Fostering the Future Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 7432, the Fostering the Future Act, which includes six separate pieces of legislation that were unanimously passed by the Ways and Means Committee.

Removing a child from their family and placing them in foster care is a last resort, something we should only do at times when there is no way to keep a child safe at home.

Youth who must enter foster care have already experienced significant trauma, and to our shame, many experience additional trauma while in our care.

One of the greatest honors and greatest challenges of my service in Congress has been listening to youth who experienced foster care, learning from them, and trying to make sure we do better in the future.

Over the years, older youth who experienced foster care have helped us enact historic legislation to improve foster care for those who come after them. Former foster youth informed and supported our work to help more children leave foster care to live with their grandparents and other family members, and with the supports they needed in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act.

Older youth said it would help them if we helped their parents address substance use disorders and mental health challenges. So, first, we created regional partnerships grants to bring child welfare, substance abuse treatment providers, and law enforcement together.

Then, youth helped us enact the landmark Family First Prevention Services Act, which made Federal funding just as available to stabilize families as it is to separate them.

Older youth, especially those who are LGBTQ, continue to warn us that children are being harmed in group homes and inappropriate placements, so that we can improve our enforcement of laws that are supposed to protect them.

In all those efforts, older youth who were in foster care and young adults who recently left it helped make foster care better for others.

Today's bill would directly address the specific challenges older youth themselves experienced. Every year, about 20,000 young people age out of foster care, never having found a permanent family. Other older youth do exit to live safely with their parents or in loving kinship or adoptive homes, but the trauma and disruption they experienced still puts them at a significant disadvantage compared to their peers.

Older youth who experienced foster care are less likely to finish school or pursue higher education, more likely to struggle with untreated mental health issues and trauma, more likely to experience homelessness, more likely to become young parents, and more likely to face legal challenges.

The Chafee program, which was renamed to honor foster youth champion Senator John Chafee after his death, was created to help current and former foster youth transition to successful adulthood.

Unfortunately, its funding has never been significantly adjusted to keep up with inflation, and its purposes and rules for States have only been sporadically updated to keep pace with our understanding of adolescent brain development, fix policies that don't work well, and make sure that former foster youth navigate adulthood with the help of people who love them.

Despite the Chafee program's many successes, only about 35 percent of youth who are eligible for Chafee services receive any help, and many of the services youth need the most are not available, don't work well with other sources of help, or are hard to access.

Over the past 6 months, Chairman LaHood and I have worked with our colleagues on Ways and Means to find true common ground on policies affecting older youth who are, or were, in foster care.

I commend my friend, Mr. LaHood, for a bipartisan process that should be a model for all of our work, a sincere, thoughtful collaboration where we both talked and listened. This collaborative process yielded six separate pieces of legislation that reflect real agreement about steps that will help youth. Our work was further strengthened by support from First Lady Melania Trump, who has also been listening carefully to youth about what they need.

I will briefly recognize my colleagues that authored the bills that were passed by Ways and Means and then combined into one bill for consideration today. Their thoughtful proposals generated hundreds of endorsements by organizations representing foster youth, families, child welfare agencies, and experts like pediatricians and family law practitioners.

Chairman LaHood and Congresswoman Gwen Moore led the Foster Youth Housing Opportunity Act, which would improve foster youth access to section 8 housing vouchers and make it easier for Chafee programs to provide housing support to foster youth. Housing is a foundation of stable adult life, and our current policies are preventing the Chafee program from doing as much as it can and should.

Congresswoman Judy Chu and Congressman Nathaniel Moran led the Foster Youth Postsecondary Education Access and Success Act, which would increase the potential amount of Chafee education and training vouchers from $5,000 to $12,000, provide better opportunities for youth who are struggling to retain their vouchers, and provide more financing options for Chafee voucher outreach.

At our committee hearings, some youth told us they didn't even know that Chafee would help them pay for college until it was too late, and others told us that the way the vouchers were limited made them almost impossible to use.

Representatives Chu and Moran's bill lays the foundation for a bigger, more effective effort to help foster youth go to college and build careers in the future.

Representative Max Miller and Representative Dwight Evans led the Foster Youth Workforce Opportunity Act, which would ensure that foster youth could use Chafee education vouchers for high quality training programs and apprenticeships, as well as college, and would ensure that they have the skills and qualifications to be accepted into the colleges or training programs they choose.

I led the Fresh Start for Foster Youth Act, together with Chairman LaHood. It would help foster youth transition to adulthood by providing better access to resources to address legal challenges affecting housing, education, employment, and family conditions.

Since launching its virtual support services program for foster youth in 2021, Think of Us reports that 18 percent of all requests from transition-age youth are for help with legal services. A few of the issues include: housing stability and eviction defense; guardianship and custody, especially for youth informally caring for relatives; needs of expectant and parenting youth; reentry into extended care; legal issues; and education and disability advocacy.

I thank Nikolas Hughey, a former foster youth intern with the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, for raising the issue of urgent legal issues.

I was also pleased to work with Congressman Rudy Yakym on the Support for Expectant and Parenting Foster Youth Act, which requires States to refer expectant and parenting foster youth for Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting, or MIECHV, home visiting services and consider parenting status in case planning, building on the success Illinois and Indiana have had using targeted, intensive services to support young families.

Last, but definitely not least, in her dual role as a key member of the Worker and Family Support Subcommittee and as co-chair of the Congressional Foster Youth Caucus, Congresswoman Gwen Moore worked with Congressman Mike Carey on the CONNECT Act. Their bill updates the purposes of the Chafee program to help youth form and preserve meaningful, supportive, long-term relationships, which both youth and experts have identified as the key to a successful transition to adulthood.

This change is something youth have been telling us for a long time, that all of the challenges they face are surmountable if they have a family, a loving and trustworthy network of adults and peers that advises them, believes in them, and catches them when they stumble.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 7432 and also to make voting for this bill just the first step in their efforts to help older youth who experienced foster care.

Notably, there is a critical need for more investment. Aside from during the pandemic, Congress has only increased Chafee funding by $3 million since its creation in 1999. The amount of money needed would be tiny and insignificant compared to the fiscal impact of many of the bills we have considered in the House this Congress or a day at the Defense Department; yet, such funding could be life-changing for foster youth.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support of these six bills, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Moore).

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I thank Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Neal, and all members of the subcommittee. I certainly want to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood), my dear friend, for his leadership. I also thank all of those witnesses who shared their stories with us, all of the youth who shared their lives and their lifetimes.

I thank our outstanding committee staff led by Morna Miller, Kimberley Meinert, Cheryl Freiman, Keval Sojitara, and my primary Ways and Means staffer, Dr. Jill Hunter-Williams.

Today is a good day for foster youth, but it is also a good day for America. It is a good day when we say to the young people of our country that we care about you, we love you, and we recognize your needs.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to vote to pass this legislation as quickly as we can get it enacted so that America will be the land of youth.

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