Make the Leap

Empowering Foster Children: The Ross Last-Dollar Grant for Foster Children

Ross Education

Curious about how a debt-free education could transform the lives of foster children? In this episode of "Make the Leap," Brad Constant, George Grayeb, and Kristen Beal introduce the Ross Last-Dollar Grant for Foster Children, a last-dollar grant initiative that ensures foster children can attend Ross without tuition fees or student debt. Listen as George shares eye-opening statistics about the financial challenges faced by foster children and explains how this program seeks to mitigate those obstacles, providing not just financial relief but also academic support and tutoring. Ross's commitment to students extends beyond graduation, aiming to equip them with the tools they need to succeed in life.

We also broaden the conversation to address the societal responsibility we all share in supporting foster children. Kristen previews future discussions with experts who will delve into critical topics like trauma-informed care, housing instability, and food insecurities. Stay tuned for an insightful future episode featuring Kelsey Fox from United Way of Delaware County, Ohio, who will share her expertise on homelessness and transitional housing. Don't miss this compelling episode about the power of community and education to change lives.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Make the Leap, a podcast focused on the many economic hurdles facing college students, lower income individuals and those striving to move up the social ladder. I'm Brad Constant here with George Graeb and Kristen Biel. Today's episode will sound a little bit different as we flip the script and interview George. So, Kristen, what is our topic for today?

Speaker 2:

Well, thanks, brad. We're talking about foster care again, and it's become a very important topic on the podcast recently. We were introduced to the topic during the first episode of the season and we then took a deeper dive during our last episode. And that brings us to this episode in which we have the privilege to discuss the new Ross.

Speaker 1:

Foster Care Program. Thanks, Kristen. So, George, we'll hand it over to you to introduce us to the new Ross Foster Care Program.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, brett. So the Foster Kids or Foster Care Scholarship Program is what we would call the last dollar grant program, which means kids that would meet the qualification of a foster child as it is laid out on the FAFSA, which is a free application for federal student aid, would qualify to go to Ross without taking any debt or coming out of any out-of-pocket expense. That would Ross cover their expenses beyond any grants that they may qualify for. And even if they don't qualify for any grants, their tuition and fees will still be covered through the last dollar foster kids scholarship program.

Speaker 2:

What led to the creation of this program then?

Speaker 3:

So this is kind of a back to our original conversation. I think a lot of it, kristen is, when you put this topic in front of us a few months back, and so I would have to be somewhat transparent to say that I knew next to really next to nothing about how the foster care system worked, didn't really have any grasp of the challenges kids will have to go through. And, as we began that conversation and realized at any given time, in the US there are 400,000 kids in the foster care system and that number simply continues to rise. And out of that 400,000, there's roughly over 100,000 of these that are kids that are eligible for adoption, but they will wait and wait and wait, and sometimes an excess three years, of over three years, to find a family. So when you look at this and you look in terms of what their needs are, when you look at this and you look in terms of what their needs are and I know foster kids are in different places Sometimes many of them do get reunited with family, some of them do get adopted, some of them simply age out of the system.

Speaker 3:

But the reality, no matter what, 93% of the parents of an adopted child or a foster kid rely heavily on subsidies. They rely heavily on additional assistance to be able to take care and meet the needs of their kids, and sometimes education isn't high on that radar and I truly felt that Ross can step into that piece of it where we can offer kids who are interested in vocational healthcare-related education. They would have access to go to Ross and not have to worry about out-of-pocket or having to take out loans.

Speaker 1:

So reducing student debt is central to Ross's mission, at least since I've been here in these past three years. We have moved to a nonprofit. We started the foundation. How is this different? How can students in the foster care program achieve a debt-free education without having to do a student loan?

Speaker 3:

So, look, it's hard to know the hardship the kids face, but we do know sometimes that as they start to age out and almost 10% of them, when they age out, are dealing with some severe challenges and severe life issues that they deal with, and sometimes they end up in some kind of institutional care.

Speaker 3:

But what we try to do is just give one more option. So, regardless of their financial situation whether they have no money or they're eligible for aid or eligible for federal grants or not eligible for any federal grants they will not have to take out loans or have to pay out of pocket. So many of them are probably are not going to go to school any other way because the parents are not going to take out loans. They're not going to be in a position to help them. They already stretched out financially. So this is not just simply go to school with no debt which it does deliver on that but it really makes going to school or going to a post-secondary school an option which may never have been an option to them when they hit age 18 or 19 and they're trying to sort out what they want to do next.

Speaker 2:

Well, how is Ross uniquely positioned to support these foster kids from enrollment to post-graduation?

Speaker 3:

these foster kids from enrollment to post-graduation. It's a new territory, kristen, so we continue to work through this. But Ross is set up to provide what I would call wraparound services to many of our students. To begin with, you know the need for kids coming out of the foster care system. I'm not going to even begin to assume that we know or we can deal with all of it. I know they get through, sometimes without any meaningful support. I know in general, and the data tells us, that they will do worse in post-secondary educational attainment, they will do worse in employment, they will do worse in housing stability, they will need public assistance and sometimes they don't know how to get it, and we know they're going to encounter the criminal justice system.

Speaker 3:

We know all that and so I'm not necessarily going to say that we are in a position to fix it all. But we do have services. That extends on the academic side the one-on-one, the tutoring, the academic support, a lot of hand-holding to make sure that they can get through the academic program, whether they do it on a campus level or they do it online. So we work with a lot of high risk students. We have experience, we have the background, but this is a new territory. This is really an opportunity for us to provide that service. Maybe we will adjust to it, make some changes as we go and try to do it better every day, and I know you and Beth have been instrumental in helping us, guide us through this process, and I'm sure we'll continue to provide better support and better guidance to kids as we go down that journey.

Speaker 2:

Right. I find that an admissions rep who cares to do a really thorough intake of those students really helps them prepare for their career. So not just finding a job but giving them an outcome and something to work towards that can give them the results that they seek, I think will really ensure their likelihood of having a good experience on the front end and then more likely to seek out that other support services that we offer our students here at Ross as well. So I think holding their hand from the beginning and getting them to think not job but career, I think then gets them on the path to completing it by just by that sheer motivation of somebody taking the time and working through that with them.

Speaker 3:

We just think about like over 50,000 foster kids live in some kind of an institution, whether a group, home or environment similar to that and just think through, like, what kind of learning does that place allow for? You know how much are they going to progress in their pre-K, you know all the way through high school, and what role does this play in terms of their ability to start the post-secondary and ultimately graduate? And the data that you data that you look at when it comes to foster kids is the majority of them, over 70% of them, do want to go to school, they do want to attend a college or a vocational school, and nearly 25% of them do not even complete high school. So, even though 70% do want to go and do something, many of them do not and are not able to finish high school or even get a GED. And less than 6% of foster kids finish a two-year or a four-year degree program.

Speaker 3:

And so, and as I started this conversation, there are about 400,000 foster children on any given day. It's like a revolving door, so many exit but many enter. And when you also look at it in terms of what Ross does and in terms of society, it's again tilted towards the poor, it's tilted towards minority. I think there's some data out there that one out of 17 kids likely to enter the foster care system at some point, but it's like one out of nine for African-Americans and one out of seven for Native Americans. So it does really come right in terms of what we do and the services that we'll provide. But I'm sure we will have some hiccups as we begin this process and we will get better over time.

Speaker 1:

So that has me thinking more about the future. As we know short term, we're going to start this program, add it to all of the other services that Ross provided. Could you shed a little bit of light on how this program fits into Ross's future plans over the maybe the next year, three years, whatever.

Speaker 3:

Honestly, this is a reaction to a need. It literally was not on my radar maybe four or five months ago. You know, kristen put it on my radar and then Beth put it on our radar and we've kind of decided that this is something that we can do and allows us hopefully to help. I think it fits from the overall mission, which is we want to serve students who lack opportunities. We want to serve students who are not always been given the chance to hopefully get out of poverty or or at least get some path out of the situation that they're in.

Speaker 3:

The foster kids has it kind of from from three different pieces. They tend to be financially challenged because the parents are really relying on subsidies to help these kids. They tend to also have some real academic challenges on top of that, bouncing around from school to school, moving from parent to parent, especially if they live in a group home or an institution and then you've got the fact that many of them come from communities that are already marginalized and they're already at risk to begin with. So you bring all this together and that's what we do. That's really the student that we serve. Except there are even the students are at a much, much higher risk and incredibly more. I called it in our first podcast. I think we call it the invisible like they're not on anybody's radar, nobody knows that they're there and unfortunately, I think as a society we take them for granted.

Speaker 2:

Well, we kind of talked about how society can help these people and how Ross can help this population. But how can people in general support this program if they're interested?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think you've touched base in terms of the challenges they deal with. They have academic challenges, they have housing challenges. They have really some severe financial needs. So we can maybe meet some of that. We are going to step in and provide as much academic support as we can and we're going to give them placement services and career services as long as they need it, for how long they need it. But I think this just meets a small segment of what foster kids need and what the foster parents need. So I think the support has to come, sometimes in form of financial support, because parents really lack the money or the resources to meet the child's need. Housing becomes such a huge part of it. I think we've talked about how many of them are homeless or become homeless and the one that age out of the system. I mean those are really the biggest concern. Almost 10% will age out of the system, 20,000 will age out of the system, and many of them have no emotional, no financial support to face what life is going to bring at them.

Speaker 1:

So, george, I'm really excited about this program. I'm excited to see how it grows and evolves and adapts and, as a Ross employee, I'm most excited about the fact that this is just another tool in our toolbox to help meet people where they are and give them what they need to give them a chance to really achieve a goal that they may not have even realized was attainable. So, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you'd like to add? Was attainable.

Speaker 3:

So, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you'd like to add? You know sometimes, you know, when we look at foster kids and we look at it in totality and we look at the system, we lose sight of the individual aspect of what this is all about. When we look at in terms of what Ross is going to do and there are maybe nine states where we can have, where we have physical campuses, and these nine states really do not have a large amount of foster kids I think Indiana and Ohio, Michigan, tend to have 10,000 or a little bit more, but the rest are 4,000 or 5,000 foster children. The online program obviously has a much, much wider reach, but this really comes down to one kid at a time. They bring different needs, different challenges to the table and, from whether it is Ross or whatever, what other academic institution decides to help foster kids. I know, for example, the state of Michigan has a foster kids program that supports these kids when they want to go to college. They really need a full wraparound services.

Speaker 3:

This is not going to work by simply saying, hey, there's a free tuition, go to school. It's just simply going to take a lot more than that to get them to start to finish, to graduate, to get a job, to get some stability in their housing, in their situational hopefully you know past graduation and get them into a much safer place. But it's a system that doesn't really work. It's stressed financially, it's stretched financially A lot of turnover in parents, foster parents, a lot of turnover in the state agencies that try to manage this program. So it's just going to take a lot. It's going to take academic institution, nonprofit churches, state. It's just simply going to need considerably more resources than Ross can provide. But we are going to do what we can.

Speaker 1:

George, thanks for taking the time and talking with us about the Ross Foster Care Program. Thank you, but before we sign off, I want to hand it over to Kristen to talk about our future guests and how they fit into the umbrella services George mentioned earlier.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, brad. I appreciate it. We have some upcoming guests that I think will really add to our discussion about the services that we'll be able to provide to our foster care program students. For our next upcoming guest speaker we have, they'll be addressing trauma-informed care and trauma-informed learning, which many of these learners that come to us from foster care or who are adopted enter into the system because of a trauma they've experienced.

Speaker 2:

Similarly, our next guest will be someone who will be speaking to us about housing instability. In particular she's with an organization called the Treehouse who handles transitional housing for those young adults who are aging out of the system. And the last speaker that we have coming up in the future is someone who is attesting to food insecurities and how we as a community and society can assist with these. And we'll kind of look at each one of these guest speakers as a piece of that wraparound service from that Ross provides to all students, including from admissions through graduation and career services and placement. So I think we have some really interesting perspectives that will be coming up soon that will contribute to our understanding of the needs that these young adults that are foster kids or similarly adaptive kids as well.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to Make the Leap. Be sure to visit our site, rosspodcastcom or the podcast platform of your choice, to listen to past episodes, as well as subscribe, so you never miss a future episode. As well as subscribe so you never miss a future episode. We hope you join us two weeks from now for our next episode as we discuss homelessness and transitional housing with Kelsey Fox, the Director in Housing of Community Solutions for United Way of Delaware County in Ohio. See you then, thank you.

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