The Youth Empowerment Outreach Program
Youth Empowerment Outreach Program ensures that youth aging out of foster care have the same opportunities for success as anyone else in their community — equipped with the knowledge, resources, and connections to create real change in their own lives and in society. We're a preventive solution built on collective effort, giving young people ages 18–24 the tools to build a stronger, more meaningful future.
The Reality
For too many youth, aging out of foster care at 18 means aging into crisis. Without support, they become targets for exploitation and abuse, often by the very adults who should have protected them. They face incarceration, addiction, homelessness, and in the most devastating cases, they don't survive it. This is the reality StopGap exists to change.
How many kids age out of foster care?
Nationally, 437,000 children are in foster care. Each year, approximately 23,000 age out of the system — roughly 63 every day. Nearly a quarter are 13 or older, and 23% live in institutions, group homes, or transitional homes.
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Leaving foster care without essential life skills carries lifelong consequences. Youth who age out without support face significantly higher rates of early pregnancy, homelessness, unemployment, and educational gaps — vulnerabilities that also make them prime targets for human trafficking and exploitation.
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In Kansas alone, nearly 6,895 children were in out-of-home placement as of April 2021, including 1,096 youth ages 16–18 and 71 who had already passed their 18th birthday.
The Youth Empowerment Outreach Program
The Youth Empowerment Outreach Program is an 18–24-month intensive, supervised program centered around a 4–5-bedroom home — a secure environment where youth can live, learn, and develop the skills needed to move from dependence to independence.
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Through one-on-one advising and community-based programming, we provide life skills training and personal development strategies tailored to youth ages 16–24. Our goal is to build knowledge, self-confidence, and self-determination — empowering young people to make informed decisions based on their own needs, not others' assumptions about what those needs should be.
Our focus is prevention: stopping the cycle before it starts.
Building Independence
The goal of The Youth Empowerment Outreach Program is to change the trajectory for youth aging out of foster care — shifting from dependency to self-regulation with ongoing support along the way.
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We are not here to take care of them. We are here to teach them to take care of themselves.
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Youth who have spent years navigating the foster care system deserve better than a cycle of failure at the finish line. Each of us has a role to play in ensuring that when young people exit foster care, they don't have to face that struggle alone.