0:00

People ask me all the time,

0:02

what is the toughest part

0:02

about growing

0:04

up in the foster care system? I

0:07

was an 11-month-old baby when I was placed in foster

0:09

care. By

0:12

the time I was in the third grade and

0:14

I was about nine, I was adopted. I was giving

0:16

a new forever family. But

0:18

it was far from a loving home. I

0:21

was consistently referred to as the N-word.

0:24

I was a very shy kid. I was consistently

0:27

referred to as the N-word. The

0:30

refrigerator couldn't be touched. She

0:33

cared more about that check than she did me.

0:38

By the time I was 15, I was

0:40

sick of it. I knew that

0:42

I needed to take matters into my own hands. So

0:47

after watching Law & Order, the show, thank

0:51

God for Olivia Benson, I realized something. I

0:55

needed to get the evidence of what was happening to me.

0:58

So I took a recorder and

1:00

I took some tape, and

1:02

I taped that recorder to my chest, and I got

1:05

the evidence that I needed to get back into

1:07

the foster care system. Even

1:10

without abuse, foster care

1:13

is a tough experience. You don't

1:15

know what's actually going to happen to you. You're

1:17

placed with a stranger, and you're expected to

1:19

become friends with the stranger. You're placed

1:21

with a stranger, and you're expected

1:23

to become family. But if you don't fit in, if you act

1:26

up a little bit too much, you will find yourself

1:28

in a new home with new school, new rules,

1:30

new everything.

1:32

When I was placed back in foster care at 15,

1:35

I thought that that was the end of my storm. But

1:38

it was just the beginning of the next storm.

1:41

I didn't go back home, went to a few different

1:44

homes, but unlike many, I

1:46

was placed in a nonprofit program where

1:49

I got ready to live on my own.

1:52

The foster care system is not doing a good

1:54

job of raising children.

1:57

Unsupported foster youth are two to

1:59

three times more likely

1:59

likely to have negative outcomes

2:02

related to homelessness, incarceration,

2:05

being sexually trafficked.

2:09

The mental tone is severe.

2:11

I want you to think about war veterans.

2:15

Foster youth are two times

2:17

more likely than war veterans to experience

2:20

and suffer from PTSD.

2:23

This is why I started Think

2:25

of Us, because this

2:27

is the current result of the foster care system.

2:30

It's designed wrong.

2:33

So we approach problems differently. We

2:35

actually engage those who are impacted. We

2:38

ask questions. We listen. We

2:40

take the collective experience

2:43

of thousands of people who are impacted

2:45

and turn that into data and insights

2:48

that then we know what are the most broken

2:50

pieces of the system and where we can start

2:52

to redesign it. We work with leaders

2:55

across the entire sector, people with

2:57

lived experience, to co-design new

3:00

solutions. And then we do whatever

3:02

it takes to implement those solutions.

3:06

I want to give you an example.

3:09

We overwhelmingly heard from teenage

3:11

foster youth that they were being misplaced

3:13

in group homes. The system

3:16

was acting like they have nowhere to place these children.

3:20

Turned around, we sent our researchers

3:22

out, and what they were

3:24

able to reveal was that the majority

3:27

of those children actually had extended

3:29

family members that they could have lived with.

3:32

On top of that, that they were having

3:35

these very traumatic experiences.

3:38

We collected those voices and lifted them up. The

3:43

vibration of the truth of what they shared with

3:45

us was so strong that it helped

3:47

inform litigation brought on by

3:49

the United States Department of Justice, the

3:51

Civil Rights Division. It

3:54

helped inform an investigation into

3:56

institutional abuse by these for-profit

3:59

group homes by the United States Senate.

4:04

It helped inform an amicus

4:06

brief that went to the United States Supreme

4:09

Court. That is

4:11

the power of lived experience. The

4:13

key to transformation is lived

4:16

experience. For

4:19

the past eight years, we've

4:21

listened to thousands of young people. And

4:25

it's become so clear that there's one key

4:27

thing that we need to transform. And

4:30

that is who children in foster care

4:33

get to live with. Kin.

4:38

We believe that Kin can transform

4:40

the foster care experience.

4:42

Kinship care is when a child

4:44

goes ahead and is able to live with

4:46

an extended family member or

4:48

an adult that they have already known, an

4:51

adult who loves them.

4:54

That adult can be a church member, a

4:57

close family friend.

4:59

And what we now know is

5:01

that research is showing that

5:03

when children are placed with Kin, they

5:05

fear way better from mental

5:08

health to stability to graduating

5:10

high school on time. And

5:12

yet, only 35% of

5:15

young people in the foster care system are actually

5:17

placed with Kin. But it doesn't have to

5:19

be this way.

5:20

In one state, in partnership,

5:23

right, we went in and we implemented some

5:26

simple solutions, like

5:28

let's ask young people which adults

5:30

in their family they should live with. I

5:35

wish I told you something better. That

5:37

is one solution. We

5:41

asked, we went ahead and like required

5:43

social workers to get extra approvals if

5:45

they're gonna place you outside of Kin.

5:48

The result, the initial placement

5:51

with young people in the foster care system

5:54

in a situation where they were living with Kin, rose

5:56

from 3% to over 40% in just.

7:58

I

8:00

was always 58 miles and a couple

8:02

questions away from being raised by

8:04

people who could have loved me, by people

8:06

who could have been my family.

8:11

The worst part about this is

8:14

that my story is actually not unique. That

8:17

every single year, hundreds

8:19

of thousands of children are entering

8:21

the foster care system and they're not being

8:23

placed with family. And again, it actually

8:26

doesn't have to be this way.

8:27

The system spends over $30

8:30

billion on less than one

8:32

million families a year.

8:35

That is more than enough to make sure we

8:37

find family, we support them, and that

8:39

every child is living in a loving family

8:42

situation.

8:44

Right now, there's a big

8:46

systems change opportunity, a federal

8:48

decision that would make it super easy

8:51

to have people who are related to a

8:53

child step up and say, I'm willing to do

8:55

this and get that support.

8:57

If approved, we

8:59

would see $3 billion shift

9:03

from traditional foster care to kinship

9:05

care.

9:07

So when we work on these crazy

9:09

ideas like, let's make kinship care the norm,

9:12

it is actually possible.

9:15

And I want to leave you with three things to think

9:17

about.

9:18

Number one, I came

9:20

on the stage with a very simple idea.

9:23

Children should be raised in family. How

9:27

can we replace the majority of foster care with kinship care?

9:30

Number two, how

9:33

do we center those who have been impacted, those

9:36

who have lived experience in making kinship

9:38

care the new norm as we design it and implement

9:41

it? And the last part, I

9:43

want to

9:45

tell you, we need some help.

9:47

We need some allies, we need you

9:49

to become advocates with us. And you don't have

9:52

to be a foster care expert to know the

9:54

power of family and

9:56

to know that every child should be being raised by family or

9:59

kids.

9:59

or someone that they know when it's possible.

10:02

I'll say this.

10:04

I truly believe we're at this pivot point. And

10:07

that if we push just a little bit harder in

10:09

this very moment, that we can actually

10:12

live in a new reality where when

10:14

children have to come into the foster care system,

10:17

that the first thing that is looked at is

10:19

extended family, it's people that they

10:21

know. And if we are able to achieve

10:23

that, we will literally be able to ensure

10:26

that millions of children will come off

10:28

of that school bus, go into their homes,

10:31

look at family members, people that they

10:33

know, and say,

10:34

I am loved. Thank you.

10:37

APPLAUSE