MISSING THE MARK: THE IMPORTANCE OF FINANCIAL ANXIETY IN FINANCIAL SKILLS TRAINING FOR FOSTER YOUTH
Abstract
It is well established that many former Canadian foster youth struggle with financial issues after aging out of care. Much of the financially focused intervention literature speaks to financial literacy training within independent living programming (ILP) or financial empowerment within individual development accounts (IDAs). These important programs offer educational modules to address financial skills or increase youth access to savings. Yet they are not sufficient, as neither addresses the emotional side of personal financial decision-making. Growing up in poverty can create emotional challenges related to money, such as financial anxiety. Financial anxiety affects quality of life in complex ways. Using three clinical composite profiles of youth aging out of the youth protection system in Quebec, this paper highlights some of the complex challenges faced by foster care alumni in dealing with economic insecurities. It is our proposition that we must be more mindful of current and former foster youth’s financial well-being and adapt financial literacy training accordingly. Further, these programs must be assessed for short- and long-term efficacy. Neglecting to measure and address financial anxiety for foster youth and alumni of care risks setting them up for preventable hardships and failures. This paper thus proposes that Canadian child welfare organizations and research teams must further develop this area of inquiry and intervention.
Downloads
Metrics
Authors contributing to the International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Rights Granted After Publication
After publication, authors may reuse portions or the full article without obtaining formal permission for inclusion within their thesis or dissertation.
Permission for these reuses is granted on the following conditions:
- that full acknowledgement is made of the original publication stating the specific material reused [pages, figure numbers, etc.], [Title] by/edited by [Author/editor], [year of publication], reproduced by permission of International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies [link to IJCYFS website];
- In the case of joint-authored works, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission from co-authors for the work to be reuse/republished;
- that reuse on personal websites and institutional or subject-based repositories includes a link to the work as published in the International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies; and that the material is not distributed under any kind of Open Access style licences (e.g. Creative Commons) which may affect the Licence between the author and IJCYFS.