Nadine Finigan-Carr and Michael Fitzgerald from Imprint News published an new article, “Foster Care’s Missing Policies For Sexual and Reproductive Health.”
High stakes, high risks
“Foster Youth Need Sex Ed Too!” declared a 2018 study in the American Journal of Sexuality Education, which noted their “history of inconsistent relationships, childhood trauma, and broken support systems.”
Among 270 youth surveyed who had been placed in foster families, group homes or detention settings, just 53.5% were “unaware that condom use can decrease their risk of getting HIV/AIDS and other STIs.” And among those stating they’d had sex, nearly 20% reported “forced sex,” or intimate partner violence in the past year.
“A lot of what I’ve been trying to answer is, how do we get our workers and foster parents to engage youth about their sexual and reproductive health as much as their physical health?” said Nadine Finigan-Carr, the study’s lead author and a prevention research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.