They were neglected or abused at home and grew up in Alaska foster care. They never found a family to call their own. They've been homeless, pregnant and stuck in low-paying jobs.
Yet for all that, the vast majority of young adults who "aged out" of Alaska foster care describe themselves as happy, according to a new study by the University of Alaska Anchorage.
"They were not an embittered, angry group of people that we talked to," said Beth Sirles, one of the study's lead authors. The foster care alumni look forward to jobs, school, marriage and kids, she said, even as they recognize their own childhoods were not normal.
Through the study they emerge as complex young adults whose teen years were marred by dark emotional voids.
Tammy Sandoval, deputy commissioner over the state Office of Children's Services, said the system has changed to better care for foster children, including the hiring of four specialists to help teens prepare for life on their own.
"These kids come to us already damaged. They come from homes that are extremely stressed," she said. "They come with a lot of issues that the system is responsible to address."
Asked what could have been done better to help them, the ex-foster kids, whose names are not given, mixed blunt talk with the social work language they've heard all their lives.
"They could have paid more attention and not placed me with unfit caregivers and not moved me around so much," one said. "This system stinks. They need to be careful of who they let raise children."
"They could have listened. I could have grown up with a little bit of love," another said. Instead, the foster care graduate felt "treated like an unwanted disease."
And this: "They didn't really help me, and I was lost and scared. I learned the most when I was on my own. ... Don't assume that we know what to do."
The study took two years, including months tracking down the former foster youths, and was released in August. The UAA School of Social Work, which Sirles directs, received $750,000 in federal funds to conduct this study and three related ones. A tribal group, OCS and a private organization that aims to improve foster care guided the work.
Researchers focused on young adults who had aged out, meaning those who left foster care because they were too old to remain.
Most spent years in limbo because, in the state's view, their parents never shaped up enough to regain custody and social workers never found them an adoptive family or guardian.
"In effect, we as a society ask our least-prepared young adults -- those behind their peers in education, training, and so many other ways -- to go it on their own, with significantly less support, long before we expect that of young people who were not removed from their homes," the study said.
The alumni were ages 19 to 29 when the study began in 2004. Each had spent at least a year in foster care as a teen. State officials identified 140 such individuals, and researchers were able to interview 66. Some were in jail or an institution, and 41 couldn't be reached. Two had died.
Among the findings:
• The average time spent in state custody and out of their parents' home was nearly seven years. Life was tumultuous. Kids lived in an average of 13 different places under the state's watch. More than one-third had run away at least once.
"My last set of foster parents are great and they want to adopt me, but you constantly had to wonder if this place would be it or were you going to move again," one study participant said.
• Nearly 38 percent of those interviewed had been homeless at some point since leaving foster care, and nearly 29 percent reported they had been in jail.
• Almost three-quarters of the women interviewed had been pregnant, and 62 percent had babies. Some of the young adults repeated the dismal mistakes of their own parents. About 9 percent had children taken away by the state.
• They earned high school diplomas at nearly the same rate as Alaska youths in the general population. But fewer got college degrees. The average income was $12,300, about half the per capita income for Alaskans overall.
Amanda Metivier, 20, spent three of her teen years in foster care and now is president of an Alaska advisory group of current and former foster kids. She still lives with her foster family even though they no longer are paid to care for her. The family became permanent guardians to her younger sister, giving her an assurance of a home without requiring the severance of legal ties to birth families. She's a social work student at UAA, with her college tuition covered by a special program that benefits five former foster kids a year.
She knows of others who had rougher times. Many foster kids are separated from brothers and sisters, a problem identified in the study. One girl, whose sister was adopted without her, was told not to contact the sister any more, Metivier said.
Teens may feel no one cares, she said. Some foster parents seem to want them only to baby-sit younger children. And "some social workers just treat you like a file," she said.
Often, foster parents want to connect with the teens in their charge, but the kids push them away by acting up, said Aspen Perkins, 30, a foster mother who has cared for 28 children over the past four years.
"Every teenager that I've ever had has wanted nothing more than to have a real family. But they make it impossible, honestly. Their walls are so high," Perkins said. She's currently guardian for a 17-year-old and was the same for the girl's older sister, now 18 and on her own working as a cashier.
"Basically I am still mom when life falls apart or crumbles or she doesn't want to walk to work" in the rain, Perkins said. When the family goes to a movie, the aged-out sister is invited too. If she's too broke to buy food, she can come over for dinner. And she could move back in, if she were to agree to follow house rules, Perkins said.
Metivier's group, Facing Foster Care in Alaska, is pushing for change. It wants more foster kids to get help with college tuition and have better contact among siblings.
The system is getting better, said researchers and OCS officials. Stays in foster care are much shorter now, and birth families are being brought in on the decision-making. The state is starting to do more in-depth assessments of foster families, now called resource families, in the hope kids won't be shuttled from home to home and will get to stay with brothers and sisters, Sandoval said.
The state gets $500,000 a year in federal funds specifically to help foster youths succeed on their own, said Dorothy Douglas, coordinator of the OCS independent living program.
The four specialists spend their workday helping the teens plan for college, train for jobs, write resumes and run a household, she said. They can help with the first three months' rent. The youths can stay in foster care until they are 19, a practice that is encouraged for those who haven't completed high school.
Currently, there are 236 teens age 16 or older in Alaska foster care, Douglas said. About 40 to 50 age out every year.
Daily News reporter Lisa Demer can be reached at ldemer@adn.com and 257-4390.
