How to Reach Those With a ‘Survivor’ Mind-Set

One of the biggest challenges for college programs that serve foster youth is finding those students and persuading them to accept assistance.

The financial-aid office can’t simply hand over a list of students who indicated on the federal financial-aid form that they’d been through foster care; privacy law prohibits it. And research shows that foster youth are often reluctant to seek out help, even when they desperately need it.

That reluctance stems from a “survivor self-reliance mind-set,” a mistrust of authorities, and an unwillingness to be a burden on others, says Brenda Morton, an associate professor of education at George Fox University.

“Foster youth believe reliance on others is risky,” she says.

From Foster Care to Freshman Year

How colleges can create a sense of family and stability for students who have rarely ever had it.

• Lessons From One College’s Foster-Youth Effort
• Building a Campus for Foster Kids Only
• From Foster Care to Freshman Year

In Oklahoma, administrators at some public colleges have found one way to reach students while still respecting their privacy: They ask the financial-aid office to provide students who checked the box for foster youth on the federal aid form with a list of campus contacts and a description of available supports.

Virginia’s community colleges take an even more proactive approach, recruiting students from local employment and training centers, churches, high schools, and group homes.

“We go out into the community and find them,” said Rachel Strawn, director of Great Expectations, a program for foster youth that has spread to 21 out of Virginia’s 23 community colleges. The approach seems to be working. During the last academic year, the program enrolled more than 1,300 of the 5,000 current and former foster youth in the state between the ages of 16 and 26. More than 500 of them took community-college courses that year; more than 100 earned a degree or certificate.