Note: This article originally appeared on Medium.
Why hope may be the key to child wellbeing
By Holly Raymond, Chief of Community Engagement at Upbring
When you work in child welfare, the headlines can weigh you down. Waves of immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, rising poverty, inflation, plus funding shortages for education and other social services all begin to feel like insurmountable problems.
Then there are the well-worn statistics about children who enter state care. Only 62% of students in the Texas foster care system graduate from high school. About 25% of youth in foster care nationwide will become involved with the criminal justice system within two years of leaving care. The same number, 1 in 4, are estimated to become homeless by age 22.
The effects of poverty alone are long-lasting, even in children who don’t enter foster care. For children, low family income correlates to lower educational achievement and lower earnings in adulthood, among other poor outcomes. It’s easy to understand why this cycle so often repeats itself, generation after generation.
Still, despite the historical probability of these outcomes, I remain hopeful for child wellbeing in Texas. Here’s why.
We know how to help children heal. Too often, entering state care is posed as a child’s final chapter, with assumptions of how the rest of the story goes. What if, instead, state care became the beginning of a child’s healing journey?
We know which interventions work for children who have experienced trauma. We know how to help at-risk children and families prevent abuse and neglect from happening in the first place. So many people, from caseworkers and counselors to teachers and foster parents, are invested in helping. In the right space and with the right support, I’ve seen firsthand how children can build resilience. What’s more, we can measure our impact.
Consider, for example, that children from low-income families who enroll in a Head Start preschool are 93% less likely to end up in foster care. That’s because this early childhood education model includes wraparound support that addresses root socioeconomic causes of abuse and neglect. Children who attend Head Start also perform better on cognitive and social-emotional measures in kindergarten and have fewer attention problems and negative behaviors.
And you wouldn’t know it from the headlines, but the number of children in foster care nationwide has actually decreased by 23% since 2007. Meanwhile, the number of those who are reunited with their families has increased by 14%.
For these reasons and more, I believe we can provide a pivotal starting point for rewriting a child’s story with a different, beautiful ending. That gives me hope.
We have countless success stories. Child wellbeing interventions address trauma in the short term, but the physical, emotional and psychological healing lasts well into adulthood. You don’t have to look far to see examples of people who draw strength from their experiences of growing up in care.
I recently met Bryan*, who aged out of Texas foster care before he could be adopted. He was competing in an innovation competition here in Austin, which I had the honor of judging. I was blown away by his Web3 strategies for improving the foster care system — and his dedication to helping other children like himself.
I also think of Marshay, who was once a resident of Upbring New Life Children’s Center and our supervised independent living program, BeREAL. Now she’s a junior studying business management at Texas A&M and working toward a career in the automotive industry. Marshay volunteers to show children in foster care that their past doesn’t have to dictate their future. She’s also determined to give her 3-year-old daughter the stable childhood she never had.
Then there’s the Ferguson family. They lovingly adopted little Korbin, who has medical needs, from foster care and then adopted his older sister, Kendall. These children get to grow up together because the Fergusons opened their hearts and their home.
If not for state care, Korbin and Kendall may never have found a safe and nurturing forever home. And Bryan and Marshay may not have discovered their inner talents and passion for giving back. Stories like theirs give me hope for the future.
Children need to hear and experience hope. Children in state care are all too often bombarded with the enormity of the challenges they face. They’re incredibly intuitive and can sense when someone labels them or writes them off. We have to change this narrative, and that begins by meeting them with empathy, not pity.
Watch your language, starting with how you use the words “foster kid” — they’re a kid in foster care and not the system themselves. Become a mentor — there are children in every school, congregation and community in Texas who could use an adult in their corner, as we have learned from the Texas Youth Permanency Study (TYPS). Even small acts of kindness go a long way toward helping children feel seen. Compliment their outfit. Ask how their school day went. Show them you care.
Only when a child regains their sense of self-worth and belonging can they start to envision a better future for themselves.
The bad is all around us if we go looking for it. But so is the good. Focusing on the positive is an intentional choice, one that I make every day. I couldn’t do this work if I didn’t.
Choose love, choose joy, choose hope. It’s the only way we’ll make Texas a better place for our children.
*Bryan’s story is true, but we have used a pseudonym to protect his privacy.