One of the first former foster children to receive free tuition from a B.C. university has graduated and become a provincial government social worker.
Jordanna Southall, 22, has come full circle: from a four-year-old taken into care and raised by foster parents, to a sometimes-defiant teen who relied on social workers for guidance, to a recently hired child protection worker who will now help foster kids.
“I can share my experience and use it as a way to communicate and relate to people I work with,” she said in an interview.
“I think it will make me stronger when going through similar experiences [with clients].”
Her alma mater, Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, was the first post-secondary school in B.C. to accept the challenge two years ago by children’s representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond to offer free tuition to youth who age out of the foster care system.
At age 19, they lose access to their foster homes, financial support and social workers, and many face dire outcomes such as poverty, substance abuse and unemployment.
Today, eight of the province’s 25 universities and colleges have been made tuition free for former foster children, with at least three more considering similar changes.
Southall, raised by caring foster parents in Parksville, was a turbulent teen in Grades 9 and 10, but then a supportive social worker encouraged her to do better and she buckled down in school.
After high school, she went to the University of Victoria, but switched to VIU’s social work program two years ago, becoming one of the first former foster kids to access the Youth In Care Tuition Waiver.
“I felt like I was the luckiest person in the world,” she said. “[The tuition waiver] was very important. It pushed me the rest of the way to getting my degree and getting my career. I was at that breaking point where I hadn’t been working for three years.”
She has been hired by the Ministry of Children and Family Development, which oversees B.C.’s foster care system, to be a child protection worker on Vancouver Island.
She has also been appointed to a ministry youth advisory council that discusses bettering the lives of youth in care.
On Tuesday, Vancouver city council said a key driver of homelessness is youth aging out of care.
The council passed a motion asking B.C. to “extend the option of foster care to the age of 24, and end the practice of automatic aging out of the system.”
B.C. has not yet followed the lead of Alberta and Ontario, which have boosted support to age 24 and 21 respectively.
And Britain’s Children’s Commissioner told a London newspaper Thursday that foster kids there should remain in care to age 25, since 20-somethings are increasingly still living at home.
There has been momentum in B.C. over the past year to improve outcomes for these youth, but the changes have been piecemeal. Recent announcements have included funding to expand a program offering guidance in life skills, a new mentorship program, and a website with resources to help aged-out youth transition to adulthood.
Several non-profit groups have also opened housing that can be used by aged-out youth. The most recent is in the new Broadway Youth Resource Centre building, funded by the provincial and municipal governments, which opened in June and allotted 30 rooms for youth 16 to 24.
This spring, the non-profit Vancouver Foundation held five workshops across the Vancouver area to gather input on how communities can better help foster children transition to adulthood. Youth told the forum they are lonely for meaningful relationships and that the adult financial, health and support systems are too complicated to figure out at age 19, asking for something easier and more streamlined.
“This year in British Columbia, 700 youth in foster care will be cut off from housing, caregivers, and the people in their lives when they turn 19,” the Vancouver Foundation workshop literature says.
“This is a public disgrace.”
