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.