One Youth’s Reflection on Aging-Out of Foster Care

The passage of AB12, the California Fostering Connections to Success Act, last month was an historic extension of foster care supports up to age 21. College student, media producer for YO! and emancipated foster youth, Jockuela Ballard is more fortunate than many of the 4,200 foster youth each year who emancipate in California without a permanent home. She has a close relationship with her Great Grandmother, as well as a loving foster family. Yet Jockuela experiences the natural insecurities that so many foster youth suffer: that having a place to stay is dependent on relationships that expire. Thanks to AB12, she can now postpone the worries she writes about, below, until she turns 21.

At age 16 I was placed with my foster parents. My Great Grandmother had suffered from a stroke and was told she couldn’t take care of me anymore. Moving in with them at such a late age scared me because I didn’t know what was going to happen when I hit 18.

Now I am in college, living in the dorms, and come home to my foster parents for most of my breaks. It scares me to live with them during breaks because I feel they could kick me out at any time. I’m 19 now, and I am not their child. They always remind me I have nothing to worry about, but I still do. There is always that possibility that they can give up on me. I know deep down they won’t but when you are left so many times in life you can’t think any other way. I know I am their foster child, but in their eyes I am their own.

Posted November 1, 2010