Contact: Debra Dennis
214-378-1851,
ddennis@dcccd.edu
For immediate release — May 10, 2016
(DALLAS) — Speakers, social workers and vendors will gather at Eastfield College to discuss how to assist teenagers who are exiting foster care and entering adulthood during a free program titled “We Are Here and We Care: Foster Care Student Program Awareness Panel” on Thursday, May 19. The general public is invited to attend.
The program will be held from 1 to 2:30 p.m. in Building G, rooms 101 and 102, at Eastfield, which is located at 3737 Motley Drive in Mesquite. Panelists will share tips for students who want to make a successful transition to college. Vendors will set up in the foyer to provide resources.
Dallas County Community College District representatives, along with civic leaders and other community organizations, will discuss educational benefits for foster care youth as well as other services that assist these students so they can become self-sustaining adults. The district offers a Foster Care Student Program that helps students who are enrolled at all seven of its colleges so that they can navigate financial aid and other services.
“These students need guidance applying for college, and they also need to know the services that are available to them,” said Dr. Shirley Higgs, DCCCD’s director of educational policy. She is leading DCCCD’s efforts to provide eligibility and life skills information to foster youth.
Many young people enter the foster care system when they are children and then bounce from foster home to foster home and sometimes from county to county, Higgs explained. Children in foster care are under the the conservatorship of the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services. “They often are ashamed. There is a stigma, and we want to talk about that and all of the services that are available to these students,” Higgs added.
Texas provides free tuition to students who were formerly in the state foster care system. To preserve their eligibility, students must enroll in at least one college course by age 25 to qualify, Higgs said. “DCCCD’s support program extends resources to those foster youth who are either facing high school graduation or who have graduated and are not sure how to get into college,” she explained.
But tuition is not the only concern. Counseling, case management and housing are other themes that need to be explored. Many students who have been in foster care have struggled with homelessness, abandonment and neglect as well as physical and emotional abuse.
Key Speakers
The program, a first for DCCCD, will feature Rev. Payton Parker, who will share a first-hand account of his journey as someone who was adopted out of foster care. Parker is a youth minister at St. Luke Community United Methodist Church in Dallas.
Other panelists include:
- Former North Lake student Krystal Holliday;
- Nikeesia Ranson, founder of SWAGG (Serenity, Wisdom, Agility, Guidance and Grace), a program that caters to the academic interests, skills and talents of foster care and adopted students;
- Madeline Reedy, director of TRAC (Transition Resource Action Center), which provides transitional living services for youth who are leaving foster care; and
- Other DCCCD foster advocates and community leaders.
For more information, go to dcccd.edu/FosterCare or contact Debra Dennis in the DCCCD office of public and governmental affairs at 214-378-1851 or
ddennis@dcccd.edu.
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