Aging out

Aging out is American popular culture vernacular used to describe anytime a youth leaves a formal system of care designed to provide services below a certain age level.

There are a variety of applications of the phrase throughout the youth development field. In respect to foster care, aging out is the process of a youth transitioning from the formal control of the foster care system towards independent living. It is used to describe anytime a foster youth leaves the varying factors of foster care, including home, school and financial systems. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services defines an "aging out" case as, "a situation referring to a person's petition to become a permanent legal resident as a child, and in the time that passes during the processing of the application, the child turns 18 and ages out.

Often used to highlight the problems traditional foster care approaches face, aging out affects foster youth in a variety of ways. An estimated 30,000 adolescents age out of the foster care system each year in the United States.

Aging Out is also used in reference to Drum Corps International's rules which state that drum corps' members above the age of 18-to-21 are denied the ability to compete in World Class.

The Child Welfare League of America reports that as many as 36% of foster youth who have aged out of the system become homeless, 56% become unemployed, and 27% of male former foster youth become jailed. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that less than half of emancipated youth who have aged out graduate from high school, compared to 85% of all 18- to 24-year-olds; fewer than 1 in 8 graduate from a four-year college; two-thirds had not maintained employment for a year; fewer than 1 in 5 was completely self-supporting; more than a quarter of the males spent time in jail; and 4 of 10 had become parents as a result of an unplanned pregnancy.

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