BY GAIL MATSUNAGA
From Dateline (August 19, 2004))
Helping Foster Youth Take Flight Post-Emancipation
Titan alumna Jenny Mohr has run a homeless
shelter, a crisis clinic and a group home, in addition to working
as coordi-nator of the After Care Program for Orangewood Children’s
Home. Now she directs the Guardian Scholars Program, which acknowledges
the accom-plishments of students who have left the foster care system,
were wards of the court or come from similar backgrounds.
Q: |
How are post-emancipated
youths different from other youths? |
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A: |
They’re different develop-mentally
from children who have parents. Children who live with non-relative
caregivers have attachment issues – they aren’t
ready to trust. They usually feel as if people are going to
leave them. Many are placed into foster care because their
families are no longer able to care or provide them with a
safe and loving home. Consequently, they take it as their
fault for being removed.
They have stressors that other kids don’t, including
homeless-ness: “If I fail out of college, where am I
going to live? If I run out of money, who’s going to
take care of me?” They grow up really fast.
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Q: |
Why is Guardian Scholars
so important? |
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A:
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It’s filling a void. There’s
a huge gap between the support of social services and being
independent – then going to college. Nationally, approxi-mately
30 percent of foster youth go to college, and of that group,
an even smaller percent graduate.
Guardian Scholars is the safety net that usually takes the
place of family. We’ve designed a pro-gram based on
student input – a student advisory council made up of
six students who take on an advisory role for our program
and provide me with support and feedback.
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Q: |
What are some of the services/activities
the program provides? |
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A: |
We offer a lot of personal enrichment
activities that include mentoring, leadership training, advocacy.
[Last spring], we went to Sacramento to talk to legislators
about some of the laws that impact foster youth.
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Q: |
Isn’t there a
legislative bill that requires all colleges and universities
to have a program such as this? |
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A: |
Yes, AB 2463 is an Assembly
bill passed in 1996 that was supposed to be enacted in 1997.
We started developing our program before that legislative
push because there was an unmet need. Unfortunately, this
legislation never had any money attached to it. I think the
intent was to focus on foster youth as historically underrepresented
at the university. Many folks see it as another form of entitlement,
which is wrong. This is an academic scholarship, not a handout. |
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Q: |
What do you think the influence
of Guardian Scholars has been? |
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A:
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We are the flagship program.
We were the first in the nation to begin developing a compre-hensive
program that addresses this need. We have the longest history,
and we also have made the most mistakes [laughs]. Therefore,
my role in working with groups like the Council of Colleges
– a group of nine programs in Orange County like ours
– is to help them learn; show them different partner-ships
that need to be developed; the different types of interac-tions
you need to provide for your students; how to educate your
university or community college environment. To share our
history and what we’ve learned.
We’ve received a great deal of national attention.
The Washing- ton Education Foundation visited last year and
saw that we have great retention and graduation rates and
wondered how they can make that hap-pen in the state of Washington.
Representatives from several colleges in Washington came down,
including Washington State, to check us out.
Casey Family Services in Balti-more and the Annie E. Casey
Foundation in Washington came to look at our model. The Lumina
Foundation in Indianapolis – born out of Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac – is starting a program, as is Ball
State. Nationally, I’ve shared this model at the It’s
My Life Conference in Austin, Texas. |
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Q: |
What do you see for the
future of our program? |
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A:
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I see us graduating more students.
Every year our num-bers keep getting better. In the next year,
my goal is to promote Guardian Scholars university-wide so
that there’s more awareness among faculty and staff.
Strengthening our staff, training our alumni to come back
and mentor our students. I’d also like to strengthen
the retention rate of incoming freshman. |
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Q: |
What do you think is the
greatest challenge for the program? |
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A:
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Staffing – being there
for the students when I have these other competing priorities.
Trying to stay positive in a negative fiscal time, fund raising,
grant development so that we can graduate them in five years
– that’s the commitment we make. We want to be
able to provide research-oriented, numerically sound success
rate statistics. Without that kind of proven success you’re
just a feel-good program. I want to say that we’re making
a difference. |
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Q:
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And the greatest challenge
for the students? |
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A: |
I think it’s the transitions.
For our incoming students, they are hit with a reality check
like you cannot believe. Never in their lives have they had
this much freedom. In an institutional setting they’ve
been told when to wake up, when to go to the bathroom, when
to eat. Things have been done for them and for many, it’s
the first time they’re making their own choices and
learning from their own mistakes.
For students graduating from college it is like another
emancipation process: “I have to move, I have to be
able to be self- supporting, get a job, lose all my friends,
lose all my support.” That is dramatic for some students.
In the year before graduation, we see a great deal of anxiety
and fear. Much of that is not knowing what’s going to
happen. That’s why I talk about the importance of the
Guardian Scholars who have made it, to come back and tell
current scholars that it’s going to be okay –
how great it is to feel like you’re no longer burdened
by being labeled a foster youth. |
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