Foster Care Education Statistics & How We Are Helping

Aug 31

Let’s talk stats!

First, we at Set To Thrive know that some statistics are shocking and distressing. But we hope that, by sharing these statistics with you, we provide a picture of why we work hard to help the foster youth in our community. Every foster child deserves to feel confident and comfortable when entering a new home and school. That’s our goal.

In California, there are over 60,000 children in the foster care system each year. Just in our community, there are 250 children in Contra Costa County and 420 children in Alameda County who enter the foster care system for the first time each year.

Each time a child enters the foster care system, they are not only entering a new home but likely a new school. Unfortunately, their first placement is not always their last placement. 44% of California foster youth who are in the system for over 2 years, experience 3 or more placements, 15% experience 5 or more placements. Placement changes not only lead to instability and stress for the child but also lead to troubles in learning and isolation in school. It is estimated that over 40% of school-aged children in foster care have educational difficulties. 10% are more likely to be chronically absent than their peers due to home placement changes, school transfers, court hearings, and parental visitations. Also, 65% experience 7 or more school changes throughout their entire K - 12 education. Which leads to our final shocking statistics: Only 50% of foster youth will graduate from high school; only 3% will go onto higher education; and only 1% graduate with a college degree.

This August, Set To Thrive held a Backpack and School Supply Drive, with the goal to collect 100 backpacks and as many school supplies as we could. Shortly after announcing our August Drive, two of our Set To Thrive friends reached out and offered to hold Backpack and School Supply drives for STT! Thanks to Kristine Ruslen (and the Stanford Healthcare Team!) and Shelly Firebaugh, we received more than 70 brand new backpacks and an extremely generous amount of essential school supplies for our foster youth. Check out the totals below for how many of each item we received!

After the great success with our Backpack & School Supply Drive, we provided over 30 new and fully-loaded backpacks to foster youth, including 25 to the San Ramon Valley Unified School District for new foster youth in its schools, who got to pick their favorite backpacks! These backpacks were in addition to the Thrive Bags we provided to other foster youth in August. Our hope is that the foster kids who received our “Back to School” backpacks were more ready to start their new year and that the STT backpacks relieved some of the stress the students may be feeling to be in a new school – and helped push back against the statistics!

Thank you!!

* Data sources for these statistics are available upon request.