Youth leaving foster care should receive guaranteed income
Dave Cortese and Shimica Gaskins
March 9, 2021
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The debate over survival checks is front and center as millions of families face an uncertain financial future. While short-term relief for the duration of the pandemic is certainly necessary, the debate over stimulus checks has opened the door to a long overdue conversation about guaranteed basic income. But even that conversation often fails to address some of the most vulnerable among us: youth transitioning out of the foster care system.
A new report from The Appeal’s The Lab makes the case for direct-cash programs initiated at a local level that offer the potential to empower young adults leaving foster care not just to survive, but to thrive. Children in foster care, and particularly those aging out of the system, are often left out of conversations about vulnerable communities in this country, despite the significant uphill battles they face. As of September 2019, there were 423,997 children in foster care in the United States, and as noted by the Washington Post, 20,000 of these children aged out of foster care because they never found permanent placement with families.