Fostering Our Youth Touches Hearts in Littleton
Approximately 130 people attended when South Metro Community Foundation (SMCF) sponsored a community forum on foster youth. Fostering Our Youth was held at South Fellowship Church on S. Broadway in Littleton. Delicious free burritos from GraceFull Café and coffee provided by Lost Coffee were followed by discussion from a panel of experts and people with life experience as foster youth.
SMCF Chair Susan Thornton welcomed everyone to the forum and noted that SMCF is raising funds so that Advocates for Children can hire navigators for at least their last year in foster care. The navigators will help the foster youth apply for housing vouchers, obtain job/skills training and jobs, and develop life skills such as banking, budgeting and communications. To date the two organizations have raised $252,000 for navigation services.
Thornton introduced Josefina Milliner, Executive Director of Advocates for Children/CASA and herself a former foster child, who served as facilitator for the forum. She pointed out that dismal results for many foster youth is happening nationally and “right here in our neighborhood.”
Milliner began by asking Lynn Johnson for a “big picture” national overview of foster youth issues. Johnson, former Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, described her years working with children in foster care across the nation, and in Jefferson County. Sixty-two percent of out-of-home placement of children result from poverty, she said.
Approximately 152 youth who have emancipated from the foster system at 18 call her “Mom” and come to her home for life experiences they missed in foster care, such as camping, fishing, and sitting around a campfire making Smores.
A relatively small percentage of foster youth graduate from high school compared with their peers, and thus lack work skills; most become almost immediately homeless; and many are trafficked, use drugs or alcohol, and get into the criminal justice system at a very high cost to taxpayers. Young women are at elevated risk for early pregnancy, and – perhaps most distressingly — the suicide rate for foster youth is 10 times that of their peers. “We are facing a national problem,” Johnson said, “and it should be addressed by the federal government.”
In addition, Johnson stated that children from the same family should not be separated, as that separation takes an enormous toll on the siblings. The young people in the foster care system know what is wrong with it and what could help solve its problems, she stated. “We just need to listen to them.”
Kathy Butler, a behavioral health specialist with Doctors Care and herself a foster mother, described behavioral issues among foster youth who “have had a lot of trauma in their lives,” often resulting in depression and lack of bonding. Youngsters in foster care feel stigmatized as “different,” and don’t feel safe telling others about their issues or problems, she said. They fear that there will be consequences if they “open up,” she added, such as being moved to a different foster home. “We are not teaching them to trust,” she observed. “We are teaching them to move whenever an issue gets hard,” and this is a pattern that is likely to continue through life.
Milliner and Butler pointed out that foster parents need support just as foster youth do. “No one gets into this work [as a foster parent] for the money,” Milliner stated. And establishing trust with young people in foster care takes time. “Trust doesn’t happen overnight,” she said.
The next speaker, Tami Slipher, adopted three foster siblings, ages 10, 11 and 12. Then she and her husband learned that there were eight-month-old foster twins entering foster care from the same family — and she was pregnant. She drew laughs when she said, “Going from no children to six children all at once was hard!”
Slipher stated that all but one of her adopted children had been born to a mother who abused drugs; those children had learning difficulties as a result. Only the youngest was saved from that fate, she said, as she was born in prison, where the mother did not have access to drugs. That daughter, she said proudly, recently earned a Ph.D. and is providing counseling to veterans.
Slipher told stories about helping the children adapt to their new home. For example, when she and her husband adopted the children, they let them choose what last name they would prefer.
And when she found that the children were stripping blankets and sheets off their beds and sleeping on the mattresses, she asked why. They explained that they had slept that way in their biological home, and so sleeping without sheets made them feel like they were home again. They also said that the sheets in different foster homes had “smelled different.” So Slipher took them to the store and had them pick out the laundry detergent that most smelled like their biological home.
A former foster child named Dominque spoke of being sent to 23 different foster homes in what was a turbulent childhood. She told of one foster home where the parents kept a lock on the refrigerator and where the foster youth were prohibited from hanging out in the yard. Dominique had lost her younger brother to the system, she said, and only recently found and reunited with him.
Determined to improve the future for foster youth, Dominique has formed a nonprofit to ensure that the voices of foster youth are heard. C.A.R.E.S. – Youth Today, Adults Tomorrow advocates at the legislature for keeping siblings together. Johnson praised that effort, saying keeping siblings together is critical for their welfare. Dominique noted that she left foster care with $8,000 in savings but because she didn’t understand budgeting or taxes, she soon lost it.
Shelby described becoming almost immediately homeless when she aged out of the foster care system. She moved in with a boyfriend, but fought with him and was soon arrested for domestic violence. Saying the system “tried to break me,” she now has a criminal record so that she is unable to get any kind of job. It’s hard, she said, “very hard.”
Johnson pointed out that almost all foster youth who end up homeless are victims of trafficking. She stated that she would love to establish a team of pro bono attorneys to advocate for these victims.
At the conclusion of the panel, SMCF Board member Merrill Stillwell read out questions texted to him by audience members, and many members of the audience stayed late to discuss what they had learned as well as possible solutions to improve outcomes for foster youth. Thornton praised the nonprofits who helped make the community forum possible. These included the City of Littleton, Littleton Rotary Club, the Denver Y, Love INC of Denver, South Metro Housing Options, Doctors Care, AllHealth Network, Advocates for Children/CASA, South Fellowship Church, the Littleton Business Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce.
Submitted by Susan Thornton, Chair, SMCF
