LAUSR

There are 415,000 children in foster care in the USA. Many of those children will turn 18 before being adopted, meaning they will “age-out” and essentially be on their own as adults. We wanted to see if formal mentoring programs improved outcomes for those aging out of foster care and the Journey Up Mentorship Program in Salt Lake City offered such a program. Forty-nine youth who had aged out of foster care with the help of mentors were surveyed and found they scored significantly higher in their ability to get jobs and were less at risk for addiction, homelessness, and incarceration compared to data from the National Youth in Transition for Utah. Fifteen additional youth were interviewed in focus groups to explore the results further. Qualitative data showed participants were not less at risk given their stories, and benefited from mentors’ consistency, positive role modeling, and lessons on being an adult. This is consistent with other studies on the topic of mentoring but should be expanded into more specified comparative studies and use larger sample sizes.