My observations today regard the organization known as Foster Care Alumni of America. This is an organization whose stated mission is "to connect the alumni community and to transform policy and practice, ensuring opportunity for people in and from foster care."
As an alumnus of foster care who lived in foster care for 11 years, and as an advocate for those currently and formerly in foster care, it is my strong belief that Foster Care Alumni of America should be headed by a foster care alumni.
After all, it would be un-thinkable for a white person to lead the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) or the Urban League. Moreover, men do not lead the National Organization for Women (NOW), heterosexuals do not lead the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, and young 20-something-year-olds do not lead the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). It is likewise unthinkable that a non-foster care alumnus leads Foster Care Alumni of America.
It’s time for the board and funders of Foster Care Alumni of America to be sensitive to their stakeholders and find and hire an executive who is an alumni of the foster care system, to do otherwise is a slap in the face to those of us who survived foster care.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Let me start with foster care reform, which is more critical now than ever before. Over 800,000 vulnerable young people enter care every year, and about 500,000 vulnerable young people are in care at any given time. Most of them come out of care more damaged than when they entered care. A just society with vast resources ought to be ashamed for tolerating, and even accepting, the preventable suffering of so many vulnerable young people.
While there have been many policy changes, more attention paid, and more resources directed toward foster care, much work is left undone, and our efforts are still falling woefully short. Someone needs to be an authentic voice and an indigenous presence in foster care reform. Who will be their voice and represent their presence? I guess the responsibility falls to people like me who lived in 15 damn foster homes to lead the charge as there are so few of us in a position to do so.
Yes, I sometimes do get weary, but I have a unique set of skills, insights, gifts and experiences, and the need for dramatic reform is unrelenting, so I must be unrelenting as well. I am confident that civil rights leaders; equal rights leaders for women, and the leaders of other important movements must be weary at times, but they soldier on in search of social justice.
I am convinced that an innovative and critical approach in foster care reform is to build the capacity of the largely underutilized resource of foster care alumni.
Certainly, the historic child welfare leaders have been largely ineffective. After all, why not invest resources in foster care alumni as a change agent? Everything else has failed and it is time to think outside of the box.
While there have been many policy changes, more attention paid, and more resources directed toward foster care, much work is left undone, and our efforts are still falling woefully short. Someone needs to be an authentic voice and an indigenous presence in foster care reform. Who will be their voice and represent their presence? I guess the responsibility falls to people like me who lived in 15 damn foster homes to lead the charge as there are so few of us in a position to do so.
Yes, I sometimes do get weary, but I have a unique set of skills, insights, gifts and experiences, and the need for dramatic reform is unrelenting, so I must be unrelenting as well. I am confident that civil rights leaders; equal rights leaders for women, and the leaders of other important movements must be weary at times, but they soldier on in search of social justice.
I am convinced that an innovative and critical approach in foster care reform is to build the capacity of the largely underutilized resource of foster care alumni.
Certainly, the historic child welfare leaders have been largely ineffective. After all, why not invest resources in foster care alumni as a change agent? Everything else has failed and it is time to think outside of the box.
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