Will positive interventions on our foster care system decrease adulthood mental illness and transiency?

More than 250,000 US children enter foster care every year and more than one-third of them live in California. Young children living in foster care, compared to other young children, have higher rates of psychological and social problems. At 18, when adolescents “age out” of the foster care system, the newly independent young adults encounter astonishingly high rates of unemployment and homelessness. Countless studies on the homeless population have found associations between childhood foster care and mental health concerns such as depression. But do these associations exist in the general population? Using the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), a state-wide data set with responses from 42,000 California households, we examine the prevalence rate of a childhood history of foster care and measure its association with adulthood psychosocial concerns including mental illness and transiency. Analyses include path models that will exhibit the impact of childhood foster care on adulthood outcomes including mental health status, heavy drinking, and transiency. Preliminary results indicate that approximately 3% of the general population compared to almost 30% of homeless adults experienced childhood foster care (p<0.0001). Further analyses will demonstrate whether a childhood history of foster care is linked to mental health and transiency in the general population. If so, launching effective county- and state-wide interventions on children in our foster care system may result in a reduction of costly psychosocial problems such as transiency in adults.