Tag: foster care

5 Super-Moms Making a Difference

Posted on by robbie

On any given day, a mother exhibits at least one superpower — whether it’s finding the missing Lego piece in the abyss of a playroom or staying up all night to keep tabs on a feverish toddler. One thing is certain: Motherhood is a responsibility like no other. We’ve found five exceptional mothers who not only are successfully raising their own kids, but also helping hundreds of other children and families in their own communities and beyond. Here are the women giving the definition of motherhood a much broader meaning.

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Kimberly Gomez founded STAY RVA to help Richmond public schools thrive.

KIMBERLY GOMEZ: THE MOM WHO EMPOWERS URBAN SCHOOLS

Richmond, Virginia, has a knack for offering amazing culture — respectable art museums, innovative cuisine, historic neighborhoods — in the most accessible way, making this riverside city incredibly kid-friendly. The problem? Once kids are ready for elementary school, many families either cough up the tuition for private school or relocate to the suburbs. This is especially true for white children, with only 27 percent enrolling in the city’s public schools.
Kimberly Gomez, mom to three kids under age 6, didn’t want to fall in line with the status quo, and so last year she founded STAY RVA, a parent-led movement to support and enhance the public education system in an effort to encourage other families to stay in Richmond.
“It just didn’t seem right to have a school around the corner and not have your kids go there,” Gomez says. “It’s part of our community.”
Having spent more than a decade teaching in urban schools in Washington, D.C., and Houston, Gomez understood that tapping into the pulse of a neighborhood can create positive changes. “I started thinking about the resources that lie within people — those skill sets can be brought in, and there can be a bridge connecting the community with the school to help it thrive.”
In its first year, some of STAY (Supporting Together Area Youth) RVA’s projects included redecorating school bathrooms and staff lounges, preparing a lunch spread for custodians and starting a cross-school club, called Be the Change, to empower kids with activities like yoga and art lessons.
The changes taking place are not just within the schools; Gomez is noticing how parent volunteers are shifting their views about staying put in Richmond. Since STAY RVA’s launch party, 10 additional gatherings have taken place across different neighborhoods. Each was hosted by a local family to share ideas of what parents can do not just for their child, but for all students attending public schools in Richmond.
“I really feel the spirit in the outpouring of local business support,” says Gomez. “Everyone has so many gifts and talents and resources, and this is a movement where all of those can be used for a greater purpose.”

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“Every time a donor gives us a dollar, they are hiring us to solve a problem,” says the Miracle Foundation’s Dianne Holbrook (center).

DIANNE HOLBROOK: THE MOM WHO WANTS TO HELP 8 MILLION KIDS

Dianne Holbrook’s job is to help put the Miracle Foundation, where she’s the executive vice president, out of business by 2040 — that is, to join forces with other international organizations and find permanent homes for the estimated 8 million children around the world who live in orphanages.
Holbrook sponsored her first orphaned child in India 18 years ago, around the same time that her friend and former colleague, Caroline Boudreaux, started the Miracle Foundation on Mother’s Day in 2000. Two years later, Holbrook took her then 15-year-old son, Christopher, to meet the child. “It changed him completely,” she recalls. “He went to India as a boy and came back as a young man.” (Christopher has been sponsoring a child of his own ever since.)
It was a move that would eventually put Holbrook on a dramatically different path, from a high-profile career in network television sales to nonprofit executive.
Seeing that, even in the depths of extreme poverty, the children were beyond grateful for even the most basic displays of affection fueled Holbrook’s admiration for the foundation’s efforts. So when, last year, she received a call from Boudreaux to join the team, she jumped at the chance.
Currently, the Miracle Foundation sponsors over 7,000 children globally; has sent close to 200 kids to college; and has reunited about 500 children with their families (about half the orphans Miracle Foundation works with have a living parent who had been unable to provide for them).
Given that in the U.S., group homes and foster care have replaced traditional orphanages, the organization plans to roll out a social-networking app early next year targeted to foster families in Texas, with plans to expand to other states in the future. The app will help foster parents make sense of an incredibly complex system by providing resources, like hiring a vetted babysitter or scheduling meetings with social workers, at their fingertips.
“It’s a privilege that I was invited to be a part of this organization,” adds Holbrook. “I get to be a mom all over again.”

Serese Marotta joined Families Fighting Flu after losing her 5-year-old son, Joseph, to the virus in 2009.

SERESE MAROTTA: THE MOM WHO FIGHTS THE FLU

Influenza may not be new, but the brutality of this past flu season has shown that it is a vicious adversary. Families Fighting Flu, a national volunteer-based advocacy nonprofit dedicated to protecting children and communities, wants to show the public what the flu really is: a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“It’s not just a bad cold,” says Serese Marotta, chief operating officer for Families Fighting Flu in Arlington, Virginia, who lost her otherwise healthy 5-year-old son, Joseph, to the virus in 2009. “It can be a serious, highly contagious disease.”
Marotta was an environmental scientist who made sure both Joseph and his then 7-year-old sister got their flu vaccines — except at the time, the nasal spray did not protect against the strain of H1N1 her son contracted. Joseph was one of nearly 350 children in the U.S. who succumbed to the pandemic during the 2009–’10 flu season; to date, there have been more than 1,600 influenza-associated pediatric deaths since the CDC started tracking that data in 2004. “I had no idea how many healthy children lose their lives to flu every year,” says Marotta.
Six months later, she began speaking on behalf of Families Fighting Flu to local health departments, schools and coalitions. “This is a place for families just like mine,” she says of the organization. “We reach out with support because we have walked this path.” Marotta’s active involvement led her to her current role, in which she both serves as a pillar for families coping with a heartbreaking situation and raises awareness of flu as a public health concern.
By sharing her own tragic story Marotta knows her work is instrumental. “I have changed people’s mind about the flu,” she says. “I’ve had people come up to me after [a talk] and say, ‘I know I should be vaccinating, but I never realized how important it is until today.’ Knowing that I am making a difference, and potentially saving other people from being seriously affected by the flu, makes my work worthwhile.”

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Sarah Yore-Van Oosterhout opened Lighthouse Immigrant Advocates to help undocumented immigrants who couldn’t afford legal counsel.

SARAH YORE-VAN OOSTERHOUT: THE MOM WHO GIVES OTHERS A VOICE
Imagine if an 8-year-old girl (falsely) accused your 12-year-old son of sexual assault, and then he was harassed by a local police officer and hauled off to jail. Now imagine how much worse it would be if you didn’t know what to do because you believe your immigration status prohibited you from advocating on behalf of your child.
“Undocumented immigrants have come to associate law enforcement with deportation, and the fear of being separated from their family is often far worse [than not reporting a crime],” says attorney Sarah Yore-Van Oosterhout, founder of Lighthouse Immigrant Advocates in Holland, Michigan.
Given that Michigan has about 150,000 undocumented residents, Lighthouse was a much-needed resource in the state. Yore-Van Oosterhout recognized that the people who would most benefit from legal counsel were the ones who could least afford it, and so in 2015 she opened Lighthouse to provide low-cost legal services, education and advocacy. To date, the nonprofit has worked with more than 650 families, helping them to understand their constitutional rights and preparing paperwork, like the guardianship of minors in the case of deportation. Lighthouse also hosts workshops at area schools, churches and businesses on immigration law and policy, and advocates on the local, state and federal levels.
As a mother to two young daughters, Yore-Van Oosterhout knows first-hand the importance of having a strong support network. “My parents come once a week to take care of my girls,” she says. “I couldn’t do the work that I do without their support.” It’s an opportunity she wants everyone to have, but current immigration laws often keep families apart. “We’re forcing them to be separated for decades and to try to survive and thrive without the support of family. It’s cruel.”
In a world that can be unwelcoming to immigrants, everyone who comes through Lighthouse’s doors are treated with the utmost dignity and respect, says Yore-Van Oosterhout. “It is so important for us that they are valued and welcomed. I hope my girls, who are at the office with me, are seeing that.”
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As CEO of New Moms, Laura Zumdahl helps provide housing and career counseling to young mothers.

LAURA ZUMDAHL: THE MOM WHO BELIEVES IN SECOND CHANCES
Motherhood is easy, said no one ever — least of all, young mothers disadvantaged by poverty, homelessness and poor social support.
“It’s hard to parent, let alone think about how to go back to school if you don’t know where you’re going to spend the night,” says Laura Zumdahl, president and CEO of New Moms in Chicago. For the past 35 years, the nonprofit has provided stable housing, job training and parental mentoring to nearly 4,000 pregnant women and mothers under the age of 25. Since Zumdahl came on the scene five years ago, the organization has doubled in size, emphasizing the importance of community support in breaking the cycle of poverty.  
“We found that one of the keys to success, especially for a family in trauma, is to blend all of the supports in one place,” says Zumdahl. “That’s the secret sauce.”
In addition to New Moms’ Transformation Center, which includes 40 apartments, Zumdahl has overseen the construction of a new building that will offer housing for an additional 18 mother-led households. She was also key in expanding the 16-week job-training program at the nonprofit’s social-enterprise candle company, Bright Endeavors.
Zumdahl’s goal at work, and at home with her three teenage stepkids, is to show that the power of mother’s love is immense and that by carving out space for moms to build up their skills, they can overcome challenges and create stronger families.
“There are a lot of people who go to bed and wonder, ‘Did what I do today matter?’” says Zumdahl. “I never think that. I know that it does matter. It’s not just about me — if New Moms wasn’t there, we’d lose generations, and that’s not OK.”

In College, Former Foster Kids Pay It Forward

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Bria Davis didn’t have the easiest time growing up. Her mother suffered from schizophrenia and her father wasn’t around. As a result, she was placed into the foster-care system, which meant changing schools every year.
“Coming out of high school, I never was in a stable place,” Davis says.
Davis’ freshman year at Miami Dade College in Florida was challenging, and she eventually sought help. Now a well-acclimated sophomore, Davis decided she was in a unique position to give back. So she joined the Changemaker Corps, a peer-to-peer mentoring program by and for students who are aging out of foster care. The service year program launched at Miami Dade in 2015 with support from Service Year Alliance and the nonprofit Educate Tomorrow.
The idea behind Changemaker Corps is to encourage former foster-care students who have gotten help navigating college life to pass on that wisdom to struggling students from similar backgrounds. After all, no one is more qualified to understand the difficulties facing a student emerging from the foster system than a young person who has already lived through them.
“The service year model is a way for college students to serve, actually mentoring and helping others succeed,” says Brett McNaught, CEO of Educate Tomorrow.
The commitment to helping this student population succeed extends to Miami Dade College’s upper leadership.
“More and more universities are understanding the importance of giving their students the opportunity to get involved in this work,” says Eduardo Padron, president of Miami Dade College. “A service year should be part of every institution, where students have opportunities to help their school, their communities, and our nation.”

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NationSwell asks you to join our partnership with Service Year Alliance. Watch the video above and ask Congress to support federal funding for national service. Together, we can lead a national movement to give young Americans the opportunity to help bridge the divides in our country.

The High-Tech Way Foster Youth Are Safeguarding Their Records (And Their Memories, Too)

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Florida’s child welfare system shuttled Jay Schad to a new home every of couple months — roughly 25 placements in all. (He lost the exact count.) The most disruptive move sent him to a group home in Tallahassee, two hours east of Panama City, his hometown, and plopped him into a new high school. Already a month behind his classmates, the freshman attempted to make friends by trying out for the football team. But with many of his records back in Panama City, including his latest physical exam, the coaches couldn’t let him take the field. Eventually, Schad got the go-ahead from a local doctor and started playing. But the setback made him feel, as he says, “let down by the system.” Hadn’t the 14-year-old been through enough with his mother’s meth addiction, his father’s violence and dozens of destabilizing moves to have to worry about his personal papers?
Record-keeping, a seemingly bureaucratic task, poses a huge challenge for the nation’s 428,000 foster youth. Already struggling to keep up with their peers, these adolescents might not realize the need to preserve their important documents until it’s too late. Even if a diligent social worker does compile a binder, it might be lost in a hectic move, and in some states, there are extra hurdles for a teen who’s aged out of the system. This means most applications — whether for financial aid, a new job or housing — can be stymied simply because documents are missing.
Cloud-based technology, however, might have an answer for these teens. My JumpVault, a virtual storage locker, allows a foster kid to upload and protect their essential files, like a birth certificate, medical history and school transcripts. Developed by Five Points Technology Group (FPTG), a business headquartered in the Tampa suburb of Bradenton, Fla., and funded by the state, My JumpVault currently has about 7,000 users. The digital records it holds, maintained securely behind several layers of authentication, won’t disappear like hard copies might.
Former foster youth played a large role in building My JumpVault. In 2009, two 19-year-old former foster kids led a statewide campaign to streamline access to Florida’s child welfare records. (Previously, emancipated youth needed a judge’s order to see their case file.) After successfully pushing a bill through the legislature, they started to question what access truly meant. Even though they’d won the legal right to look at their papers, did adolescents truly have access if the process of obtaining a copy was so difficult? That’s when the young men — Thomas Fair, now a member of the design team, and Mike Williams, an assistant product manager — signed on with FPTG to advise the team behind My JumpVault and help code the nascent app.
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Accessible by desktop or smartphone, an email address is all a teen needs to sign up for the service. Once they’ve locked the account with a password, they might log in to scan an important document they’ve just received or to locate an image, like Schad did eight months ago when applying for a waiter job at a restaurant. He’d misplaced his social security card, and his new manager told him he couldn’t clock in until he found it. Schad pulled up his electronic copy, and luckily, the boss accepted it.
To further ease the process, a couple of agencies recently partnered with FPTG to store files directly on My JumpVault’s servers. For example, Sunshine Health, the state’s Medicaid provider, lists a kid’s prior hospital visits and prescription medications. Soon, My JumpVault could integrate with the court system to track hearing dates and with local schools to keep report cards. “Tactically, it frees caseworkers up from having to provide documents over and over again in hard copy, and it puts youth in a better position for independence,” notes Chris Pantaleon, the company’s business development director.
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In addition to vital records, one of My JumpVault’s unique features provides storage space for memories. Because foster children might have only one or two pictures of their birth parents, storing photos is the best way to preserve a sense of self. Without these keepsakes, “You don’t understand who you are,” says Williams, who knows the feeling firsthand. “It’s like having no identity.” That’s why they encourage users to add pictures, certificates and awards. Even if a foster kid is relocated to another home, one whose walls might be covered with family portraits, he can take comfort in his own background and family roots, too.
Another powerful feature, which Fair pushed to include within the app, is a series of guides to help foster youth navigate difficult situations. These worksheets might list the names of all service providers in a metro area, provide instructions on applying for food stamps or explain the types of questions employers ask in an interview.
Schad knows there are plenty of issues still plaguing the foster care system. But at least with My JumpVault’s storage in the cloud, those kids don’t have to worry about whether paperwork might hold them back.

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This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future-forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.
 

10 Innovative Ideas That Propelled America Forward in 2016

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The most contentious presidential election in modern history offered Americans abundant reasons to shut off the news. But if they looked past the front page’s daily jaw-droppers, our countrymen would see that there’s plenty of inspiring work being done. At NationSwell, we strive to find the nonprofit directors, the social entrepreneurs and the government officials testing new ways to solve America’s most intractable problems. In our reporting this year, we’ve found there’s no shortage of good being done. Here’s a look at our favorite solutions from 2016.

This Woman Has Collected 40,000 Feminine Products to Boost the Self-Esteem of Homeless Women
Already struggling to afford basic necessities, homeless women often forgo bras and menstrual hygiene products. Dana Marlowe, a mother of two in the Washington, D.C., area, restored these ladies’ dignity by distributing over 40,000 feminine products to the homeless before NationSwell met her in February. Since then, her organization Support the Girls has given out 212,000 more.
Why Sleeping in a Former Slave’s Home Will Make You Rethink Race Relations in America
Joseph McGill, a Civil War re-enactor and history consultant for Charleston’s Magnolia Plantation in South Carolina, believes we must not forget the history of slavery and its lasting impact to date. To remind us, he’s slept overnight in 80 dilapidated cabins — sometimes bringing along groups of people interested in the experience — that once held the enslaved.

This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline
Abandoned by an abusive dad and a mentally ill mom, Pamela Bolnick was placed into foster care at 6 years old. For a time, the system worked — that is, until she “aged out” of it. Bolnick sought help from First Place for Youth, an East Bay nonprofit that provides security deposits for emancipated children to transition into stable housing.

Would Your Opinions of Criminals Change if One Cooked and Served You Dinner?
Café Momentum, one of Dallas’s most popular restaurants, is staffed by formerly incarcerated young men without prior culinary experience. Owner Chad Houser says the kitchen jobs have almost entirely eliminated recidivism among his restaurant’s ranks.

This Proven Method Is How You Prevent Sexual Assault on College Campuses
Nearly three decades before Rolling Stone published its incendiary (and factually inaccurate) description of sexual assault at the University of Virginia, a gang rape occurred at the University of New Hampshire in 1987. Choosing the right ways to respond to the crisis, the public college has since become the undisputed leader in ending sex crimes on campus.

This Sustainable ‘Farm of the Future’ Is Changing How Food Is Grown
Once a commercial fisherman, Bren Smith now employs a more sustainable way to draw food from the ocean. Underwater, near Thimble Island, Conn., he’s grown a vertical farm, layered with kelp, mussels, scallops and oysters.

This Former Inmate Fights for Others’ Freedom from Life Sentences
Jason Hernandez was never supposed to leave prison. At age 21, a federal judge sentenced him to life for selling crack cocaine in McKinney, Texas — Hernandez’s first criminal offense. After President Obama granted him clemency in 2013, he’s advocated on behalf of those still behind bars for first-time, nonviolent drug offenses.

Eliminating Food Waste, One Sandwich (and App) at a Time
In 2012, Raj Karmani, a Pakistani immigrant studying computer science at the University of Illinois, built an app to redistribute leftover food to local nonprofits. So far, the nonprofit Zero Percent has delivered 1 million meals from restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets to Chicago’s needy. In recognition of his work, Karmani was awarded a $10,000 grant as part of NationSwell’s and Comcast NBCUniversal’s AllStars program.

Baltimore Explores a Bold Solution to Fight Heroin Addiction
Last year, someone in Baltimore died from an overdose every day: 393 in total, more than the number killed by guns. Dr. Leana Wen, the city’s tireless public health commissioner, issued a blanket prescription for naloxone, which can reverse overdoses, to every citizen — the first step in her ambitious plan to wean 20,000 residents off heroin.

How a Fake Ad Campaign Led to the Real-Life Launch of a Massive Infrastructure Project
Up until 1974, a streetcar made daily trips from El Paso, Texas, across the Mexican border to Ciudad Juárez. Recently, a public art project depicting fake ads for the trolley inspired locals to call for the line’s comeback, and the artist behind the poster campaign now sits on the city council.

Continue reading “10 Innovative Ideas That Propelled America Forward in 2016”

This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline

Posted on by robbie

Moments of stability were rare during Pamela Bolnick’s childhood. She repeatedly witnessed her father beat her mother, a Venezuelan immigrant diagnosed with schizophrenia. Bolnick’s mom eventually left her abusive spouse, fleeing to the Bay Area with her two kids. When she stopped taking her medication, the county child welfare department stepped in and placed six-year-old Bolnick and her younger brother in foster care. Her mother resumed treatment for her mental illness, and for two short years, retained custody of her children. After another relapse, Bolnick and her sibling were permanently removed from their home.

Bolnick was placed with her godparents in Richmond, Calif., an East Bay city then known for its notoriously high murder rates. Toughened by her childhood, she excelled at El Cerrito High School, impressing teachers in her Advanced Placement classes and filling her schedule with softball games and dance rehearsals. By senior year, however, she felt her foster family was pressuring her to move on. “All this time, I looked at them as being my own family. I did everything that you’d expect of a child, going to school, not getting into trouble, applying to college,” Bolnick says. “I came to see it as a business transaction: them being paid [by the government] for taking care of me, and me getting the benefit of being a child in their custody.” Disgusted, she left and spent the summer living at friend’s house. Shortly afterwards, she enrolled at Holy Names University in nearby Oakland Hills.

Alone for the first time, juggling 19 credits of core classes and a full-time job overwhelmed Bolnick. Short on time and seared by her past relationships, she distanced herself from others. “I almost grew to believe that I could be this Superwoman figure,” she recalls. “It burned me out completely. I didn’t have time to enjoy my first year of college, a time that’s supposed to be so liberating. I had finally reached the only thing my mother wanted me to do, and it made me so sad knowing I wasn’t happy.” Bolnick dropped out. Her foster parents refused to take her back, and without a permanent place to go, she couch-surfed at friends’ dorms.

The foster care system is one of America’s most troublesome institutions: chronically underfunded and largely uninformed and unsuccessful at raising children much better than the parents from whom they were removed. Its primary recipients — children under the age of 18 — have no political leverage, so policy decisions are often driven by scandals. In New York City, for example, after a mother killed her daughter in 1995, thousands of kids were forcefully removed from their homes, but when troubles beset the administration in 2005, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. While the system as a whole has experienced some reforms (motivated by Victorian sensationalism, as Jill Lepore documents in The New Yorker), a subset of its population gets little attention: those who “age out” of the system.

Each year in California, several thousand youth exit foster care immediately upon turning 21 years old. (Previously emancipated at 18, youth care was extended by a 2012 state law.) Longitudinal studies by researchers from University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall Center for Children found that 24 percent of youth were homeless after exiting the system and nearly half had been incarcerated within two years. Perhaps most shockingly, 77 percent of the young women reported a pregnancy, risking another generation reentering the system.

While other children can mature gradually, relying on their parents for emotional advice or a bit of extra cash, these youth are entirely on their own. Amy Lemley, a former case manager at a group home for foster youth in Boston, remembers teenagers celebrating their 18th birthdays by stuffing their few belongings into a backpack and saying goodbye. “We kind of looked the other way and pretended that it was going to work out, but we knew that it wasn’t,” she says. Recognizing that these kids needed help transitioning into adulthood, Lemley enrolled in a public policy graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley, and with her classmate and “kindred spirit” Deanne Pearn, the women founded an organization in 1999 to provide that support.

Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., First Place for Youth provides emancipated youth in five Bay Area counties and Los Angeles with their very first apartment, covering both the security deposit and the monthly rental fees. Last year, 464 youth moved into these residences. Most stay in the program for around 18 months; some kids drop in for 30 days, while others stay for three years, current First Place for Youth CEO Sam Cobbs says. Before exiting, the organization assists the young adults meet four main goals: find stable employment, locate housing that matches their income, complete two semesters of community college or a certificate program and, finally, achieve “healthy living,” which means avoiding arrests, unintended pregnancies and substance abuse.

First Place for Youth CEO Sam Cobb.

The program’s scope wasn’t always so large. The way Lemley originally envisioned it, housing would be enough. But after realizing that some First Place participants couldn’t read, she quickly pivoted, including educational and career services as well. Targeting a group that’s significantly behind their peers, First Place’s goals are modest. “I can tell you, we don’t have anybody at Goldman Sachs,” Claudia Miller, the group’s spokeswoman says. Instead, it aims for participants to land jobs that provide a livable wage, like a paralegal, nurse or solar panel installer. A full 86 percent obtain employment, and 91 percent attend college. (The program did not provide numbers on how many complete their education.)

“This program is not a handout; it is a hand up,” Cobbs says. “What we’re doing is trying to help you understand and make choices so that you can provide for yourself. You have to meet us, if not halfway, at least 30 percent, and invest in your own future. Which I think is one of the reasons it’s such a big success: it depends on them.”

Bolnick heard about First Place for Youth through a college counselor, who advised her that the program could provide her with the financial and emotional support she needed. Feeling like she was “working to live each day,” Bolnick initially signed up for just classes. But after dropping out of Holy Names University, experiencing a brief period of homelessness and crashing with friends for a bit, she moved into housing provided by First Place.

The transition wasn’t always easy. Like in her dorm room, she shared the space (a two-bedroom apartment in San Leandro, Calif.) with another teenager, this time a foster youth who’d faced her own hardships. At first, the pair bonded, but soon Bolnick felt that her roommate began to shirk responsibilities, hanging around at home and smoking pot and cigarettes, even after she found out she was pregnant. “It literally put a flash of light in front of me, knowing there are kids out there who don’t even want to make a difference in their life,” she says. The environment became so tense that Bolnick couldn’t take it anymore and had to move to another apartment. There, Bolnick found another First Place participant who became like “a little sister to me.”

It’s a result that can’t be quantified, but Bolnick says First Place provided a community that understood her. After losing both parents (her father left the picture when the family moved to California, and her mother committed suicide) and then feeling betrayed by her foster family, Bolnick learned to distance herself from those closest to her. Before getting to First Place, she didn’t express any emotions related to her upbringing. She couldn’t tell her little brother how scared she was for fear of traumatizing him, and she kept her biological parents a secret through high school so that her friends wouldn’t pity her. Getting to know other emancipated youth at First Place helped her, Bolnick says, not because they necessarily knew the specifics of her story, but because each of them had a similar experience to share. Up until her early 20s, she says she never knew what it was like to cry. When asked what the rush of emotions feels like now, Bolnick says simply, “I appreciate it.”

Foster youth “have completely normal behavior,” Cobbs says, “and what I mean by that is, if you are moved nine times, then you probably wouldn’t establish relationships really quickly. It is normal behavior to protect yourself from building intimate relationships, because every time you get attached, you get hurt. It’s abnormal not to do that.”

Pamela Bolnick in her current apartment.

Today, Bolnick pays for her own apartment near Oakland, where she bikes and reads by Lake Merritt. She’s working full-time as an assistant manager for a high-end fashion company, and she’s saved enough money to take a two-week trip to Venezuela to meet her mother’s family. Within the next year, she plans to complete her last semester of community college and apply to U.C. Berkeley, where she’s planning to major in biophysics (the next step towards her goal of practicing pediatric neurosurgery) and minor in sociology (a way to understand where she’s been and what she’s faced). She spoke to NationSwell, she confessed, partially because she wanted to hear more about the neighborhood around New York University in downtown Manhattan where she plans to go to medical school. But she also mentioned she wanted to talk because she feels she has an important story to share — one that has a brighter ending than her mother’s.

Why was Bolnick able to beat the odds? Some of the latest scientific research on trauma might call it grit or resilience — an inborn ability to overcome. In her words, “I think it has to do with seeing the light behind all the blockages that get in the way. It takes a lot mentally,” she explains. “If I keep telling myself I am a foster kid, I am a Latina woman, I live in Richmond and all of my friends are doing the same things that people expect me to do, I should just as easily do that. But I never once had that thought at all. I just wanted to make the best of what I had.” Bolnick also credits First Place for Youth for providing her with the network she needed to halt a situation that was spiraling out of control. She says the nonprofit gave her “stability, stability, stability.”

With results like that, Cobbs wants to see the model expand across the country, whether it’s run by his organization or a partner. He acknowledges specific benefits — support for transitional housing in Sacramento and a top-notch community college system statewide — that make the model work in California, but he also points to challenges, including the Golden State’s high cost of living and the fact that it is the largest foster care system in the country (largely because it hasn’t been as aggressive in returning kids to their homes, even if conditions improve, and because a flood of orphaned immigrant children keep adding to the total, he says). If replicated in just 10 more cities nationwide, Cobbs says that about 70 percent of America’s foster youth could have another option available to them.

Before Lemley founded First Place for Youth, the safety net for America’s foster youth abruptly disappeared at age 18, abandoning these vulnerable children at the most critical moment. First Place for Youth lengthens and stabilizes that transition to adulthood. Homelessness and jail-time are no longer mandatory chapters in stories about foster care. With the organization’s work, emancipated youth finally have a home to call their own.

Homepage photo courtesy of First Place for Youth

MORE: Removing Children from Abusive Situations at Home Isn’t Always the Answer. This Is

Removing Children from Abusive Situations at Home Isn’t Always the Answer. This Is

Posted on by robbie

Elisa Izquierdo was conceived in a Brooklyn, N.Y., homeless shelter and born with cocaine in her bloodstream in late 1980s. Her mother, Awilda Lopez, went on week-long drug binges and cashed welfare checks to feed her crack addiction. Two of Lopez’s other children lived with relatives, removed from the home by the court system.
Social workers placed Izquierdo in the custody of her father, where she remained until his death in 1994. After returning to live with her mother, school officials noticed that Izquierdo was withdrawn, walked as if recovering from an injury and had a large bruise marking her head, prompting them to call child welfare. Lopez responded by pulling her daughter out of the school. “When I asked her if she was hitting Elisa,” Izquierdo’s aunt recalls of a conversation with her sister, “she told me no, that she just punished her.”
In November 1995, three days before Thanksgiving, Lopez beat her daughter to death by throwing her against their housing project’s concrete wall, the impact causing the six-year-old’s brain to hemorrhage. After seeing the body, one police lieutenant told reporters that it was the worst case of child abuse he had seen in his 22 years on the force. Authorities had been notified of Izquierdo’s case at least eight times, but failed to respond despite plangent cries for help ringing out repeatedly.
The shocking murder, for which then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the entire city was “accountable,” led to the creation of the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), a governmental body with a $2.9 billion budget charged to protect the well-being of New York City’s children. During its overzealous beginnings, the agency took things too far. In 1993, more than 45,000 kids resided in foster care. This year, in an equally stunning turn, those in the system numbered just 10,400, less than a quarter of its prior size. But with a spate of deaths in 2014, is the reduction in foster care population endangering children?

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At the time of Izquierdo’s murder, budget cuts placed heavy caseloads — allegedly as high as 25 families per employee in Queens — on child protection workers, who had little access to data collected by other city agencies. The entire child welfare system was based on “paper case files and folders,” some stacked five feet high along the office walls, says Andrew White, ACS’s deputy commissioner for policy, planning and measurement. A month after Izquierdo’s death, Mayor Giuliani contemplated an additional $18 million cut, largely from the team of field investigators. By the time the budget was drafted, however, he decided to take more decisive action by creating ACS to manage child welfare cases.
By setting up ACS to operate outside the larger social service bureaucracy and appointing a former federal prosecutor to head the agency, Giuliani set a presumption of action. “The philosophy of child welfare has been too rigidly focused on holding families together, sometimes at the cost of protecting babies and children,” Giuliani said in his 1996 address to the city council, according to The New York Times. “When a child is abused, when child safety is in question, then government must act.” Almost overnight, ineffective investigations were replaced by punitive interventions.
But soon, mismanagement crept back in: One contractor faked records, while another misspent thousands of dollars at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration vetted long-standing partnerships with group homes and residential rehab facilities, ending those that weren’t up to snuff. ACS’s professional staff began integrating a more rigorous understanding of mental health, domestic violence and substance abuse into their work, a move that would culminate in the next administration’s integration of research on trauma.

“Foster care is expensive, not only in financial terms but in human psychological development.”

—Andrew White

In the last year and a half under Bill de Blasio’s mayorship, ACS pioneered new tactics to keep families united, shifting its emphasis to 11 evidence-based preventative services, which officials believe is the largest and most diverse continuum of child-centered programs anywhere in the world. Serving 19,962 families last year, the agency now asks, why take a child away from a bad parent if the city could help that parent do a better job of parenting in the first place?
“Since the late Nineties, there’s been a recognition that foster care is not a panacea. Foster care is very valuable in certain situations and very necessary in certain situations,” explains White, before adding that it’s also a traumatic experience for children that often doesn’t lead to positive results.
A growing body of work by sociologists and neuroscientists points to the negative effects of distressing, adverse experiences in childhood as the root for many developmental problems. Parents who were physically abused or neglected as kids are more likely to treat the next generation in a similar fashion, according to Cathy Spatz Widom, psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. That logic drove Giuliani to aggressively remove kids from dangerous upbringings, but advocates wondered if being separated from parents traumatized foster children?
By examining foster care records, Spatz Widom found little difference in arrest rates during adulthood between kids abused or neglected at home and those placed in foster care or with a guardian — proving that the instability of being removed from the home does not cause a child future harm. That being said, Spatz Widom did discover that children who were moved three times or more developed significant behavior problems — “chronic fighting, fire setting, destructiveness, uncontrollable anger, sadistic tendencies, and extreme defiance of authority” — and, in adulthood, had arrest rates that were nearly twice as high. Stability, she concluded, was hugely important for a child’s development.
“Foster care is expensive, not only in financial terms but in human psychological development. The breakup of a family causes all kinds of trauma, and sometimes that’s necessary. But a lot of times — and we know from looking at cases now — many of the parents we work with today went into foster care during the crack years,” White says. “It’s devastating to see they don’t have stability in their lives, and they don’t have the parenting skills. You can see the history in what’s happening now. We don’t want to repeat that. We want to ensure families get what they need now.”

“When a child is abused, when child safety is in question, then government must act.”

—Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani

During an intervention today, ACS first tries to repair a family with intensive therapy and developmental workshops. If that fails, it looks to non-custodial parents or other family members to act as caretakers, keeping the family as intact as possible. “This is not a cookie-cutter approach. It’s individualized service to address their unique concerns,” White says.
Many of ACS’s 11 models were adapted from other realms of social work, particularly criminal justice, and cover every imaginable scenario. Brief Strategic Family Therapy, for example, is targeted at reasserting parental leadership when minors develop drug addictions and other behavior problems. Child-Parent Psychotherapy, meanwhile, helps mothers strengthen attachments with children under five who experienced a traumatic event, ensuring the youngster feels a sense of safety. There’s also various levels of monitoring. Family Treatment and Rehabilitation, which is on the high-risk end, helps participants achieve a baseline of sobriety (for instance) with three visits a week, while a low- to moderate-risk family struggling with poverty may partake in Family Connections, where plans are reevaluated every 90 days. A team of six improves program development, and other staff continuously monitor contractors to ensure correct procedures are followed.
Many are still critical of ACS, particularly when it comes to the length of time children stay in foster care — a median of 53 months in 2014 — waiting to be adopted. The city’s public advocate, Letitia James, filed a class action lawsuit in July on behalf of 10 foster children, which pointed out that New York City’s wait times are twice as long as the rest of the country and that children suffer higher rates of maltreatment while in foster care. In a press release, James claims that, “ACS has delegated foster care to 29 contract agencies, but has consistently failed to monitor these contract agencies — leaving thousands of children languishing in the system with no permanent home.” ACS attributes much of the adoption delay to bureaucratic systems outside their control and says their new programs are making headway. A settlement with Gov. Andrew Cuomo was reached in October, and a state-appointed monitor was assigned to ensure the city takes corrective action; ACS is still contesting the legal challenge in court.
Despite the suit, White looks at ACS’s progress today and believes that “we are far and away the leader in the country doing this work on the preventive side,” he says. “A small foster care system is a reflection of a healthy city. We have a city now that is more stable for families than back in the Nineties.”
The hope is that today, child protective workers would visit an Elisa Izquierdo earlier and regularly. They could provide treatment for her mother’s drug addiction and diagnose any mental illness. The innocent girl could be placed with another family member and would have the opportunity to grow up. Because of Izquierdo’s death, a system changed. Now it is ACS’s responsibility to ensure that she didn’t die in vain.
Homepage photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

For Kids Raised in the Foster Care System, This Program Provides a Future

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As teens leave the foster system, they become some of the country’s most vulnerable population. They’re less likely to graduate high school, seek higher education or find long-term employment. Additionally, at least one out of four foster youths will end up homeless, forgo health care and require public assistance, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Which is why Springfield, Mo., is launching a pilot project teaching customer service skills to young adults, ages 17 to 21, leaving the foster care system and looking to enter the workforce.

The Missouri Customer Service Partnership (MCSP), which is run out of the Ozarks Technical Community College (OTC), assists at-risk youths as they transition out on their own. OTC teamed up with the Community Partnership of the Ozarks to create a 10-week, intensive course, offered both in the fall and spring, with a year of a follow-up mentorship program. It’s one of two in Missouri; the other is run out of St. Louis Community College.

“This is a great transition. It’s a bridge to help them into the workforce and into higher education,” says Marilyn Madden, who coordinates the project. “We’re attempting to empower them to be active citizens regardless of their back-story.”

Throughout the 10-week course, a group of up to 15 youths receive help with resumes and interview skills, as well as job expectations and how to prepare for a career in retail and customer service, reports the Springfield News-Leader. The pilot also assists in job placement and gives students access to support from community and business leaders. After completion of the course, students earn four college credits.

For some teens, the course provides access to more basic needs, such as how to dress or find professional clothes for work or finding a safe place to live and way to commute to work.

“It’s all about connectedness so they’re not all alone,” says Amanda Coleman, community mentorship coordinator for the Community Partnership of the Ozarks. “They need someone to talk to and someone to point them in the right direction.”

The project, funded by the Missouri Division of Workforce Development and the Missouri Department of Social Services, cost about $120,000 in the first year. The first 10-week course began this past fall and of the 12 people who enrolled, 10 quickly found jobs, one relocated and the other is still looking for a full-time position.

“They have challenges they don’t choose,” Madden says.

MORE: Foster Kids Need One Thing to Succeed in School. A Former Teacher’s Goal Is to Give It to Every Single One

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Overcoming a Difficult Childhood, This Former Marine Is on a Mission to Help Others

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After growing up near Chicago and bouncing around five different group homes and 13 foster families, Tina Thomas found the stability and sense of belonging that she lacked by enlisting in the Marines when she was 18 years old.
“Growing up in the foster care system left me feeling empty and incomplete,” she tells Rich Polt of Talking Good.
Thomas was inspired to serve after working as a peer mentor at a summer camp for children who’d been victims of abuse. Thomas, too, suffered physical and sexual abuse during her years in the foster care system, but she never lets it define her. “If I’m a victim of sexual trauma and foster care, the statistics say I’m supposed to be a certain way. But I’m me…I’m not a number,” she says.
Thomas mentored kids at the summer camp every year until its funding was eliminated, an experience that made her realize, “I wanted to make an impact on people’s lives.”
For four years, Thomas served in the Marines before struggling to find a civilian job. Finally, she landed in Washington, D.C., where she works for the Federal Aviation Administration as an administrative assistant.
The 34-year-old Thomas has never stopped serving others and is now a member of The Mission Continues’ DC 1st Service Platoon, a nonprofit that organizes veterans to solve problems and help others in their community. “All of this service work provides me with structure and growth. It keeps me motivated and gets me out there so that I can continue to make a difference,” she says.
Even though she had little support growing up, Thomas continues to be a shining example of the impact one individual can make through a commitment to service. She tells Polk she hopes her legacy will be “that even at my lowest points in life, I’ve still reached out to help others to lift them higher.”
MORE: Salute the Nonprofit that Helps Vets Continue to Serve When They Return Home

Shooting For Hope: How One Photo Changed This Foster Teen’s Life

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“A picture is worth a 1,000 words,” is a maxim that’s taught us the power of imagery. But that doesn’t always resonate when a picture fails to capture its subject.
For a 16-year-old foster child, that seemed to be part of the problem. Deon, a teen born and raised in Yakima, Washington, has spent most of his childhood in and out of foster care since the age of 5. Last year, he gave up finding a family, expecting his final years in the foster care system to wind down.
In most states, foster children become responsible for themselves when they turn 18. While some agencies provide job training programs or workshops to build resumes, most of these children are thrust into adulthood without any support or stability. In fact, more than 27,000 of the 400,000 children in U.S. foster care leave the system without any family or support, according to U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Children’s Bureau.
“It’s pretty frightening for them because they really are just pretty much on their own,” said Amber Louis, a recruitment and outreach specialist for the Northwest Adoption Exchange in Seattle.
But that all changed for Deon, who thanks to a photographer’s eye, found a new outlook on life.
Jennifer Loomis, a family photographer based in Seattle, was scrolling through photos of children on adoption sites when she realized how poor their quality was.
“I was so blown away by how bad the photos were that I thought, ‘Oh my God, these photos don’t show these kids at all,'” she told CNN. “I can’t get a sense of who these kids are.”
Loomis contacted the Northwest Adoption Exchange, and Louis quickly responded. Loomis enlisted another photographer, Rocky Salskov, arranging a two-day photo shoot to capture the spirit of seven children between ages 9 and 17 who are looking for a home. Deon was fortunate enough to be selected.
“I wanted photos where you could look into their eyes and see into their soul a little bit better, where you could be like, ‘Wow, Deon, what a guy,’ ” she said.
MORE: Foster Kids Need One Thing to Succeed in School. A Former Teacher’s Goal Is to Give It to Every Single One
It worked. Joanna Church always wanted to adopt an older child and she began her search after her husband, Sean Vaillancourt, a sonar operator for the Canadian Navy, agreed. Church first spotted Deon’s old photo on a website and skipped past it, but after seeing his newfangled shot on the Northwest Adoption Exchange, she was captivated.
“You saw…personality in the face, like you saw it coming off the page and it was enough to get us to stop and open that profile and look at it it, and want to get to know Deon better,” Church said.
Deon moved in with Church and Vaillancourt in October, and the adoption process soon followed.
“They’ve really given me a new look on life,” he said. “Instead of feeling just like that I’m all alone, I actually feel like I have somebody there for me.”
Church and Vaillancourt are helping Deon with obtaining Canadian citizenship to prepare for their move to Victoria, British Columbia, in August. Deon, who had trouble in school, has since improved his grades, joined the track team and is learning to drive. The couple is also dedicated to ensuring their new son keeps in touch with his biological family — including his great grandmother who has taken care of him over the years.
When you give someone a chance, it can change their life forever, Deon said. “You are basically saving a life.”
As for the new parents, the relationship has led Church to become an advocate for adoption, sharing her good fortune to raise awareness about older kids waiting for homes. She often hears that parents are nervous about the uncertainty that comes with older children, she adds.
“And my response is always, you [don’t] know what kind of kid you’re going to get when you birth them,” she said.
Vaillancourt contends it’s about giving someone else a chance.
“We’ve all had our chances, from our parents, from somebody looking out for us, and these [kids] have nobody looking out for them.”

These Seniors Needed Affordable Housing, and These Kids Needed Love. Together, They’re Beautifully Solving Both Problems

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In Portland, Ore., there’s an idea so innovative that it has managed to bring together two sets of people with different problems — and solve them for both.
Welcome to the Bridge Meadows housing development, which helps elders and kids by providing a supportive environment for families that adopt foster kids alongside 27 units of affordable housing for seniors who agree to pitch in for 10 hours a week to help out with the kids. It’s a solution to a problem you don’t hear about often on the news: According to the PBS News Hour, 15 percent of seniors in America live below the poverty line, which often makes them struggle to find affordable housing. Meanwhile, families who adopt foster children face their own difficulties, as they are pressed for time, money and support.
Jackie Lynn, 60, is in the process of adopting her niece’s children because both of their drug-addicted parents are in jail. She works full time and felt she wasn’t able to give the kids the attention they needed until they moved to Bridge Meadows. Her family is partnered with neighbors Jim and Joy Corcoran, the “elders” who volunteer to spend time with the kids. “They are the reason that we thrive,” Lynn told Cat Wise of the PBS NewsHour. “Jim takes the boys every Sunday morning for about three hours. And they come home excited, with all these wonderful stories. You see children running up to them and giving them hugs. It’s just incredible to watch it.”
Meanwhile, the Corcorans experienced financial trouble after Jim lost his construction job, but now they live comfortably at Bridge Meadows with a $500 monthly rent payment. Joy Corcoran told Wise, “It was really difficult to find any decent housing that we could afford in any regard. And so when we had the opportunity to move here, it was just a godsend. It was like a huge relief.”
Bridge Meadows is funded by rents and donations from corporations and the community, and it provides a myriad of ways for kids and elders to interact every week. Elders lead story times, teach music lessons, tutor kids in school subjects, give them lifts to school and more. Derenda Schubert, the executive director of Bridge Meadows, said that there have been a few families who moved in and found the togetherness a bit too much, but for most of them it’s a perfect fit, and several seniors reported that their health improved through so much interaction. “Connections across the generations is critical, absolutely critical for aging well,” Jim Corcoran told Wise.
Plenty of people agree with Jim — which is why another intergenerational housing development like Bridge Meadows is currently under construction in Portland. But there’s good news for those who don’t live in Oregon, too: The staff of Bridge Meadows is consulting with people across the country who want to start their own such housing projects.
MORE: These Startups Offer Sleek Technological Innovations for the Elderly