Fostering Higher Education: A postsecondary access and retention intervention for youth with foster care experience

Abstract

Most youth in foster care aspire to obtain higher education, but face daunting obstacles in doing so. While societal interest and effort to support foster youth in achieving higher education has grown, very few supports have evidence to show that they are effective at improving postsecondary outcomes. In an effort to address the dearth of clearly articulated, evidence-based postsecondary support approaches for foster youth, we have developed Fostering Higher Education (FHE), a comprehensive, structured, and evaluable postsecondary access and retention intervention composed of elements (professional educational advocacy, substance abuse prevention, mentoring) that are either evidence based or promising based on the scientific literature and their ability to address the outcomes of interest. This paper describes the development and youth usability and practitioner feasibility testing of the FHE intervention approach, which was developed through funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Youth usability feedback was primarily positive, with the majority of participants indicating they found the FHE activities interesting and useful, and were comfortable participating in them. Practitioner feasibility feedback was also primarily positive, with almost unanimous ratings of the FHE intervention components as very important to provide to youth and that all would be feasible for an organization to implement, though the mentoring components were seen as slightly less feasible than other components. Next steps and implications of this intervention development process are discussed.

Incorporating self‐determination into substance abuse prevention programming for youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood

“…One option for this may be to couch brief substance abuse prevention programming into more long‐term service provision in order to be able to have it delivered by someone who already has established a meaningful relationship with the youth. An example of this is the Fostering Higher Education intervention (Salazar et al, ), the intervention developed over the course of this study. In the Fostering Higher Education intervention, substance abuse is one of six “potential pitfalls,” or common challenges that interfere with postsecondary educational attainment according to college retention studies, that is, covered in a curriculum to prepare youth for higher education.…”

“…The findings described in the current paper emerged from focus groups conducted as part of the Fostering Higher Education intervention development process. More information about these focus groups and other findings emerging from them can be found in Salazar, Haggerty, and Roe () and Salazar, Roe, Ullrich, and Haggerty (). This study was determined exempt from IRB review by the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services Institutional Review Board.…”

Expanding Promise: Depicting the Ecosystems of Support and Financial Sustainability for Five College Promise Populations

“…Fostering Higher Education Intervention (FHE) is a postsecondary access and retention intervention based on the social development model and self-determination theory (Salazar et al, 2016). FHE has three primary intervention elements: educational advocacy, substance abuse prevention programming, and mentoring.…”

“…FHE has three primary intervention elements: educational advocacy, substance abuse prevention programming, and mentoring. It comprises three primary intervention components: the Higher Education Goal Planning and Action procedure, the Top 6 Potential Pitfalls for Higher Education curriculum, and mentoring (Salazar et al, 2016). According to study findings, participants found the activities interesting and useful, gave positive feedback for the higher education planning activity, had positive reactions to the Pitfalls curriculum areas, and believed the mentoring intake activity was important.…”

Centering Resiliency and Capturing Covitality: Patterns of Well-Being among Former Youth in Foster Care

“…Partnering with programs that offer a mentoring component is advantageous as quality mentorship can be a way to break unhealthy patterns and decrease adverse long-term outcomes for individuals who have a history with the child welfare system, and increase assets associated with BIO (Greeson, 2013). Approaches such as Fostering Higher Education (FHE), which include comprehensive and structured elements (professional educational advocacy, substance abuse prevention, mentoring) aimed at postsecondary access and retention interventions for youth with foster care experience, offer a promising opportunities to embed wellness focused assessments and interventions to promote postsecondary success (Salazar, Haggerty & Roe, 2016). These partnerships are congruent with healing-centered approaches to working with students who have been impacted by trauma and provide a community of support to promote well-being and educational success.…”