People First Radio – December 18, 2025People First Radio – December 18, 2025
People First Radio
Conversation focusing on youth aging out of state care in Canada, sharing lived experience, stark outcomes and current policy responses across provinces. Guests discuss education, homelessness, Indigenous over-representation and calls for national standards and more humane support past 18.
0:00•18 Dec 2025
Thrown Out at 18: Youth Aging Out of Care and the Cost of Abandonment
Episode Overview
- Aging out of care is often a hard cutoff at 18 or 19, leaving young people suddenly without family-style support, income or housing.
- Former youth in care face high rates of homelessness, criminalisation, trauma and low educational attainment compared with their peers.
- Access to post-secondary education, including tuition waivers and wraparound supports, is framed as both an ethical and financially smarter investment than crisis responses.
- Support after care varies widely between provinces, with some programmes like B.C.’s SAGE extending aid to the mid‑20s, while others offer little or nothing.
- Advocates call for national standards, a federal role, and a cultural shift towards relational, trauma-informed care that genuinely values youth and their potential.
“"For kids in the general population, parents don't just go, hey, you're 18 or 19 now... here's a garbage bag of your belongings. Out the door you go."”
How do individuals turn their lives around after addiction? People First Radio shifts the spotlight to a different but closely linked crisis: what happens when young people age out of state care and are left to fend for themselves. This episode focuses on youth whose "parent" is the state, and what it looks like when that support suddenly disappears.
Host Joe Pugh brings together three voices with deep lived and professional experience: researcher and former youth in care Jacqueline (Jackie) Gahagan, National Council of Youth in Care Advocates executive director Dr Melanie Doucet, and B.C.-based advocate and social worker Jessica Knutson. Gahagan sets the scene with a gut-punch image: turning 18, finishing your cake, and then being handed green garbage bags of your clothes and shown the door.
She talks about low expectations around education, the "extraordinary burden" of instant adulthood, and why tuition waivers and wraparound supports are a smarter investment than leaving young people to fall into poverty, homelessness or the justice system. Doucet digs into the national picture, describing how aging out is usually "a hard cutoff" rather than a gradual transition.
She outlines grim statistics on homelessness, criminalisation, trauma and low high-school and post‑secondary completion, and explains why youth in care often start adulthood in deep poverty without family safety nets. Her advocacy for national standards and a federal role highlights just how patchy support is across Canada.
Knutson zooms in on British Columbia’s SAGE programme, praising extended supports to age 27 while questioning whether the system truly meets the needs of Indigenous youth, who make up about 70% of those in care in the province. This conversation is aimed at anyone interested in mental health, addiction, homelessness and social justice, and at people in recovery who know how fragile a life transition can be.
It might leave you asking: if the state claims to be a better parent, what does a "good parent" actually look like?
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