Among Us Podcast

When it comes to system reform, the perspectives we should pay the most attention to are those who know the system best: individuals with lived experience. Our final episode of this season features two young changemakers using their experiences in foster care to help create a better reality for youth today. Eve Aaliyah Valdez is a youth activist with California Youth Connection, a youth-led organization that aims to transform foster care. Demontea Thompson is a doctoral candidate in the UCLA School of Education, a foster care researcher, and co-founder of Twinspire, a nonprofit organization that provides financial literacy to young people with foster care experience. How can we better prioritize basic needs for foster youth? What happens when we invite young people with lived experience to actively participate in research and reform processes?

Transition-age foster youth are young people between 16 and 25 years old who are transitioning out of the foster care system and into adulthood. Many of them are not prepared to live independently or have a strong support system to lean on. They may need help with finding stable housing or employment, paying for college, and curating supportive relationships they can rely on. Youth aging out of care could also be experiencing trauma and other challenges in addition to these transitions. We speak with Amy Dworsky and Liz Squibb about the common obstacles foster youth face as they age out of care, and actions we can take to better support youth and families. What happens after foster youth age out of care? What supports do they need to thrive as adults?

Nationally, only 3 out of 100 foster youth graduate with a bachelor's degree by age 26. Recent legislation in some states aims to increase this number by covering the full cost of in-state college attendance. However, students with foster care experience need a tremendous amount of support beyond financial aid to thrive in college and beyond, in areas such as life skills, housing and finances, self-care, and dependable relationships with trusted adults. Scholars Kizzy Lopez and Nate Okpych join us to uplift the real barriers that foster youth face in accessing higher education, navigating college and campus life, and support programs that some campuses offer for foster youth. How can we create better pathways for foster youth to attend college and support them through their college years?

Get a glimpse into the inner workings of state government and how elected officials and state agencies are working to support foster youth. This episode highlights perspectives from two different states: Jamie Burciaga, Colorado State Coordinator for Foster Care Education, and Isaac G. Bryan, California Assemblymember (55th District – Los Angeles), who will share his experiences in foster care and the legislative changes he is advocating for on behalf of foster youth. How do supports for foster youth vary from state to state, and what promising practices can we uplift? How can we work through bureaucratic barriers to form fruitful partnerships?

Foster youth tend to have a rough time in school. They are more likely to change homes and schools multiple times mid-year, and can miss a lot of classes for reasons beyond their control. We spoke to foster youth advocate Dylan Tatom, who shares her educational experiences as a foster student and how she discovered her voice. La Shona Jenkins, who leads foster youth educational services for Los Angeles County, expresses the importance of cross-sector collaboration and supporting each foster student’s unique, individual needs. How can schools holistically support students in foster care?

Involvement in the foster care system is not random. Racism and social inequities are both reflected in and actively shape our foster care system that’s largely comprised of Black and Brown youth experiencing poverty. Foster care abolitionist Dorothy Roberts talks about the “family policing system” that is tied to historically oppressive and harmful practices, including slavery and the carceral system, and inflicts trauma on communities of color. Tamara Hunter, a foster care systems leader for Los Angeles County, champions a shift from mandated reporting to mandated supporting, and the need for a “third option” beyond either reporting or not reporting. What is the “foster care-to-prison pipeline” and how are Black children being funneled into it? How can we build pathways to support mandated reporters, like teachers and healthcare professionals, to connect families with resources?

Let’s unpack the U.S. foster care system as we know it. Child welfare and public policy historian Catherine E. Rymph provides a lesson on the origins of foster care and its evolution into the complex system that it is today. Child welfare systems change leader Sixto Cancel shares about his personal experiences of racism and abuse while in foster care that led him to found Think of Us. How did poverty and neglect–the pretense for most foster care referrals–become conflated? What would happen if we provided families in need with resources instead of reporting them?

Foster students face unique challenges in and out of the classroom and they deserve more of our attention. Leading education scholars Tyrone Howard, Joseph Bishop, and Angela James discuss the intersections of foster care with poverty, systemic racism, homelessness, punitive discipline, and the carceral system. Who is responsible for the well-being of foster youth? How can schools more equitably support students, no matter their circumstances?

Among Us from UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools uplifts the experiences of students furthest from opportunity, and explores how systems and structures both in and out-of-school are either creating barriers or opportunities for young people. This season, we are going on a journey together through the foster care system. UCLA researchers unpack the foster system through conversations with young people, practitioners, scholars, advocates and philanthropy to better understand how youth and families are facing barriers to thrive–and what we all can do about it. Join us every Wednesday starting August 7th.