Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/foster-care/page/6/)
"With all the obstacles you faced while you were in foster care, what motivates you to move forward in life?" Brittany Myers, 23, asks Jody Middlebrooks, 20. Former foster kids Middlebrooks and Myers get honest about motivation, case workers and the power of positive interactions in this insightful conversation on forging relationships in the system.
Summit Trail is an residential complex in Atlanta for teenagers transitioning out of foster care. Founded by the CHRIS Kids program, Summit Trail offers life coaching to the teens within the residential facility.
“Somebody might get discovered tonight! I may have a record deal for you!” joked Georgia Rep. Erica Thomas, 28, at a communal birthday party for teenagers and young adults who are dealing with homelessness, abuse and neglect, or other troubles. Just hours before, Thomas was on the floor of the Georgia House of Representatives, where the former foster youth counts improving the lives of kids in foster care among her top priorities.
Social workers “look at the delinquency system as having the power to control these [foster] kids. And the control is they get locked up. They think of that as a traditional method of disciplining the kids.”
"Every time I went to a new group home, it was like: 'you're a girl; you have to have girl things,'" said Luke McNamara, 25, who recounts the abuse and humiliation he faced as a transgender youth growing up in the California foster care system.
Semaj Clark is a determined young man.
The Los Angeles teenager’s steadfastness helped him emerge from a childhood punctuated by a string of foster homes and arrests to become an ambassador to troubled youth.
Michael Nash’s 30-year career as a jurist has mostly been focused on trying to make life better for Los Angeles County’s children. He is about to embark on a new challenge relating to LA’s foster kids: Early next year, he will become the first director of Los Angeles County’s new Office of Child Protection.
James Milan entered foster care at age 4. “My childhood wasn’t the greatest,” he says wryly. “I was trying to figure out why my mother didn’t want me, why my father wasn’t there.” In and out of foster care homes and group homes, he found the Claremont Neighborhood Center in the Bronx, N.Y., — and now works as a senior counselor there with kids ages 5 through 13.
NEW YORK — Despite the strides that the LGBTQ community has made in the United States over the last year, LGBTQ youth still have a way to go in having equitable juvenile justice and foster care systems as well as combating homelessness.
The wraparound model, a structured, creative and individualized team planning process, is far more accommodating to foster youth dealing with trauma and mental health issues than the traditional model of putting youth struggling with permanence into a group home, according to Lincoln Child Center CEO Christine Stoner-Mertz.