Life can be hard after leaving Florida foster care. These places offer soft place to land

Every year, approximately 1,000 children age out of Florida’s foster care system. They go into the world with little to no support — and at significant risk of running into trouble.

Racquell Perry was one of them. When she was just 12, she called police after seeing her mother’s boyfriend hit her. Social services came to their Little Haiti apartment and removed her and three younger siblings.

That night sent Perry on an odyssey through Florida’s child welfare system, including a brief stint with a cousin in Orlando, then a host of foster placements in Miami until one set of foster parents kicked her out when she was 17. She eventually landed with her 21-year-old half sister in Fort Lauderdale.

Despite the turmoil, Perry, who is now 35, graduated from high school at the top of her class, earned two degrees from Florida A&M University and for a time worked in child welfare advocacy herself. She says it critical to make life easier for children aging out of the system. She managed to avoid the dangers of an 18-year-old suddenly alone without support — but many others don’t.

“That’s a recipe for jail or drugs,” she said.

Former foster youth, the statistics show, are less likely to receive higher education and more likely to be victims of food insecurity and sex trafficking. The Department of Children and Families offers aid like extended foster care and post-education services and support. Florida’s former foster youth receive tuition exemption for state colleges and universities.

There is also another option: Transitional housing programs marry those resources with emotional support and life skills training in a community living environment. Child welfare advocates say that these programs are not for everyone. Some former foster youth chafe at group living and are eager to strike out on their own.

But the ones that exist are a vital lifeline for many others and advocates argue they need more support from government agencies.

“This is a population of youth who don’t have anyone to call on,” said Shavon Saint Preux, founder of the Saint House, a transitional housing program for young women aging out of the foster care system. “Everybody needs somebody.”

Here for a good time, not a long time

Preux founded the Saint House, located in Little Haiti, based on her experience in the foster care system. The Bahamas native lost both parents by age seven.

Preux was living with an older sister by her 18th birthday, but she knows that many former foster youth have nowhere to go and no one to call. The Saint House offers its residents, aged 18 to 23, support, resources, and a personal coach to help them achieve their goals —whether it’s finishing school, learning how to budget, or finding a job.

The residents provide the Saint House with a portion of the stipend they receive from the Citrus Family Care Network –the organization that oversees child welfare services in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. Preux also receives other funding from private donations and occasionally from a city commissioner. However, Preux told the Herald that funding for transitional housing programs is often inconsistent and she wished that government agencies on the state, city, and county levels offered more funding.

A Homestead native, Chartanay Davis, 18, had been in the foster care system a year before she moved into the Saint House after her main source of support, her older brother, went to jail.

“When my brother left, I didn’t have support and when my mama left me down here, I definitely didn’t have none,” she told the Herald. “I was on my own. I gotta do everything by myself and I can’t. I don’t have no help. I don’t have nothing. And then on top of that, I didn’t have no job.”

Now, she works part-time at Target while earning her high school diploma.

The women also receive cooking classes because Preux knows that many former foster youth don’t know how to cook or weren’t fed properly in their previous foster homes. A fall 2003 survey found that 45 percent of former foster youth reported very low food security. She experienced food insecurity while living with a foster mother who forbade her from touching food in the house unless it was given to her.

Her foster mother, she says, did not restrict her biological children in the same way. One night she was so hungry that she snuck and grabbed a can of pears from the refrigerator.

“When she caught me, oh my gosh, she went crazy, just cursing me out,” Preux told the Herald. “But I was just hungry.

While she grows attached to these young women –often becoming their emergency contact –she empathizes that the Saint House is a resting place, not a final stop.

“I tell all the girls who come in, you’re here for a good time not a long time.”

‘I didn’t have a home to go to’

Perry understands first-hand the toll a lack of support takes on former foster youth. During her early college days, she remembers the sting of seeing her peers call their parents for help knowing she couldn’t do the same.

Her sister, just a few years older, was Perry’s only form of support and had never been to college —leaving her ill-equipped to provide any guidance.

Florida provides former foster youth with a monthly stipend of $1,720 if they are pursuing post-secondary education but, nationwide, just 3 to 4 percent earn a four-year college degree.

Perry finished her first semester with a 1.8 GPA. The university gave her a warning: improve your grades by next semester or go home.

“And then reality kicked in that I didn’t have a home to go to.”

Beyond transitional housing programs, there are other options as well. Ana Ramos assists young people like Perry in her role as director of Florida International University’s Fostering Panther Pride program which offers academic and support services to former foster youth and students experiencing homelessness.

This support includes providing students in need with up to $3,000 per semester, paying for medical procedures for those without insurance, maintaining a food pantry, supplying professional clothes, lending out laptops and offering internships with community partners. Some program participants also travel to Washington, DC to advocate for legislation to improve services for former foster youth.

Ramos noted that FIU’s year-round housing options are ideal for students in her program because staying open 365 days a year prevents issues for those who have nowhere to go during breaks.

“FIU has been fantastic in the sense that if a student needs to be housed, our program participants have always had the priority,” she told the Herald.

Rebecca Louve Yao, executive director of the National Foster Youth Institute, echoed the importance of accessible campus housing, citing the recent introduction of bipartisan legislation that would provide college housing assistance to vulnerable students, like former foster youth. The bill seeks to allow students to use Section 8 vouchers for housing on college campuses.

“Not only would being on campus eliminate them from having to get second jobs and commuting, but they would be able to focus,” Yao told the Herald. “They also can join extracurricular activities, which is building their social mobility and community.”

Perry built her community by joining various social clubs. She changed her major and sought mentorship from a popular professor who she now calls her surrogate father. Her efforts paid off.

“After that first semester I never got anything less than a 3.5.”

Dangers of Miami

Perry and Preux stayed in 10 different foster placements between them but they shared a common temporary home at Miami Bridges –an emergency shelter for kids aged 10 to 17.

Both spoke highly of their time at the shelter that houses and provides therapy for youth in crisis, including those who are in foster care, homeless, runaways, or involved in the juvenile justice system. The residents are referred to agencies that provide transitional housing and support once they have “aged out.”

The shelter manager, Samantha Roberts —who spent time in foster care herself —spoke to the Herald about the heightened risk of sex trafficking for these youth. Her staff is on high alert for signs of recruitment because they’ve had instances of residents who are trafficking victims run away and bring others with them.

“These girls don’t have a home and they’re hearing all these good things about money so they’re very susceptible to this,” she said.

An estimated 60% of child sex trafficking victims have spent some time in the child welfare system.

Alexis Adams, the program manager at Casa Valentina —a transitional housing program for former foster youth—echoed these concerns. Like most large cities, Miami, she says, is a hub for trafficking, particularly whenever there’s a major event.

“That is something about Miami, people often see the glamour and glitz,” Adams told the Herald. “But what we’re seeing is how many of these young people are being exploited.

Something that doesn’t go away

Days before her 18th birthday, Perry met with a judge to discuss her transition plan out of foster care. For the first time, Perry says, an adult asked her what she wanted to do.

“Foster care was such a traumatic experience and her asking a simple question changed me in some way,” she said. “I wanted to do that for some young person.”

This encounter led her to law school and that same judge swore her into the Florida Bar. However, she eventually left child welfare advocacy work, finding it too personal.

Perry grew weary of seeing foster youth deal with the same dehumanizing issues she faced as a child —particularly the use of trash bags to transport their belongings from one placement to the next. This is why, Preux says, the Saint House provides residents with a welcome bag to store their belongings.

She added that other issues stemming from the foster care system are harder to resolve. For example, some of her residents dropped out of school in the seventh grade despite having foster care case workers who Preux insists should have made sure they attended class. She says that this lack of oversight has long-term, detrimental effects that are not easily corrected as the youth are already set in their ways by the time they age out of foster care.

“A bad case worker can really mean a bad life for foster youth,” she said.

Perry wants more resources provided to struggling families so that the removal of children is the last resort because, she says, nothing can replicate that emotional support. She recalled a time when her apartment was robbed and she found herself longing for her mother event though they hadn’t spoken in years.

“That’s just something that does not go away.”

This story was produced with financial support from the Esserman Family Foundation in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.