John Seita, associate professor of social work. Photo by Andy Henion

Angelique Day, research specialist in the School of Social Work. Photo by Andy Henion

Click on an image to view a larger or high-resolution version.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Two Michigan State University researchers are part of a new breed of child-welfare advocates who spent time as youth in the foster care system and are now working to fix that embattled system. 

John Seita, associate professor of social work, and research specialist Angelique Day are leading groundbreaking research designed to identify – and ultimately meet – the needs of foster care children while they’re in the system and in the years following their release. Seita and Day also lobby legislators and policymakers to improve the foster care system. 

A recently released report claims there is a “systemwide failure” in Michigan to provide children with stable foster care placements, vital services and adequate protection from maltreatment. The independent report was ordered by the federal judge overseeing a lawsuit by New York-based Children’s Rights, which is seeking reform in Michigan’s foster care system. 

“Research has shown that the rate of post-traumatic stress disorder is higher among foster care alumni than it is for war veterans,” said Seita, who has a doctorate in education and has authored several books on foster care, including “Kids Who Outwit Adults.” 

In 1973, the year he turned 18, Seita “graduated” from Michigan’s child welfare system to a life of homelessness and shoplifting on the streets of East Lansing. Jobless, depressed and lacking any family or professional support, he said he had reached one of the two lowest points of his life. The other: Being removed from his abusive home at age 8 and placed in the first of many foster homes and institutions in Ohio and Michigan. 

But Seita considers himself lucky. Many others raised in foster care or group homes “age out” of the system at 18 only to end up on drugs, in prison or prostitution, or dead at an early age, he said. 

“There is a real lack of understanding of the needs of these kids when they transition out of care,” Seita said. “The outcomes in some ways aren’t any better than they were 25 years ago.” 

Seita is leading a research project investigating the needs of foster care children once they’re out of the system. The initiative is funded by a $400,000, two-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. 

According to preliminary findings, a majority of people who age out of foster care suffer from an array of severe physical and mental health conditions. In addition, 20 percent do not have health insurance and 23 percent are Medicaid recipients who wonder what they will do when they turn 21 and no longer are eligible for benefits.

While previous research has centered on youth in the foster care system, the MSU project is one of the first to focus on them once they’re out. “What’s unique about this study is that we’re trying to capture the long-term problems of people who have aged out,” Day said.  

Day was pulled from her abusive home with her five siblings and placed in Michigan’s foster care system in the early 1990s. Today she has a master’s degree in social work and also is a consultant with the nonprofit advocacy group Michigan’s Children. She is heavily involved in foster care research and in 2006 served on a task force that came up with 21 recommendations to strengthen Michigan foster care that later were approved by the Legislature. Day also has recruited many former and current foster care members to provide their testimony to local and state officials. 

Other foster care alumni who are now working to fix what they see as a broken system include: 

• Debraha Watson, interim vice chancellor for educational affairs at Wayne County Community College District in Detroit. Watson survived years of physical and sexual abuse in foster homes. Today, she draws from her experiences to conduct research, lecture and work with foster care alumni. Watson, who has a doctorate in adult and higher education, also coauthored a research paper with Day that said Michigan still lacks a coordinated strategy for ensuring at-risk youth receive the support they need to move into adulthood. 
   
• Waln Brown, CEOof the William Gladden Foundation, a nonprofit children’s advocacy organization in Florida. Brown spent much of his youth in an orphanage, detention center and state psychiatric institution. Today, he’s dedicated to “helping troubled kids and the professionals who serve them.” With a doctorate in anthropology, Brown also is helping Seita and Day investigate the needs of foster care children once they’re out of the system.  

Advocates say more resources are needed in the years immediately following a foster care child’s release from the system – such as housing, employment and health care support – although they acknowledge that’s a tall order given Michigan’s struggling economy.  

Seita said his story is fairly typical of the problems foster children face when they age out of the system. “I was 18 years old and all of a sudden there was no guarantee of food, shelter, security – and I couldn’t call anyone to help me out because people simply weren’t there for me.”

Day said it’s vitally important that foster care children have a lasting connection with at least one loving, caring adult. “For the young people that we’ve spoken to, the success stories you hear happen because they had someone that believed in them,” she said.  

Seita also believes more foster care alumni should serve in positions of leadership in child welfare agencies and associations. Several years ago he co-led an unsuccessful effort to get a state law passed to require agencies that receive child welfare funding to put system alumni on their boards.  

“I’m thunderstruck at the brick wall I keep running into,” Seita said. But he vows not to quit. “I’m not going to be timid about it and I’m not going to give up,” he said. “I’m going to keep yelling about it.” 

Listen to a podcast with Seita at: http://spartanpodcast.com/?p=356.