Sabotaged By the System

I am a former foster child and current youth advocate, involved in Foster Care Alumni of America.

Many thanks for this thoughtful and well-researched article! It prompted discussion among state leaders in the child welfare field regarding the issue of identity theft of foster care youth.

In my state, it is felt that a mandate would not go over well during this economically challenging time.

However, a training regarding Best Practices about how child welfare professionals might uncover and address identity theft before a young person ages out of foster care would be very helpful.

One person mentioned free annual online credit reports. I have some experience with that, and I do not recommend online credit reports as the solution to this problem.

The annual credit report takes you to each of the three national credit companies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) one by one. Each of the three credit agencies asks you a different set of questions, such as: ???Which of these four addresses have you resided in the past????

If you answer the questions incorrectly, you are kicked out of the portal. And, if someone has stolen your identity, you are likely not to recognize a bogus address that they might have used in your name.

My concern is that navigating the online credit report portal might not only be frustrating for young people, but it can be emotionally traumatic as well. For example, I know one young lady who was in 20 different foster care placements. I doubt she recalls the address of each one. When your life is a series of revolving doors, certain details begin to blur together.

Are there any alternate strategies or partnerships that you know of that child welfare professionals and caring folks like Mike (who posted below me) might pursue in order to assist foster care youth and alumni with this problem?

After doing some further research on my own I came up with the contact information for a website through the FTC site at: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre34.shtm . Looks like good info for anyone wanting to check on their credit. Thank you Jesse for this story!

I have a friend in California (a former Foster child) who turned 18 last year. Is there a phone number or address I could direct her towards where she could obtain her credit history?