Foster Youth Face Extreme Barriers to College. Here’s One Program That’s Helping.

Young people leaving foster care and trying to break out of poverty have the odds stacked against them. They’ve witnessed or experienced traumatic events, and often moved among multiple homes and schools. Every year, some 20,000 of the nation’s nearly 450,000 foster kids age out of the system, encountering an abrupt end to support at a time when many of their peers are enrolled in college. Their financial challenges, and often a lack of life skills, are compounded by the absence of a family or network to encourage them to enroll. “Their experiences tell them that maybe there’s not trusting people in their lives, maybe the system is not for them,” says Karen Cheers, former dean of student services at Virginia Highlands Community College, who now directs a student-success program there.

Great Expectations, an 11-year-old effort at Virginia’s community colleges, has developed a program focused on building trust and support to get foster youth to college and help them succeed. Based on recommendations from the Casey Family Programs, an advocacy group for children, and funded by the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and other sponsors, the program has coaches at 21 Virginia community colleges. We spent two days on campus at Virginia Highlands with Deborah Ledford, the campus’s Great Expectations coach, to observe the program firsthand.