Fostering Hope Foundation

Where there is help, there is hope. Where there is hope, there is a future.

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A note from the director

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Fear. Isolation. An inability to focus. Living in the present and unable to focus on the future. The world around me – and social interaction – is dangerous and to be avoided. This is how I’ve felt at times during this pandemic, as many of you may have. Likewise, it’s the connections and experiences with friends and family – even by text or Facetime – that seems to shed perspective on it all and bring the calm.

I realized recently that this is a window into the experience of kids in foster care and why Fostering Hope exists.

To be clear, childhood trauma, in the technical and scientific sense, is very different than typical fear and grief, and toxic stress is not normal stress. We are feeling these things in the face of real and imminent danger, and when it goes away, so will much of our fear. For our youth, this is the constant, even debilitating baseline they live with when the world around them is humming along uneventfully.

But even a glimpse into their world can help us understand more personally why the love and support they experience from our wonderful foster parents and volunteers and greater Fostering Hope community is so healing and transformational. Just today, a friend sent me a care package knowing I was going a little stir crazy. The warmth from this gesture and knowing I was on their mind will carry me through whatever today’s headlines bring.

So, as I reflect on this, I just want to say thank you. Whether you’re a donor, a volunteer, a foster parent or one of our community partners, your contributions to creating calm out of chaos and shining love into darkness are truly something special.

Volunteers Get Creative to Support Foster Families from Afar

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Sue knew her foster parents would be struggling to keep their kids entertained and engaged with no school or activities and strict stay-at-home orders. Normally, she’d take them to the park or on a play date, but in a Covid-19 world she did the next best thing: she dropped off a pair of activity kits at their doorstep. One included all the materials to create a balloon rocket, and the other a pom-pom drop game.

She is one of many Fostering Hope volunteers who have found new ways to support their foster families during the time of coronavirus. Instead of childcare, transportation, or date nights, all of which are not allowed or safe during the height of the pandemic, they’re relying on video and doorsteps.

Volunteers for another family read stories to the kids via video, and others put on a YouTube-style puppet show. It may not seem like much, but an hour of respite for a foster parent in quarantine can go a long way.

Others have left hot meals on doorsteps, complete with a side of toilet paper and other supplies. One volunteer stepped in to do video math tutoring for a child struggling to make the adjustment to e-learning.

“I want you all to know it means so much to have your arms around us as we go through this,” one foster mom shared with her team. “All of you are heaven sent, and I don’t mean that in a Hallmark kind of way … please know you are so, so needed and loved.”

In an interesting turn of events, the “extended family” is serving in new ways. Foster families and volunteers have brought groceries to elderly volunteers who are homebound and unable or at high-risk of going to the store. One foster family who received more food than they can eat as a family, repackaged what was left and distributed to an elderly neighbor.

On the brink of homelessness, a foster youth ages out

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Editor’s note: The following essay was written by Brian Ferguson, Fostering Hope’s Youth Transitions Coordinator. Names have been changed to protect confidentiality.

Jason and I sit at a coffee shop with my laptop. We are looking for a place for him to live — again. It’s the second time in two months that he’s been kicked out. First, by a friend from school and now by a former co-worker. He has burned every bridge. Jason’s face is blank, but I can see the tears he wipes away from underneath his sunglasses.

He is shutting down, as trauma has wired him to do, preparing himself for survival once again. He is two days away from homelessness without immediate help. He has lived in so many different places he can’t even remember them all.

As a child, he bounced from foster home to foster home. Kids with trauma often exhibit bad behaviors and intentionally push their caregivers away. Then, as a teenager, he found no one wanted to welcome him into their home anymore. He was labeled “troubled, delinquent, risky” and he lost the opportunity to live in a home with a family. He lived in group homes and facilities where a paid staff rotated through on a daily basis, making it even harder to find someone who truly cares about you.

While these placements were initially intended to be temporary, this became his last stop into adulthood. After years of living in group homes, Jason turned 18 and left the system.

He was moved into an apartment and secured a job. He had everything he needed right?

In just a few months he became homeless and trapped in depression. For a year, Jason was either living on the streets or couch surfing, and we had no contact with him.

It took almost a year before Jason was able to get another job and find a stable place to live, where he reconnected with an old friend. He re-established contact with Fostering Hope, where staff and volunteers had been so eager to help and be his friend. Now, not even a year later, the cycle is repeating.

The only way Jason knows how to handle conflict is by running away or getting kicked out – the fight, flight or freeze response. All of us have brains that protect us from harm and prepare us for survival in a state of danger. When you see a bear, your body takes over and you don’t think about what you do next. For kids experiencing trauma, this toxic level of stress rewires the brain so that this state of survival is the constant, not the other way around. Ironically, the very thing that helps you survive danger hinders Jason’s survival in society.

I take Jason to apply for an apartment and help him fill out the application. I feel like his parent taking him to an interview reminding him to shower and put on clean clothes before meeting the landlord. I review his application before we turn it in because I knew even one tiny mistake could disqualify him.

The reality starts to sink in as I review his application — in a competitive and fast-growing real estate market, he doesn’t have a chance. He has no address or phone number. He has no references.

And the emergency contact section is completely blank. I ask Jason who he wants his emergency contact to be. He responds, “What is that?” I explain this is the person you would want the landlord to contact if you were hurt or needed help. If you were taken to the hospital, who would they call to come see you?

Jason’s silence spoke a thousand words. I broke the long pause by telling him he could put me down as his emergency contact. Jason breathed a sign or relief and said, almost under his breath, “Oh, good… I don’t really have anyone right now. I mean I know where my mom is living on the east coast but I haven’t been able to contact her in a long time.”

My heart broke, and now I was the one brushing away tears from under my sunglasses.

Can you imagine being all alone in the world? Having no one who cares if you live or die, no one who would visit you in the hospital if you got hurt? I learned so much that day about what it’s like to be in foster care, and to age out of the system. I was reminded that it’s not just about resources and services.

Foster kids want a place a place to belong more than they want a place to live.

As predicted, he did not qualify for the apartment. Fostering Hope found him a safe hotel room for a couple of nights while we called on our community of supporters for ideas and leads. Thankfully, someone in the community opened their home to Jason, and he was offered both a place to belong and live for now. In lieu of rent, this individual is requiring him to set aside money each month in savings, to help him as he works to get a more permanent place of his own.

Update: In October, Fostering Hope launched its first ever transitional housing initiative. Through a master lease with Canyon Ranch Apartments, we are now able to provide more housing options for youth aging out. This initiative, made possible with help from private donors, enables youth to pay income-adjusted rent while living in an aspirational community of working-class adults with house parents on-site. While in its formative stages, our hope is that this will help kids like Jason to thrive and become self-reliant.

 

Thank you Sky Ranch Foundation!

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Fostering Hope is excited to announce that we have received $5,000 from the Sky Ranch Foundation to support our work helping youth who are aging out of care. Sky Ranch Foundation is committed to giving at-risk youth a second chance by identifying and offering grants to efficient and effective programs focused on improving the quality of help available to these youth.

The foundation invested in our work to provide relational support for former foster youth, while removing barriers and putting them on a path to productive citizenship. With help from this grant, we are helping to change the statistics associated with emancipation from foster care.

Thank you, Sky Ranch Foundation!

Donate a Car to Change a Life

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Lilliane, 20, is going places. She is a junior in college who is majoring in both finance and accounting while working part-time. She aspires to join a major accounting firm, get her doctoral degree, and someday start her own firm. Her story defies the odds for most emancipated foster youth, who more often than not find themselves homeless, unemployed and without a high school diploma.

But when it comes to literally going places, she could use our help. She needs a car. Taking the bus is never easy, but when classes resume on Aug. 15, the bus schedule will no longer align with her schedule. 

If you have an older, driveable vehicle or known someone who does, this is a great opportunity to make an investment in a young adult’s future by donating it to Lilliane, via Fostering Hope. This generous, in-kind donation would be tax deductible, and the vehicle would go directly to Lilliane to serve her immediate needs with reaching her goals. Fostering Hope has car-savvy supporters who can do light mechanical work and inspections, if needed.

Please contact Brian Ferguson at bferguson@fosteringhopefoundation.org or Brian Newsome at brian@fosteringhopefoundation.org.