Raising Youth in Care with Strong Cultural Identity
Strong cultural identity contributes to mental health resilience, higher levels of social well-being, and improved coping skills, among other benefits. Foster youth face and deal with trauma, changing home environments, and lower levels of social well-being than the general population. Often, due to this disruption, former foster youth have lower cultural identity strength than those who did not experience foster care.
With only four states providing a right to culture in their foster care youth bill of rights, there is much to be done by the child welfare system to support this important area of personal development and overall well-being. Support from foster parents can range from having certain foods in the house, holding the state accountable to the prudent parent standard established by the Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2014, and raising cultural identity concerns during court, case planning and team meetings.
Case Example
To highlight the importance and impact of cultural identity on a youth let’s use an example:
At 10 years old, a young girl is removed from her home due to neglect. Her home and her neighborhood were culturally similar, speaking a second language was normal for her, and the food she ate was familiar to her culture and not Americanized. In her home, there was always non-American music playing in the background, and she was raised in line with cultural practices - informing how she viewed those older than her, showed affection, and greeted people. At 10 years old, she is removed and placed in a new neighborhood due to a shortage of foster homes. This young girl moves several times, and, in each of these new homes, there is no music playing that she knows, her diet changes, her ways of interacting with others are no longer considered normal. When she walks home, the neighborhood cultural norms are different -- even the scents are different. What do you think the impact will be if years go by and there is no effort to help her keep her cultural identity? Will her second language be lost? Will she eat the dishes she grew up with? How will it impact her happiness and self-perception if things that used to be so fundamental completely disappear?
The Issue
According to data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), of the 437,465 children in foster care in the United States on September 30, 2016 the following came from diverse cultural backgrounds:
44% identified as white,
23% identified as black,
21% identified as Hispanic,
9% identified as multiracial, and
2% had unknown ethnicities.[1]
In turn, these children had diverse cultural identities.
What is a Cultural Identity?
Cultural identity is a significant part of who children are and plays a key role in youths’ lives. By identifying with a culture, which is often tied with an ethnic identity,[2] a child acquires that group’s core values and adopts their sociocultural practices and rituals. This identification helps shape the way a child positions him or herself in society, interacts with others, and thinks.[3] Several studies show that having a strong, positive cultural identity leads to:
Greater self-esteem
Higher education levels
Better psychological adjustment
Improved coping abilities
Decreased levels of loneliness and depression[4]
At the same time, having a strong cultural identity contributes to high levels of social well-being.[5]
Cultural identity forms early, a stage in life during which a child learns how to view the world through the child’s immediate family and close friends. This view becomes ingrained in the child’s identity.[6] This takes place until the child reaches school age, at which point the child’s worldview is embedded and internalized into the child’s sense of self as an individual, unique person. This identity is then strengthened through everyday interactions, daily social and cultural practices, and reinforcement by immediate family and friends. Examples of these distinctive family practices include:
Food
Holidays and Age Milestones
Music and Dancing
Clothing – including ways of dressing for special occasions
Language – speaking or hearing ones’ language
What happens to this identity when a child is ripped away from his immediate family and friends and placed in a new environment – a common experience for foster youth?
Cultural Identity and Foster Youth
A 2015 study[7] showed 20% of foster youth changed their ethnic identity when asked how they identified over a five-year period, which is twice as high as non-foster youth. Additionally, ethnic identity is most often mismatched between how youth self identify, how the county identifies them, and how the school has classified them. The study notes the problem of having weak cultural identity and underscores the need to increase fundamental support for youth to maintain a strong identity, for “ethnic identity is essential for promoting youth well-being and success.”[8]
Strong cultural identity is tied to lower rates of depression, anxiety, isolation, and other mental health challenges. Over 60% of children in foster care have psychiatric disorders including depression and anxiety.[9] While there are many contributing factors to mental health, strong cultural identity helps the child deal with adverse experiences and transitions and can reduce depression and anxiety.
The role that strong cultural identity plays in mental health, self-esteem, and overall well-being cannot be ignored. For example:
Former foster youth have statistically significantly weaker cultural identity strength than non-former foster youth. On the Usborne scale, a scale used in the study to measure cultural identity strength, former foster youth averaged a score 4.5 points lower than non-former foster youth.
Of those former foster youth who noted a specific aspect of their culture as important, the following percentages of youth were able to access that aspect throughout their time in foster care.
When foster youth had access to aspects of their culture they noted as important “as much or almost as much” as they wanted to, they had stronger cultural identity strength than those who did not have similar access
These research findings show that former foster youth need more support to strengthen their cultural identity to be on par with those who have not experienced the foster care system. In sum, we are failing foster youth when it comes to cultural identity.
Where the Law Stands
The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states:
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.[11]
Just four states in the United States legally provide the right to cultural heritage activities for youth in foster care via youth rights explicitly:
California
Colorado
Hawaii
Pennsylvania
Illinois law states[12] that it is the foster parent’s responsibility to support foster youth’s activities to continue a relationship with cultural heritage. This places the onus on the foster parent instead of establishing a foster youth’s inherent right, that if necessary can be advocated for by the affected youth or a concerned adult, such as a social worker or attorney. Missouri law[13] similarly says foster parents shall provide care respectful of a youth’s cultural identity.
Additionally, the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2014[14] and the Enhanced Resource Guidelines produced by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges encourage cultural identity connection. The Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening of Families Act of 2014 is legally binding federal legislation that requires states to develop prudent parent standards for caregivers serving foster youth. The prudent parent standard centers around creating an environment of normalcy that the youth would experience had they not been in foster care. This legislation explicitly requires that cultural practices, foods, connections, and other activities that support a youth’s cultural identity be supported.
In most of the United States, the cultural identity needs of foster youth are not clearly legally protected. These needs are only protected through legislation stating that cultural identity should be supported. Without more tangible legal backing that mandates consistent implementation across counties and states, the efforts of foster youth, social workers, foster parents, and children’s lawyers to advocate for best practices and assure foster youth legal access to cultural identity, along with the necessary resources and support, continue to be hampered.
Most striking is the widespread lack of an inherent right to cultural identity preservation within the United States. All states have a foster youth bill of rights or statutes explaining the expectations of what foster youth are entitled to in terms of treatment, education, family access, and other important matters. However, in 44 of 50 states, foster youth lack an inherent right, or even guideline recommendation to foster parents, that supports their access to their cultural practices, customs, and identities.[15]
Currently, for non-Indian foster youth in the United States, cultural identity is addressed by federal legislation, recommended guidelines, and an explicit right in only four states. However, consistent implementation remains a significant barrier to realizing this goal. Through the Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2014, it is federally required for states to create or adopt a prudent parent guideline that includes supporting the cultural involvement of the foster youth in care. Yet, the legislation leaves responsibility for implementation up to the state legislature, county guidelines, and the training of foster parents. There are also highly recommended guidelines, the NCJFCJ Enhanced Resource Guidelines, which call for sensitivity to foster youths’ culture by child welfare legal practitioners and systems. Yet, again, there is no mechanism to effectively implement this guideline. Until these rights are more explicit and widely implemented, however, attorneys can draw upon them to advocate in court for the youth’s rights to be protected.
Next Steps
There are many steps foster parents, social workers, lawyers, and judges can take to help support foster youth’s cultural identity. These suggestions are not all-encompassing and focus on legal avenues. There are many small and large ways individuals working with a youth can promote cultural identity, from asking about needs to taking time to share a familiar meal. It is encouraged that those working with a youth think and ask about small ways they can reaffirm or help youth explore their cultural identity. In a youth’s daily life, having access to culture is as important as proximity to culture, such as being surrounded by community members from the youth’s culture.
Access and proximity are similar in nature; both involve the youth being engaged with their culture. A simple analogy:
Imagine a youth is a flower. Having access to one’s culture would be ensuring the flower sees and spends time with other flowers, receives soil they are familiar with and other environmental factors they know. Having proximity with one's' culture would be placing the flower in a garden surrounded by all familiar aspects at once, an all-encompassing interaction with pillars of their culture.
To restate, proximity encompasses more than a concerted effort to have access to culture. Instead, a youth’s culture is around them without needing to actively piecemeal multiple important parts of their culture together. Even when foster youth are not proximate (geographically) to their culture, maintaining access to aspects of that culture by having advocates who connect them to food, music, events, etc. is key to helping youth maintain and strengthen that identity.
Lawyers/Policy Advocates
Add “right to culture” in your state’s foster youth bill of rights or as a right by law if it does not exist.
Litigate if cultural access is denied as cultural access promotes well-being.
Ensure foster parents receive cultural awareness training.
Think about cultural identity as a piece of well-being like housing, education, and safety when thinking about unmet needs and systemic change.
Judges and Lawyers
Ask foster youth about their cultural identity, or if there are any cultural practices or norms that are important to them.
Ask youth about cultural issues many times throughout their time in foster care as answers can change after the trauma of removal has been lessened.
Follow up on any previous answers to see if those needs are met.
If you are in a state in which foster youth’s access to cultural heritage is codified, use it as a tool to ensure accountability to case plans and evaluations.
How to Get Involved
Every facet of Quality Youth Services Treatment Foster Care model is designed to make Foster Parents feel confident in their ability to provide a safe, secure and nurturing environment for all family members including the foster youth.
Quality Youth Services provides short term foster care through our dedicated foster parents in Cache, Box Elder, Weber, Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties. If you or someone you know is interested in becoming a foster parent, please complete the foster parent application on our website at this link, https://www.qualityyouthservices.com/foster-care, and our Program Director will call to schedule an interview within two days.
Or if you would like more information before applying, check out our website page dedicated to Foster Parents at this link, https://www.qualityyouthservices.com/proctor-parents.
You may also request more information or get answers to specific questions prior to applying at this link https://www.qualityyouthservices.com/request-more-information
Quality Youth Services Foster Parents play a vital role in the mental health, well-being and future success of the vulnerable youth they serve in their homes. Please join us in being catalysts of positive change in our community by deciding to foster today!
This article was adapted from the presentation “Foster Youth’s Cultural Identity: An Overlooked Piece of Foster Youth Success” by Ariella Hope Stafanson, Lily Colby and Crys O’Grady, at the ABA Center on Children and the Law’s National Conference on Parent Representation, April 2019 in Tyson’s Corner, VA.
Endnotes
[1] Child Welfare Information Gateway. Foster care statistics 2017. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau, March 2019. <https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/foster.pdf>
[2] Cultural and ethnic identity are used interchangeably in this article.
[3] Smolicz, J. “Core Values and Cultural Identity.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 4(1), 1981, 75-90,
[4] Anderson, M., & L.O. Linares. “The Role of Cultural Dissimilarity Factors on Child Adjustment Following Foster Placement.” Children and Youth Services Review 34(4), 2012, 597-601.
[5] Usborne, E. & D. Taylor. “The Role of Cultural Identity Clarity for Self-Concept Clarity, Self-Esteem, and Subjective Well-Being.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36(7), 2010, 883-897.
[6] Berger, P. L. & T. Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.
[7] Schmidt, J. et al. “Who Am I? Who Do You Think I Am? Stability of Racial/Ethnic Self-Identification among Youth in Foster Care and Concordance with Agency Categorization.” Children and Youth Services Review 56, 2015, 61-67.
[8] Ibid.
[9] McMillen, C. et al. “Psychiatric Symptoms and Substance Use Disorders in a Nationally Representative Sample of American Adolescents Involved with Foster Care.” Journal of Adolescent Health 38(4), 2007, 351-358.
[10] The study was conducted by the author, Ariella H. Stafanson, and is available via email at ariellastafanson@gmail.com.
[11] United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948. <https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/>
[12] See National Conference of State Legislatures. “Foster Care Bill of Rights” (citing Ill. Rev. Stat. Ch. 20, § 520/1-15) <http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/foster-care-bill-of-rights.aspx#Children>
[13] See National Conference of State Legislatures. “Foster Care Bill of Rights” (citing Mo. Rev. Stat. § 210.566) < http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/foster-care-bill-of-rights.aspx#Children>
[14] See Epstein, Heidi Redich and Anne Marie Lancour. “The Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standard.” Child Law Practice Today, October 2016. <https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/resources/child_law_practiceonline/child_law_practice/vol-35/october-2016/the-reasonable-and-prudent-parent-standard/>
[15] National Conference of State Legislatures. Foster Care Bill of Rights, May 2, 2019. <http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/foster-care-bill-of-rights.aspx>
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