Aging out: Cleveland foster care youth beats odds, but challenges remain
Kaitlin Durbin, Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 18, 2025.
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| Despite graduating college and starting a business, Russell Lang still faces hurdles as a former foster youth, highlighting the ongoing struggles for those aging out of the system without families to help support them. (Self-portrait courtesy of Russell Lang) |
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Russell Lang knew that when he turned 18, he’d face the harsh reality of aging out of the foster care system without a family to lean on or help guide him.
The safety net that had largely supported him through childhood would fall away, and he’d be left to navigate adulthood on his own, ready or not. He knew the odds of success for most foster kids in his situation were grim.
Data from iFoster, a nonprofit supporting foster youth, show that only a quarter of foster youth graduate high school, and fewer than 12% go on to attend college, despite an abundance of resources meant to assist them. Within four years, 70% are on government assistance and 50% experience homelessness. A third will have been incarcerated.
Lang was determined to defy the statistics — not once, but twice.
He threw himself into his studies, graduating high school with a 3.5 GPA and a prestigious internship with NASA’s Glenn Research Center. Then, he earned a full ride to Cleveland State University, thanks to the Sullivan-Deckard Scholarship Opportunity Program for foster care youth.
It put him up in a dorm, which he considers his first real home, and allowed him opportunities to explore interests in sciences and photography. He graduated last summer with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science.
Today, he’s interning with iFoster, helping others transition to self-sufficiency, and trying to build his own business, RussLangPhotography, focusing on city and nature scapes.
He’s already gone farther than most.
“I had no other option” he recently told Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. “My only other option was to be out on the street.”
Lang was “resilient, determined, passionate,” as it notes on his photography profile. But not all foster youth have the same drive or think about setting themselves up for the future. Many are just thinking about how to survive the now.
They’ve been removed from their families because of neglect or abuse and have other compounding traumas that can make it difficult for them to connect or adjust, often manifesting in behavior issues and trouble performing in school. That in turn can perpetuate a negative stigma that makes it harder for them to be adopted or secure some other permanent placement, as cleveland.com has learned through its series of stories covering foster care and adoption.
Early installments explored what it takes to foster local youth and explained how the adoption process works. It also profiled two kids awaiting permanency in the system now.
But the reality is, more than a hundred Cuyahoga County youths age out of the system every year without a home. In 2022, there were 135 emancipations, data provided by the county’s Children and Family Services showed. Last year, there were 118.
The county has numerous resources meant to help prepare them for that day, starting three months prior to their separation. Kids who graduate high school can leave with a new laptop and get help pursuing higher education, trades programs or the military.
There are housing resources through Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority and partnerships with private landlords. There’s medical coverage until they’re 26. And there’s an abundance of other community programs that can assist with clothes, furniture, employment, mentorship and other basic resources.
But there’s no data on how often youths are accessing those resources, and most programs have to be contacted individually, making them harder to reach and navigate. Understaffing across county agencies also means fewer people to help make those connections.
“At least it’s there; at least they (kids) have that opportunity,” Greg Jones, a permanency support officer with the county, argues, but he acknowledges that it isn’t a perfect system and they don’t catch everyone. Sometimes youths have run away and are already trying to make it on their own by then. Other times, they’re reluctant to get help, especially from the county.
They can come back and access county support any time until they turn 21, Jones said, but he couldn’t quantify how often they do. “There are so many components that they’re facing, that they figure ‘I might as well take a chance and have my life in my own hands,’” he explained.
The problem is, like most youths their age, they’re not fully ready for the responsibility. “I have come across very few 18-year-olds who were mature enough to handle the adult world,” Jones said.
Lang admits he wasn’t ready to be an adult, though he tried to pretend.
Sure, he got into college, he said, but had no one to call for support or to help troubleshoot issues in class, discuss potential career options – anything. He didn’t trust the help that was being offered, assuming it was just part of the person’s job, an obligation they had to fill.
It was a trauma response derived from abandonment issues throughout his childhood.
Lang entered the system when he was just 4 years old, after the county learned that he’d been living in a car with his mother and two older siblings and hiding from protective services when she’d disappear for weeks at a time.
They were placed with a family that Lang recalls being very nice, but it was still a culture shock. Then his mother died of health complications, eliminating any hope of reunification. He was devastated.
“The only thing I was thinking at that time was I loved my mother,” he said. “She wasn’t around a lot, but she was my mother.”
After that, Lang said the county sent them to live with and aunt and uncle, whom they’d always enjoyed while growing up, but grief and unplanned parenthood changed them. Lang remembers being ordered to lay in his bed in silence after school and living off four slices of toast and a TV dinner each day, until his uncle relinquished custody and they were thrust back into the foster system, yet again.
Lang’s oldest sister, who had already aged out, once tried to petition for custody, he said, but the county reportedly denied the match. Lang would stay six years in his next foster home, where he said he had three meals a day and clean sheets on his bed, “but I didn’t feel like I belonged. I didn’t feel like I was loved in that house,” he said.
One day, just six months before his high school graduation, he said he came home to find his foster mother had cleaned out his closet and thrown away a bag of sentimental clothing he’d collected over the years. They fought and he was moved to a new home. Then he aged out and was off to college on his own.
He resisted support at first, he admits, but soon he connected with a program organizer who, he said, would challenge his excuses and was the first person he felt genuinely cared about his well-being. “I’d even call her a mother figure,” he says now.
It allowed him to turn an opportunity into a success, he said.
“I had the ability to develop myself. I had the ability to educate myself, to chase my passions, to form new relationships without the stress of finding housing and being on the street or couch surfing. That’s integral,” he said. “Having a place to call home was the reason why I’m successful.”
There are other success stories of foster care youth who were able to defy the odds.
Jones recalls a teen he worked with who is now a lieutenant in the Navy and volunteering with other foster care youths. There’s a girl who graduated college and now is buying her first home with her husband and child. And there’s a man in his mid-20s who’s starting his own cologne business.
Lang’s middle sister, too, is doing well. She also benefited from the Sullivan Deckard scholarship at CSU and went on to get her Masters. She’s now a case worker for Catholic Charities, where she does peer recovery support for recovering addicts, Lang said. His oldest sister has two children that he visits when able.
They try to stay connected, but Lang still feels on his own.
He’s trying to grow his photography business into a full-time job, while he works on getting a driver’s license and a car, two necessities that he believes has limited his other job prospects. He used his stimulus checks to buy a Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera during the pandemic and has developed a following for his shots of Cleveland’s skyline, which he sometimes refers to as “Gotham, Ohio,” and his “Bike rides in Cleveland” series.
His work has been featured by Cleveland Magazine, the city of Cleveland and on Cleveland.com’s social media platforms.
Still, he said, he’s living in low-income housing and worries he might soon lose his AmeriCorps-funded internship with iFoster, as the Trump Administration reviews federal spending and makes cuts.
Just a few months ago, while waiting for his public assistance to kick in, he was struggling to make ends meet on $1,900 in monthly income for an estimated $2,100 in expenses. “I was scared,” he said.
He’s not sure what comes next. He appreciates all the safety nets that have supported him over the last several years, but he’ll soon age out of those, too. He’ll have to be his own safety net.
He hopes he’ll be ready then.
“I have to be successful; I have to be good,” Lang said. “If I don’t, I’m just another statistic.”
