential program to help foster kids as young as 16 learn the skills they will need to succeed as adults), told me that “everyone was thrilled” when NorthCountry announced the “Indy accounts,” as there was “such a huge gap.”

The problems with not having a bank account is not just that kids would have a hard time getting jobs, or that they would have to explain their personal situation to their bosses. It is also that kids who did earn money would keep it in cash and risk having it stolen. Julia Longfellow, a vice president at NorthCountry, describes stories of kids keeping cash in pillowcases as they sometimes move from placement to placement. And Callahan says that, particularly with the older kids, there are sometimes large sums involved. One of the boys in his home has been working full time at a gas station and has saved thousands toward buying a car.

The accounts and online banking have also made it easier to teach the kids about budgeting and to ensure that they can pay bills online as well.

Why did it take until 2023 for such accounts to be available? Longfellow told me she has asked around in other states and with other institutions and has been unable to find similar programs. In recent years, more attention has been paid to the idea of creating normalcy for kids in foster care. States have passed laws to make it so that foster kids can sleep over at their friends’ homes without having to worry about whether foster parents will be liable if anything goes wrong. They have worked to ensure that foster kids can participate in extracurricular activities as much as possible. Other organizations have tried to help foster children get driver’s licenses, which is a bigger hurdle because they often don’t have easy access to their birth certificates.

Another relatively new Texas-based program called WHIT offers tutoring to kids who are in foster care. They are paired with an honors student at a local public university to help them make up for some of the educational gaps that are so common in the lives of these kids. Because of the neglect they experience at home or because they change schools frequently, many foster kids are years behind in their education. WHIT has helped make up for those gaps, and the program has expanded to more than 50 counties.

Tutoring for lower-income kids is a fairly common intervention — even more so since the pandemic. But because it is often unclear to outsiders who is in charge in the lives of foster children, there is more red tape in getting programs set up to help them. Often, there are ways to work around these bureaucratic barriers. The WHIT program generally has tutors meet kids in libraries or other public spaces so they don’t have to worry about waivers for privacy or liability. But they do take some initiative and a little innovation.

Jeff Lisson, who started the WHIT program, says that local school districts often don’t have the incentive to put a lot of effort into helping these kids because they are sometimes not in the school district for a very long period. But the kids really connect with their tutors, many of whom are from difficult backgrounds themselves. The tutors also take them to their college campus as they get closer to graduation, exposing them to the idea of continuing their education.

These are not earth-shattering ideas — and they’ve often been employed in other contexts with struggling kids. There are more obstacles, but they’re not insurmountable. Foster kids deserve all the opportunities that every other child receives. Smoothing the path for them should be a priority.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Deseret News contributor and the author of “ No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives ,” among other books.