H.R. 7343 — Foster Youth Workforce Opportunity Act

This section expands eligibility and allowable uses of funds under the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood (42 U.S.C. 677), which provides states with funding for education, training, and support services to help youth who have experienced foster care achieve self-sufficiency. It broadens the population served by replacing references to youth who “aged out of foster care” with youth who “experienced foster care at age 14 or older” and by lowering the minimum age for program participation from 16 to 14 in multiple subsections. The section also revises the five-year participation cap to permit up to six years of services for a youth engaged in remedial education, expands the types of costs that may be covered to include attendance at institutions of higher education or short-term Workforce Pell-eligible training programs, participation in apprenticeship programs, preparation for a general equivalency degree, and remedial education, and adds a statutory definition of remedial education that requires the instruction to be unavailable through free local, state, or federal programs and delivered by a credentialed instructor.