By Audrey Denise B. Cachuela
Nearly 16,000 young people age out of the United States foster care system each year, and many leave without permanent connections to family and with serious obstacles between them and independence (Source: U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, 2026). Congress took up that problem in May, which is why foster care reform is getting fresh attention. The same debate leaves a second group easy to overlook, the children who are living in unsafe placements right now.
Anthony Trucks, a former NFL athlete and founder of Dark Work, spent much of his childhood in foster care. He entered at age three and endured years of mental and physical abuse before a family adopted him at 14 (Source: NBC Bay Area, 2017). His experience gives a concrete picture of how closely a young adult’s readiness for independence depends on the safety and stability a child finds along the way. Foster care reform covers every stage of a young person’s time in care, including the placements children live in today.
What Is the Fostering the Future Act and How Would It Support Foster Youth?
The Fostering the Future Act, also known as H.R. 7432, updates the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood, a federal program that serves current and former foster youth between the ages of 14 and 21. The House passed it with unanimous support on May 19, 2026, and it carries the program’s first reforms since its creation in 1999 (Source: U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, 2026).
The bill ties child welfare agencies more closely to federal housing programs and widens access to education and workforce training. It also extends legal services to more foster youth. Parenting foster youth would be connected with evidence-based home visiting programs (Source: U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, 2026).
The headline change raises the maximum Education and Training Voucher from $5,000 to $12,000 at current funding levels. Vouchers would also cover apprenticeships and short-term workforce training (Source: U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, 2026).
Lifelong connections become a stated purpose of the Chafee program under the bill, an acknowledgment that practical help and lasting relationships go together (Source: U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, 2026). The Senate received the bill on May 20, 2026 and referred it to the Finance Committee (Source: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2026). Many of the needs it addresses trace back to experiences young people carried through the system, which makes conditions inside that system the next question to examine.
Why Does Foster Care Abuse Remain a Concern in the Child Welfare System?
Foster care exists to keep children safe when their original homes cannot, and many foster families do that work with great dedication. Reports from Oregon and a federal review of residential facilities show where the child welfare system still fails some children.
In 2025 the rate of children in Oregon’s child welfare system who were seriously harmed reached an all-time high. Measured as reported incidents per 100,000 care days, that rate has climbed 21.3% since 2022 in a state with about 4,600 children in foster care (Source: Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2026).
State officials are reviewing the 2025 cases to find the cause of the increase, and an initial review points to many incidents during trial home visits, when children return to their parents for a trial reunification, and during unsupervised visits with family members (Source: Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2026).
Federal auditors have raised concerns about the abuse of youth in foster care placed in residential facilities for over 20 years, and about 34,000 youth were most recently placed in such facilities in 2022, down from about 101,000 in 2002 (Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024). Agencies placing youth out of state often have limited access to the children and to information about their care. Some youth receive psychotropic medications in risky patterns, and staff sometimes injure youth during restraints (Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024).
How Does Foster Care Abuse Affect Children, and What Are the Mental Health Effects of Foster Care Trauma?
Anthony Trucks’ childhood shows what those documented concerns look like from a child’s side of the placement. His early years included starvation and beatings across five foster homes, and he was separated from his siblings along the way (Source: Dallas CASA, 2018).
A frightened child finds ways to cope. Trucks wanted desperately to go home, so he decided the fastest route back to his mother was to behave badly enough to be sent there (Source: Dallas CASA, 2018). He also learned to size up adults quickly, and he has said he had to work out at a young age whether a person would hurt him or help him (Source: WIBW, 2023).
Safety arrived with his final foster mother, who later adopted him. Trucks credits her with teaching him that adults could be trusted and that he had a place in the world, and he describes how she stayed committed to him through every stretch of difficult behavior (Source: Dallas CASA, 2018).
The mental health effects of foster care trauma can stay hidden from the people around a young person, and children experience trauma in different ways. Some pour everything into achievement because success feels like the most dependable route to acceptance. Habits like these help a child cope during hard years and can create obstacles once adulthood arrives.
Identity took shape for Trucks around a single comment. The year after his adoption, a friend who had also been in foster care said she was bad because of it, and he realized he did not want to spend his life repeating that story (Source: Dallas CASA, 2018). He put real effort into football first and academics next, and football led to a scholarship at the University of Oregon and time with three NFL teams (Source: NBC Bay Area, 2017).
A shoulder injury ended his NFL career in 2008 (Source: WIBW, 2023). Afterward he lost his marriage and watched the businesses he started fail (Source: Misfit Entrepreneur, 2021). His path shows how early experiences can keep influencing the way a person responds to loss and uncertainty. Young people reaching the age limit of care meet a different set of obstacles.
What Are the Challenges of Aging Out of Foster Care?
Most teenagers reach adulthood gradually, with parents and other trusted adults close by to catch mistakes. A former foster youth may have to find housing and steady work at the same time as they carry the emotional weight of an unstable childhood.
About 10% of children who exit foster care each year leave because they reached the state’s age limit for eligibility, and some of these youth face much higher rates of homelessness and unemployment than other youth, along with greater risk of poverty and poorer educational outcomes (Source: National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect, 2026).
Childhood stability appears to carry forward into these years. Among youth surveyed at ages 19 to 21, fewer foster care placements and placement with a family were associated with stronger employment-related skills and with earning a high school degree (Source: Child Welfare League of America, 2020). Placement type matters too. Youth in group homes or institutions were more likely to experience homelessness and incarceration, according to the same federal report, which ties the residential safety concerns described earlier to what happens after a young person leaves care (Source: Child Welfare League of America, 2020).
Youth still in care at 19 and 21 reported fewer incarcerations and lower rates of homelessness than peers who had left care, and the report describes foster care as a potential protective factor for young people who remain in or return to care after 18 (Source: Child Welfare League of America, 2020).
The coping habits described earlier show up in everyday ways. A young person can finish a job application and still hesitate to trust the employer who reads it. A moment like that explains why the experiences a young person carries out of care shape how well they use the help available afterward.
How Can Foster Care Reform Improve Safety in the Foster Care System?
Improving safety starts with watching what happens during a placement. Child welfare agencies need reliable information about children’s experiences and clear procedures for investigating abuse allegations. Oregon’s child welfare agency says it is working to have caseworkers check in more often with children and parents and to give staff more training in assessing risk and safety (Source: Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2026).
Some states have tried specific fixes. One state created an interagency committee to monitor youth placed in out-of-state residential facilities. A second state convenes a similar group on a regular schedule to analyze restraint data (Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024). Federal auditors recommended in 2022 that the Department of Health and Human Services help states share promising practices for preventing abuse in these facilities, and the agency had yet to act on that recommendation as of the 2024 testimony (Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024).
Foster youth mental health calls for sustained attention too. Children who have lived through severe abuse or repeated placement changes may need mental health care that continues after a crisis passes, and consistent support may help a young person prepare for independence. Some states have required physicians to consult a child psychiatrist before prescribing certain psychotropic medications to youth in foster care (Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024).
Keeping children connected to family and community offers another route, and Oregon has acted on it. The share of children in Oregon foster care placed with relatives rose from 18.8% in 2022 to 36.1% by the end of 2025, and keeping children with family or in the same community has been shown to benefit them. The state’s first progress report under its lawsuit settlement listed that increase among its areas of progress (Source: Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2026).
Listening to young people strengthens the system as well. The Chafee reforms drew endorsements from over 150 national, state and local organizations and from 320 foster youth and caregivers, and foster youth who shared their stories helped build momentum for the Fostering the Future Act (Source: U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, 2026). That willingness to listen belongs inside placements too, where a child who reports feeling unsafe deserves a prompt and serious response.
Anthony Trucks now talks about his years in foster care with company staff and area high school students (Source: WIBW, 2023). Foster care reform advances when people keep asking where it stands, and the Fostering the Future Act is waiting in the Senate Finance Committee. Visit the official Anthony Trucks website to learn more about his work, then contact your senators today and ask when they plan to act on the bill.
