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Havens, I'm glad to hear things are doing better now.
I watched a DVD from the library last year about 'aging out of foster care' and the documentary followed 4 young people through the process. What I took away from the movie was that the longer a person can stay in the programs, no matter how aggravating the day-to-day rules are (and most of the young people in the movie were VERY frustrated by the house rules of whichever home they were in), the better they did when they finally launched. Also it was obvious that drug use destroyed their futures, it was painful to watch how some of their lives developed (disintegrated).
For your gf's sake, I hope you can encourage her to stay in care as long as she can, and take advantage of any additional programs that might be available. It is a myth that we are ready to be totally on our own at 18 yrs old, that is not the norm, most young people need financial parental assistance well into their 20s (frequently into the 30s), especially if they go to college. The 'agenda' of the DVD was to show that young people aging out of foster care at 18 yrs old need several years of transitional programs that can fill in as the safety net that other young people get from their families.
It probably is very hard for your gf to have to live with a new parent, especially one that doesn't have a bond developed over the years. But it is also hard for the fostermom to have a new teenager kid. Foster care is not easy. A lot of the kids come into foster care from situations where they had no rules (or crazy rules) and frequently the young people have no trust in adults (for good reasons), as well as having 'issues' from all the bad stuff that has happened to them in their past.
It is also hard for the system to find adults who are willing to foster teenagers. So although the foster mother may need to keep three foster kids to support the household expenses, it is most likely the third spot was quickly filled because there are lots of teens and not enough foster homes for that age group.
Your gf is very lucky to not have to live in a residential group facility with really messed up teens. I had a foster child (elementary age, I don't take teenagers) who had a couple teenage sisters, and it was rough for the older girls, one went to a relative that turned out to be a bad situation too, and the other went into a children's home that was virtually a prison (tho she seemed to like it and refused to agree to go live with her father instead).
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