Foster Youth Need More Than Education to Build a Stable Life

Schools Don’t Nurture Long-Term Relationships—and May Even Discourage Them

For the last three years, I have been working on public policy related to foster youth. But at a recent monthly foster care policy meeting in Sacramento, where experts were discussing the needs of foster youth fortunate enough to go to college, I found myself thinking, “They’re missing the point.” Getting the degree doesn’t fix the real problem that foster youth have, which is forming relationships.

I was fully aware of the implicit arrogance of my thought in this room full of well-intentioned, talented, and hardworking people. They’d been chipping …