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CCAI Foster Youth Interns Invited to Speak: How Can Churches Love, Support and Provide Guidance for Foster Youth

Mason McFalls, a resident and native of Georgia, entered foster care at the age of 7 with his brother. He recalls the church as being one of the only stable places in his world. His pastor was one of his most effectual mentors, helping his grades skyrocket. When he matriculated into University of Georgia and graduated with honors, he was proud to note that for the first time in his life he wasn’t labeled the foster kid and recalls, “I had seven job offers right out of college and none were handouts from being a foster kid. That felt great.” He now works for Morgan Stanley, has a steady girlfriend, and hopes to get married in the next year.

Last week, the Christian Alliance for Orphans hosted a webinar and invited three former Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) Foster Youth Interns (FYI) to share their experiences in foster care and encourage churches in ways they can help foster youth.  The FYI Program is a highly esteemed Congressional internship for young adults who spent time in the foster care system.  Through the program, federal policymakers see firsthand the experiences of foster youth, and as a result use their power to make legislative change. In addition to Mason (2008 FYI Intern) the other panelists were Brittany Jean (2008 FYI Intern) and Richard Terrell (2011 FYI Intern) who each spoke briefly about their time in foster care and shared that mentors, foster families, and church life were inspirations to succeed.

Brittany Jean, also a native of Georgia, entered the system at 14, and says, “At that time I had no real direction…when I came into foster care. My foster parents were ministers and when I came they showed me love and the church became my second family…I came out of my shell and became the person I was supposed to become.” Married in 2009, Brittany remarked that more people from her church family, who mentored and clothed her, came to her wedding than from her biological family. She attended Georgia State University, majored in political science and interned for Congressman John Lewis.

Without hesitation, Brittany states the best way to change the foster system is within the church: “With the same love my foster parents gave me, I try to give to other people. People ask ‘what can I do, what can I do?’ I think there are a lot of misconceptions. I think there’s a personal [touch] of being a foster parent or a mentor, but you can also support financially, or raising community awareness, letting your church know, or giving them the option, you know, that these kids are here and they’re open and available for adoption, let the love of God lead you.”

Richard Terrell, resident and native of Minnesota, grew up in kinship care, a type of foster care in which a child is raised by a relative not in the nuclear family, and was raised by his grandmother. Richard entered foster care at a young age because of his mother’s drug addiction, and his father, although present, was not interested in having a son. He cites his pastor as his stand-in father, although he also views him as an older brother, a friend, a role model and a mentor.

Richard shared that his pastor encouraged him to apply for college, even when his grades weren’t great, he did not think he was smart enough, and his mother told him it did not matter. When he was accepted his freshman year to University of North Dakota (and later transferred to the North Central University in Minnesota) his pastor drove him to college and stayed the first week to set him up in the local area with a church and help him move in –and as Richard remembers “as if I were his own son.” Recently graduated, Richard now mentors other foster youth through his church, knowing the impact one mentor can have on the life of a foster kid.

How can communities of faith help?

When CCAI’s executive director, Kathleen Strottman opened up the Webinar discussion for questions, the panelists discussed some of the hardest challenges they faced and how the community can band together to help foster youth. Mason said that although he worked hard in school, moving school systems kept him consistently behind. Every school was on a different system; some were on semester, some on trimesters, block schedules, transitional schedules, floaters, and there were always different textbooks. If he was lucky enough to be in the same book, then the classes were on a different page. He felt like he was constantly playing catch up, always trying to teach himself. “That’s where the church stepped in,” he remembered. People offered to tutor him and donate books. By rallying together, churches could keep track of the schools in each district that have foster youth in need.

Today, as a foster youth advocate in his church, Mason works closely with a local youth center and hopes to change the pervasive stereotypes that foster kids are bad kids so that more church members open their homes up to foster youth. He cites the church as the reason he was extricated from his biological parents, who were addicted drug users. The close knit community never once wavered in their ties and continued to support him over the years by sending him clothes and care packages no matter how many times he moved schools, homes or districts. Mason concluded:  “sometimes I [was made to feel] like I cried wolf so many times the foster workers wouldn’t listen. That’s where the church steps in…when there’s something really going on, there’s someone really there to listen to you.”

Disappointed with many of her foster family placements, Brittany said, “It’s hard to come home to a house that doesn’t actually care about you. And I don’t think that’s fair to anyone.” But said that the church is a great place to recruit quality foster families.

Richard is a passionate proponent of grants and more scholarships for foster youth, especially those pursuing higher education saying, “I believe all educational systems should have some sort of scholarships set up for foster youth. I had to work 30-40 hour weeks just to pay for my education. And sometimes it wasn’t enough.” In fact, this was the very topic Richard wrote about in the annual Foster Youth Internship Report. To ease this burden, churches can raise funds to directly assist youth in the community or within their congregations go to college or even purchase school supplies and books.

In the end it was Brittany who summed it up all so well: “It doesn’t matter where I came from, it only matters where I’m going. Learning that really changed me…learning that foster care doesn’t end at eighteen.”

To listen to the webinar in its entirety and to view a list of “25 Things to Help Foster Youth” click HERE.

Educational Assistance for Foster Youth

Former CCAI Foster Youth Intern, Jeremy Long, responds to the recent USA Today article addressing the growing number of colleges and universities providing support for America’s foster youth. To read the full article click here: http://usat.ly/AegSmh. 

Our little friend Jiminy Cricket once said “when you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires, will come true.” Take a second and visualize something you once wished upon a star for. Maybe you wished for something as big as finding the cure for cancer or as simple as getting an A in a class. Whatever the wish, it was something you strongly desired to have in life. If your wish came true, great, if not, that’s fine to, but the point is that you had even the slightest hope it could come to be.

Now imagine a world in which wishes and dreams feel out of your reach. A world where the odds always seem stacked against you and you almost never get to experience what it is like to have a dream come true. This is the world in which too many of the half a million youth currently in U.S. foster care live.  Like most of us, they have wished upon a star. However, they don’t have the luxury of wishing to be the Laker’s new star forward. Their dreams are to be placed in a quality foster home where the parents treat them like their own, to have someone to celebrate their life’s accomplishments with, and not having to worry about where they will lay their head or fill their stomachs that night.

There is one dream that many youth, both in and out of foster care, share which is the opportunity to go to college and achieve graduation. A recent study published by Casey Family Programs found that only 3-7% of the 70% who plan to attend college actually graduate with a bachelor’s degree. That would mean out of nearly 500,000 youth, 350,000 have plans to attend college but only 11,000 are actually graduating with a degree. What is happening to the other 339,000 youth who wanted so desperately to obtain a higher education?

I remember my first day of college. I was terrified, scared of what was going to happen after my mom and my best friend left me to fend for myself in a sea full of party hungry teenagers hoping they spend their parents’ money wisely on an extremely expensive education. Yes, I was in foster care, but my story is very unique compared to most foster care alumnae. I was placed in a foster home that gave me the mom to celebrate with when goals were accomplished, someone who would make sure my stomach was full and my head was well rested. I had someone who made sure she did everything in her power to make me a part of that 3-7% of youth who graduated with a degree. I had the dream of graduating college and she made me believe that dream was possible. And because of her support, I went on to college and I graduated. Currently, I sit as the youth engagement coordinator for Mile High United Way’s youth success initiative.

As I said, I was one of the lucky ones. A large percentage of former foster youth are attending college after “aging out” of foster care, meaning they have no family, no system who is responsible for them. At 18, they are alone making decisions that will have lifelong consequences. Many are first generation college students so they also suffer from the fear that this is a dream that is beyond someone like them. Finally, since they are most often on their own financially, these youth have to work their way through college.  Add the stress, the work, the pressures and questions that college brings to the life of any young person and you can see why so many fail to finish.

USA Today’s article “Programs Help Foster Youth Achieve College Success” describes the work that programs like Guardian Scholars are doing to better support youth along their path to graduation. All too often we see youth on the right track to success, but the lack of support both emotionally and financially derails any chance they had of getting ahead and no human being should ever be denied the ability to obtain happiness and self-worth.  In the words of a current scholar from UCLA’s program, Guardian Scholar programs provide youth “a community that I can always rely on.” I think the most important word in that statement is always. Always being able to rely on the community, always being able to say that one has friends and family he can call on in a time of need, stress, or hardship.  There is incredible power in always being able to say one always has that.

And what articles like the one in USA Today show is this. It is ALWAYS possible for each and every youth in care to achieve their dreams. They just need a Jiminy Cricket or Gepetto to guide them towards making them reality.

Giving back has never been so meaningful

Earlier this month CCAI launched a campaign with the goal of raising $25,000 by December 31st.  A generous donor has offered to match every gift brought in this month dollar-for-dollar!  Your support will now go twice as far as we impact the lives of children in need of families.  Will you consider taking advantage of this opportunity for the matching gift?

Want to learn more about how CCAI will use your gift to change the lives of children in need of families?  

Watch our video.

Click here to DONATE and impact the life of a child in need of a family!

CCAI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.  We do not accept government funding, so we rely on the generous support of individuals like you.  Thank you enabling us to work to see our vision of a family for every child become a reality.

The high societal and financial costs of over medicating our nation’s foster youth

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs held a hearing on the high societal and financial costs of over medicating our nation’s foster youth.    CCAI would like to commend Chairman Thomas Carper and Ranking Member Scott Brown for their leadership in addressing such an important issue.  While the findings of the GAO are shocking to say the least, it is sadly not surprising to learn that youth in our Nation’s foster care are being victimized in this way.  We not only can, but we must, do better.  Issues such as the overuse of psychotropic drugs and the lack of quality mental health care are ones that have come up time and time again in the past four years of Foster Youth Intern Reports.  These wise young leaders have identified several factors which contribute to the disturbing trends revealed by yesterday’s hearing.

First, it is important to bear in mind how the federal government currently finances the foster care system.  Under the law today, states on average receive a high level of reimbursement for a child who has special needs and for children who are in congregate care.  The rationale behind such policies is that it stands to reason that the care of such children would in fact be higher than a child without special needs or who could be cared for in an individual family.  Yet, without proper screening methods and controls, it is quite possible for states to improperly label children so that they can receive the highest level of funds available for the care of a child.  This is not to suggest that states are purposely lying about the needs kids have, but there is evidence to suggest that financing and budget decisions are playing a role in the care decisions being made on their behalf.

Secondly, many CCAI Foster Youth Interns (FYIs) report that their experience in receiving mental health services while in foster care was suboptimal.  They are right to point out that the professionals (doctors, therapists, etc.) they are in the care of are often new to the profession and least likely to be trained in state of the art treatments specific to the needs of youth in care.  This is due in part to the fact that they are most often receiving these services through Medicaid.  So in essence, these kids, who are acknowledged by all to have some of the most complex mental health issues to grapple with, are being treated by those least likely to have the training and skills necessary to treat them.

Thirdly, the fact remains that there is only one foster family for every four children who need foster care.  What this means is that children in foster care are being cared for in group homes and by foster families that are often stretched to the brink.  In these settings, the use of mind altering medication can become a way to “keep control” of kids behavior.  Year in and year out, FYIs have called on the federal government to increase its efforts to promote the recruitment and training of foster parents so that each and every child can have a family to give them the love and support they need to help them heal.

And finally, as the stories of the two children profiled by Diane Sawyer yet again prove the best medicine we can give these children is the family that they need and deserve.  As Keonte said yesterday, it was his adoptive parents who made him feel safe and loved enough to sort through the issues he faced because of his past.  It was his adoptive parents who sought out the top of the line treatment that has helped him heal.  And it was his adoptive parents who sat by his side as he stood before the US Congress to demand that this no longer be the case for other children.

Keonte testifying in Congress. Photo credit: ABC News from http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/12/boy-12-tells-congress-of-years-on-stupid-meds/

 

Catch ABC’s 20/20 special tonight continuing the story on this topic.

Happy National Adoption Day!

Today, thousands of children will legally become a part of a family.  They will walk out of courtrooms across the country with an incredible smile on their faces and the security that comes from knowing when they go ‘home’ tonight, it will be for good.  Today, they will finally be able to say they are someone’s son or daughter.

Chris, 8 years old, was adopted during a National Adoption Day ceremony this year and read a letter during the event, “When I first saw you, I thought you were my mommy. You acted like a mommy and you treated me like you were my mommy. And one day, it’s happening. I feel like my heart was pounding. When I moved away, I was sad every time I moved. I am happy now. I love you, because I have you mom.”

Photo credit: The St. Clair Times

Today, on National Adoption Day, thousands of children across the country are finally having their hopes and dreams of a permanent family come true.  Judges, social workers, attorneys, and community members are coming together to be inspired and reminded just how important their work on behalf of children in need of families is.  But, this day is also about the 107,000 children in foster care still waiting to be adopted.

At CCAI, we work to raise awareness about children waiting for families through legislative efforts.  However, no policy that Congress ever passes will make an impact in a child’s life without those of you in the community, stepping forward and saying ‘yes!’ to making a difference in the life of a child.

When you’re enjoying your Thanksgiving meal with friends and family this week, look around the table and ask yourself ‘Do I have room for one more seat that a child in foster care can fill next year?’