In Santa Clara County there are any-
where from 1124 to 2000 foster youth,
depending on how you do the counting.
“The population is pretty fluid, where
youth go in and out of foster care,”
he said.
Any youth who was in an out-of-
home placement is federally defined as
a foster youth, and is eligible for “pretty
substantial federal financial aid for
college.” This is important, he said. Even
if a student was only in foster care at
age 15 for a short spell and found place-
ment with a relative and the case was
closed, “they’ve still suffered the trauma.
They’re still subject to a lot of the same
poor outcomes,” he explained.
Across Santa Clara County, the on-
time graduation rate for high school
foster youth is an average of 41 percent,
he said. However, “Youth in our
program are over 80 percent,” he said.
From 2011 to 2015, TeenForce’s
focus on foster youth went from 10
percent to 64 percent. They expanded
their efforts from Los Gatos to San Jose,
and eventually Morgan Hill. In 2017,
they relocated to Gilroy where they also
merged with the SVCF into one big
collaborative organization. “We now
serve the whole county,” Hogan said.
“And we became 100 percent focused
on foster youth.”
However, they quickly discovered
that getting foster youth just any job
was not good enough for their mission.
“Most of the foster youth we were
Written By Jordan Rosenfeld
putting to work in those minimum wage
jobs were young adults who had aged
out and were really struggling,” he said.
organization shifted, he said, thanks
hen John Hogan left the
Many of these kids were homeless or
mortgage industry and began to Elise Cutini, CEO of Silicon Valley
nearly homeless. “So the idea was that
Children’s Fund (SVCF)—with whom
to work on his MBA at Santa
we needed to begin working with them
TeenForce has now merged. She intro-
Clara University, he was startled to learn
duced him to a particularly underserved earlier to prevent or cut-off the supply
that the number of teens in the work
of 19-year-old homeless former foster
force had declined over the past 50 years. segment of youth: foster youth.
youth,” he said.
Foster youth face significant barriers
This sparked his interest in helping
This is when they partnered with
encourage teen employment. He launched due to inconsistent or absent support
the SVCF to create STEM training,
networks, instability of their home life,
his organization TeenForce in 2010, to
professional development training, and
and, often, traumatic experiences. Only
help streamline the connection between
added professional STEM internships
businesses and teenagers, acting as a non- 3 percent of foster youth graduate from
college, Hogan explained, and 75 percent to high school foster youth “to begin to
profit staffing agency to help hire these
build these habits and experiences in
of them have very little, if any, work
youth.
high school.”
By 2011, however, the mission of the experience by the age of 18.
Nonprofit Organization
Helps Foster Youth Find Work
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