Heather Davis, assistant vice president of Academic Affairs at Belmont College, welcomes students. Belmont College and Ohio University are among the colleges recognized with Ohio Reach status for support and providing access to support for students with connections to the foster care system. T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Assistance is available to help college students with connections to the foster care system as they take on postsecondary education.

Belmont College and Ohio University have been named among the first group of Ohio colleges, universities and Ohio Technical Centers to earn the Ohio Reach Postsecondary designation for their efforts to support foster care-connected students.

Ohio Reach Postsecondary designation is awarded to those campuses meeting criteria that depict their support of students with experience in foster care or kinship care.

Ohio University has a campus — Ohio University Eastern — in Belmont County west of St. Clairsville. In a release, University College Dean Dr. David Nguyen commented on the designation.

“Ohio University realizes the vital role that student support plays throughout one’s postsecondary education experiences and beyond,” Nguyen states. “Through the Ohio Reach designation, we look forward to providing focused programming that will best support foster care-connected students and help them achieve their definitions of lifelong success.”

College officials added that advocates from units across Ohio University’s campuses supported this application.

Heather Davis, assistant vice president of Academic Affairs at Belmont College, said that college has always seen value in providing assistance.

“This is for the Ohio Department of Education, the new Ohio Reach designation for foster-connected students. Foster-connected students can include students that are in the foster care system, if they’re in kinship care, or if they’re in out-of-home placement. What it means for us is that we’re going to identify the student that might have been in the foster care system and their history,” Davis said.

These students will be offered support.

“So that they can be the most successful that they can be,” she said. “Supports can include things like housing assistance, clothing, food insecurities, tutoring, career services, whatever they might need.”

Davis said this is a significant and growing issue among students. She referred to a report by the Children’s Defense Fund Ohio that showed Ohio falls behind many other states on outcomes related to youth and young people who are in the foster care system.

“They did this by surveying students in the state of Ohio, so I think Ohio identified it as a definite need, and if we want this population of students to be a success, then we definitely need to wrap them with supports,” she said.

She added that hopefully more students will be able to pursue postsecondary education.

“A lot of students might not self-identify that they’ve been in the foster care system, so we’re going to have to, I think, jump that hurdle and figure out how to get them to identify and talk to faculty and an admissions adviser that they’ve been in the system. But once they are identified, I think we can help them to be more successful,” she said.

“I know in my mental health program when I was teaching, I had a handful of students that were in the foster care system, and we had grant opportunity for students that were in the foster care system so we were able to give them money to help financially with their tuition, and that’s a great program also, but I think a lot of students come through that have been in the system in some way or another.”

Davis said being part of the foster system can leave lasting effects, whether mentally, emotionally or financially.

“They’re going to be impacted in some way, no matter what their situation might be. I think kids that are in the foster system, the ones that find a long-lasting home are pretty lucky and fortunate. What I have seen is that when kids bounce in the foster system, they’re in and out of placement, they’re group home to group home or they’re foster care family to foster care family, so that stability lacks, and that can definitely have long-term effects.

“They’ll be able to find extra support, which could be connection to counseling services,” she said, adding that a wide variety of assistance is available. “We have an on-campus closet now that’s relatively new that provides clothing, hygiene items, food items. If they need an outfit for an interview. We had a student who needed scrubs for their internship recently, so they can help himself to that closet and gain those kind of resources.”

Davis recalled other times when students have made use of the college’s resources.

“We just live in a tough world these days. Everyone could use some supports,” she said.

Christine Parker, Children Services Administrator with the Belmont County Department of Job and Family Services, was happy to hear the news, adding that while there are quality foster parents in the area, young people going through the foster care system often face an extra challenge.

“In the past, we had a foster child who attended a college in Ohio that had an Ohio Reach program, and it was very helpful because they provided her with a mentor. So if she needed extra assistance for something like housing or financial aid or signing up for a class, there were people there to help out and give her that extra support,” Parker said.

“A lot of our foster kids when they get off to college, they don’t have support from their parents like a lot of kids do,” she said. “Any support they can provide will be very helpful.”

She said there are other resources available, including Ohio’s Education and Training voucher program.