June 3, 2025 • 39 mins
Theo is joined by author and journalist Claudia Rowe to discuss her latest book Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care and take a closer look at the ways that those in the foster system have faced discrimination and a complete lack of support for generations. The intersections and overlaps between systemics failure to those in (and out) of foster care are explored, and no stone is left unturned. Also: Theo discusses how the SNAP program rollbacks will affect the unhoused.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Previously on Weedian House.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I think, coming from a British perspective, I'm very mindful
when everyone always wants to point the finger at America
because obviously under Trump it's really really bad. But I
think it's quite a dangerous game because it makes other
countries get away with it, you know, like we have
police brutality here. All the kind of terrible things go
(00:27):
on here, you know, and many people might say we're
the ones who taught America or the worst things. So
I think it's quite important to be aware.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Of what's going on.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Welcome back to Weedian Howse. I'm your host Bo Henderson.
This week we have the author of Wards of the State,
The Long Shadow of American foster Care. Our guest author,
Claudia Rooa is with us and we had a most
enlightening discussion the first on House News. Our first story
(01:19):
comes from Washington, d C. The Justice Department has been
brainstorming new ways to clear encampments. At President Donald Trump's urging,
top Justice officials sent employees in the Office of Justice
Programs and eight question email asking for a VERIR input
on how best to direct resources with the un housed
(01:40):
community and mental illnesses. Here's one of the questions. What
can the Department of Justice do to more efficiently shift
chronic vagrants away from the public square and into a
more concentrated space so that order can be restored and
resources and services can be deployed or effectively. Or this one,
(02:02):
what can the Department of Justice do to increase their
availability and use of involuntary commitment for individuals who otherwise
cannot or will not receive care. Lastly, what can the
federal government do to shift state and local government policies
and behavior to this issue. The Trump administration is moving
(02:26):
away from the housing first model, which is the policy
of placing people in stable housing before trying to direct
them into mental health or addiction services. Trump also issued
an executive order to make DC safe and Beautiful by
directing the National Park Services to remove all encampments from
federal land in the nation's capital. Our second story takes
(02:53):
place in Washington, DC again. On May twenty second, twenty
twenty five, the House Republican voted two hundred and fifteen
to two hundred and fourteen to upend the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program, also.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Known as the EBT or SNAP program.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
They are permanently changing the structure and are cutting three
hundred billion dollars over the next decade. This will take
food from millions of unhoused house families, children, disabled residents,
older adults, and veterans. Also impacted by these cuts will
be farmers, roasters, state and local governments, and the overall economy.
(03:35):
The thirty percent deep slash has opened a door to
starvation strategic and non strategic. Will people be choosing medication
over food because of this new three month time limit rule. Currently,
adults ages eighteen to fifty four must work eighty hours
a month to receive benefits unless they have young children. However,
(03:58):
under the new plan, these work requirements will extend to
parents with children over seven years old and to older
adults up to age sixty four. Over forty two million
people are struggling with food insecurity in the United States.
Not programs help more than forty million people feed their families.
(04:19):
And that's on House News. When we come back, we're
here from author Claudia Row about her new book about
the failures of the broken American foster care system. Welcome
back to William House. I'm THEO Henderson. Before we delve
(04:42):
into our interview with Claudia Row. I want to drop
a fact. Did you know that Medicaid covers one in
three children diagnosed with cancer in the United States? That
is true, and yet Trump recently approved to cut those benefits.
Many times, the ones that suffer are the vulnerable, such
as children who are unable to speak out against injustice.
(05:05):
Answer Miss Roll with her extensive interviews and the challenges
that impoverished children face in Mariada. Ways without further ado,
Missus Claudia wrote about her latest book, Wards of the State,
The Long Shadow of American Foster Care.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Hi, thank you so much for having me on and
for being interested in this topic and how the book
figures into it. So the book is Wards of the State,
The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, And initially when
I got into it, I was shocked to discover the
overlap between foster care and incarceration. The incredible number of
(05:50):
kids who literally go from one state system ward of
the state in one system to ward of the state
in another. Sometimes it's literal a seamless handoff, and the
numbers are really off the charts. Also within that is
homelessness that is somewhat more covered. The incredible numbers of
(06:13):
foster youth who leave the system aging out at eighteen,
some of them just go straight onto the street. You know.
The estimate is like twenty percent of foster kids who
age out will be immediately homeless. Other numbers, you know,
say that like twenty five percent of kids who've grown
up in foster care will experience houselessness by the time
(06:36):
they are twenty six. And there's other data that says
roughly fifty percent of the unhoused population in our country
our former foster youth. This is like ridiculous. We took
kids from their families to purportedly do something better, and
what we've done is create a population just like armies
(07:01):
of future homeless people that has received some coverage, the
connection with incarceration far less. So that's what wards of
the state looks at.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Well, here's the thing too that I remember when in
the earlier days, when I started the show, and I
interviewed a gentleman who was a young man, and he
told me he has been living literally he had a
family dynamic situation where his parents were killed in a
car accident and he went to live with his grandmother,
who was obviously of advanced age, and she passed away
and they placed him in the foster home. But the
(07:33):
foster home was such a condition of abusive situation that he,
at ten years old, just started living on the streets
and he has been living on the streets from then.
And I think one of the conversational points that I
like to point out too, is like one of the
things about houselessness and this new wave of erasing unhoused
or forcing unhoused people in places or environments that they
(07:55):
are erased and invisible because you can't see them, then
there's no house.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
It's problem.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
And I think that's part of it with the foster
care situation is when someone removes them, they have this
belief system that you know, the sunshine and rainbows, you know,
you know, you can walk down the Yellow Brook Road
and everything is wonderful, and it's far from the truth,
because there you left someone from their connective duculus of
a family, and then you got them into some system
that is very abject and very indifferent too. If they
(08:24):
survive or not or survive or thrive, and then so
when they get to become eighteen, there are no tools,
there are no ways of navigating the situation of life.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Even if you are housed then you're not a foster kid.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
It's still difficult, but it becomes increasingly more difficult if
you didn't have someone that shepherd you along the challenges,
the milestones of life, you know, you know, teenage years
and learning how to do a resume, how to present
yourself to employers, how to look for housing, and things
like that, so that those are key skills that sometimes
(08:55):
get overlooked.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah, you said a couple of essential words there, you
said invisible. This is something that frustrated me as a reporter.
So I'm a journalist. I've been covering child welfare and
juvenile justice for like nearly thirty five years, a long time.
And one thing that any reporter who looks at this
is going to encounter is the sort of oh, confidentiality,
(09:19):
and you're dealing with minors and children's privacy, and so
there's this structural you know, laws that allow the state
to shield kids supposedly for their own protection, but really
what it does is shield the state. What it really
does is prevent scrutiny from outsiders, from journalists. Right, And
(09:42):
I'll tell you every young person I talked to for
this book, and there were many, many, every one of
them wanted to talk. I mean, you know, it's sort
of when the state says, oh, confidentiality, as if what
the foster care is something to be ashamed of. The
kids fall. You know, this is supposed to be a
(10:02):
system where we're helping people, right, and what we're doing
at best, I think is warehousing people. That's the good situation, right.
And one thing I found you said this also one
thing I found in really diving in here. Sure there
are people who are abusive in the system, but in
(10:23):
the main that is not the experience of kids in
the system. It's more like this kind of mechanized or
faceless kind of brutality. It's, as you said, indifferent. It's
a system. It's a machine, and kids are just sort
of moved along through the conveyor belt of the machine
(10:44):
from one stop to the next. And it is that
that impermanence and that lack of connection that really seems
to damage kids. That really is what spits young people
out at eighteen or in some case is at twenty one,
poorly equipped to navigate mainstream life jobs. You know, roommates
(11:09):
forget about like marriage and friendships and all that stuff,
but just sort of the basic building blocks of sort
of having a life where you can support yourself to college.
All of that is sort of not normal for kids
who grow up in foster care. And I think that
the structural invisibility of the system prevents us, the outsiders,
(11:33):
the general people, from realizing this, from really seeing that.
You know, half the people around you could have some
kind of connection to the foster care system, but you
would never know. You, as a parent, don't know that
the kids sitting next to your child in school doesn't
go home to you know, what you would call a
normal home. They might not even know where they're going
(11:54):
home to that night, and that has serious impacts on behavior.
And we can talk about the connection with prison if
you want, but that's part of it, you.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Know, And before we get into that part of it too,
because it has I see the interconnectedness with that as
well as how it intersects with the unhoused community too.
Is that people see the acting out or the behavior
that causes appalling or alarm, but not understanding the underroot
causes of it. The symptom is not being addressed. Children
(12:24):
are going to be children no matter what, and I
was an educator. They're going to act out whatever the
environment that they're in, the situational the best way, the
coping mechanisms and the skills that they have or that
they are taught to do. And if you don't have that,
and you have a system that creates this impenetrable wall
that you can't interface with kids to be able to
(12:45):
get building blocks and coping skills for them to be
able to navigate when they do age out, it's.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
A foregone conclusion.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
You're going to meet them and a penetrantary or another
penaut or another institutional holding place for them to be in.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
But let's look a little do that too. Yeh.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah. There are efforts to address various problems in foster care,
but they're kind of nibbling at the edges, right. You know,
there's one side of the conversation. It would be like
the abolition side. We need to just get rid of it.
It's a disaster. And you can see that argument because
the outcomes of foster care are frankly atrocious. We spend
thirty billion dollars every year on foster care in this country,
(13:26):
and you know, we'll be conservative here, We'll say twenty
five percent of kids who leave the system end up
homeless at some point in their life. There's data that
I have in the book that shows kids who have
grown up in foster care are three times more likely
to be incarcerated. There's other data that says, you know,
by the time kids age out of foster care, by
(13:48):
the time they're twenty six, more than half will have
been incarcerated. And that could include like juvenile detention while
you're still in foster care, or could include you know,
a county jail, or it could include state prison for
a serious crime. But that is insane, right, Numbers like
over fifty percent experience lock up. Being conservative, twenty five
(14:10):
percent will experience homelessness by the time they're twenty six.
And for this, this is what we're spending thirty billion
dollars every year for those accos. So you can understand
why abolitionists say this is ridiculous. You can't reform this system.
And I think that there might be something to that.
You know, we've tried, like I said, nibbling at the
(14:31):
edges and tweaking it. Like there's extended foster care, which
allows kids to remain sort of quote unquote under somebody's
roof and there's some kind of state support still happening
until they're twenty one. But there are a lot of
conditions that come with that in certain states, like you
have to be in school or you have to be employed.
These are reasonable conditions. I'm not saying they're not. But
(14:53):
so many young people when they turn eighteen and they've
had the state running their life since childhood and not
in a great way, they're not feeling I they want
to hang around for another three years for more of that.
So it's often very hard to get foster youth to
participate in extended foster care. Yes, there are incredible young
(15:17):
people who manage to do it and somehow get to
college and somehow have fulfilling, productive lives, and some of
them are in my book Wards of the State. But overall,
fewer than five percent of kids who age out of
foster care will ever get a four year college degree.
Fewer than five percent, and fifty nine percent or something
(15:38):
are getting locked up. This is wrong.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
This is wrong.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Let's talk on that a bit, because I was going
back through my mind's eye when you was mentioning that
when I was in high school, and I was like
many people coming from artwork circumstances, and I could get
to imagine someone that's dealing with foster care and they're
dealing with the challenges of high school growing up, and
someone asking what their future is going to be like
(16:05):
where they're going to stay.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Like one of the frightening things.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
For me was going to college because you know, this
is going to be the first time that I'm going
to be matching my wits on my own.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And how am I going to navigate that?
Speaker 4 (16:17):
You know, I can't go and expect the meals that's
going to be cooked, or where am I going to
go to do laundry because you know nobody's going to
be doing by laundry but me, or just the natural things.
How to take the bus, how to navigate the city
because I was leaving Chicago going to somewhere else and
I didn't know that area that was unfeigm and that
(16:38):
caused intense anxiety. I can say this now, but it
being you know, had this big bravado like I could
do it, but it took me a minute to really
navigate and understand how to do that, at least a
junior in college. And that was with having people on
campus that were considered mentors or people that was going
to look out for you because they.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Knew it's an overwhelming experience.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
This is new, all of those things, and now add
to the mix of not having that or having a
subpar type of shepherding, that is again an inevitable conclusion
that you're going to go to a place that's going
to continue to dictate your parameters instead of learning how
to be the one to dictate your own parameters.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
One of the really shocking things that I confronted in
doing this book was how long these patterns have been cycling.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
This is not some recent trend or sudden spike or anything.
This has been the case for decades, maybe for a century.
You know, we've only had foster care for a little
bit more than a century in the way that we
know foster care today. And it's been like this, like
the whole time, just sort of kids, so well, oh yeah,
(17:53):
we took you, We said it was going to be
safer for you, but oh well, and there's really no
kind of reckoning with the outcomes. This has been accepted
for decades, and I found that shocking. And the other thing,
I mean, you know, but anyone who has been eighteen
at any point. I come on, what eighteen year old
(18:16):
can really support themselves with? You know, a well paying job?
And you know, like half a foster youth don't have
a high school diploma. They drop out. So say your
foster kid, say you didn't drop out. Say you're better
than most, right, say you got your high school diploma. Okay,
So what are you gonna do with a high school diploma?
(18:39):
And how are you going to support yourself and get
a job? You're going to need more than that for
a decent living wage. And I'm not talking about luxury.
I'm talking about just basic making your way. And anybody
who lives in a major city knows you can't really
support yourself on a minimum wage job. And that's what
you're gonna get an eighteen year old with a high
(19:01):
school diploma. So this is just reality. And then anyone
who's been a parent would say, yeah, my kid on
their own at eighteen is not going to work. Right.
Anybody who just takes a breath and thinks what happens
to an eighteen year old on their own? Come on,
I mean, it's really obvious what we're setting up here.
(19:22):
So we could talk about some solutions.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Yeah, I was going to say, you know, we were
mentioning a little bit about your book about the incarceration factor.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
What do you find when they're incarcerated?
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Is there help available for them there or because I
think our society also has this delusion, because I noticed
when they're dealing with a house community members is that
there's solutions out there, their help out there, and they're
refusing help, and they're not understanding if they don't look
on with a keen eye, that the solutions are lacking
or in a wanting and you need to really break
(19:55):
it down to explain to them, like you know.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
These are not really solutions.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
These are solutions to hide the or the person or
the people, but not really solve the problem.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
It's in the entirety.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Yeah, the word solution is a problem here, right, because
these are not magic fixes exactly. It's not like, oh,
do this and do that and it's all good. It's
not like that. They are attempts to mitigate some of
the worst aspects. And that's what I mean, like we
kind of nibble at the edges, and I don't mean
to minimize the value of that. Any improvement is some improvement. Indeed,
(20:28):
So your question about services in lock up one of
the more interesting things in the book. So I'll just
quickly summarize, even though we're just talking about really serious
social policy questions here, the book is presented through the
eyes of six characters, six young people, six real people.
They're all real people, and they all are former foster youth.
(20:52):
One of them was still in foster care when we
started working together on this book. She was eighteen. She's
the youngest and she's just about to turn twenty one now.
And the oldest person is sixty years old and got
a life sentence very shortly out of Washington State foster care.
So that's the span, right, We've got somebody in their
(21:14):
late teens, early twenties and somebody sixty years old. The
point was to say, hey, this has been going on
a long time. This is generations of people. You know,
you got a baby boomer on one end, you got
what gen z or something on the other, and it's
still the same thing, right, Okay, So within that the
opening character and I want to emphasize I say character,
(21:37):
this is a real person, not based on truth, This
is an actual real person. This is journalism okay, right,
So she had been on the run from foster care.
As many many kids in foster care do. They run
from their places, and this doesn't mean they're actually running,
they're just not where they're supposed to be. They're out
(21:57):
and about. When she was on run, she was trafficked,
and she eventually ended up shooting a man in the head,
and she was arrested and charged with murder. I don't
want to give away too much of the book, but
one of the really fascinating things was, for a number
of reasons, this young woman she was nineteen when I
(22:21):
met her, and when she was sentenced. She committed this
crime when she was sixteen, and then she sat in
juvie for a couple of years. After she got sentenced,
she had the opportunity, through an unusual Washington state program,
to go to a youth facility, even though by this
point she was twenty years old. And the idea was, oh,
(22:42):
you know, a youth facility will be more focused on rehabilitation,
and she'll get education and counseling and job training and
all this stuff. Right, Well, there are a lot of
problems with that program. However, for her, it had an
incredible transformative effect. And it wasn't because the services in
(23:02):
lock up were so good. What it was was stability.
She was actually in one place for several years where
she knew she would be fed, she would be safe,
no one was going to jump her, and she was
going to have the same adult case manager working with
her all the time. There was going to be stability, consistency,
(23:25):
and opportunity for some kind of human attachment to one
consistent person, and safety. Just those like basic level things
created such a transformation in this young person that the
argument her defense had attempted to make the argument that
(23:45):
state government, the state foster care system, was in some
way to blame partly culpable for her crime. And when
you saw the effect of a stable reality, not luxuryous,
not anything. In fact, the services were kind of crappy,
but it was simply the stability and safety, there was
(24:08):
a massive transformation. The rest of that story is, you know,
you'll have to read the book because it's not a
perfect Unicorns and Rainbow's story, of course, but I bring
it up to your point about services and lock up
sometimes they are in fact better than what young people
are getting in the child welfare system, which is a
(24:29):
pretty serious indictment.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Right, yes, yes, We'll be back with more from Claudia
afters dis break.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Welcome back. This is theo Henderson Lewenian House.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
Here's the rest of my interview with Claudia wrote, you
were emageing earlier about there are some solutions that you
wanted to bring up or at some well, recommendations.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
What would you recommend?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
So there are a couple of things going on regarding
foster care. There are some efforts because you know, one
of the most damaging aspects of foster care is the
like I said before, the impermanence, right, So there are
some efforts to work to increase attachment of the young
person with a stable adult, which really matters far more
(25:17):
than we as a society have kind of admitted. It
matters for brain science, brain development, like chemical level stuff,
and it has a direct effect on behavior or frankly,
lack of being able to control your behavior. The lack
of attachment has sort of chemical brain chemical ramifications. There's
(25:38):
a little bit on brain chemistry in the book, just
a little not too deep, so addressing that finding ways
to create more attachment. So a lot of people may
have heard about kinship care This is sort of the
current leading edge where social workers will try to place
a foster youth with a relative or you know, even
(25:59):
a CLO's family friend or like a teacher who might
have a close connection with that kid. Even that, even
placing kids with relatives used to be until quite recently, absolutely,
if not forbidden, strongly discouraged, because the idea was, oh,
if you if you come from a family with problems,
you should obliterate any trace of that and then you'll,
(26:21):
like you said, you'll go on to this shining rainbow life,
which is just absurd because it's not how people's hearts
and minds work, right. They have attachment, They have bonds,
even to parents who were imperfect or even abusive. I mean,
there's a guy in the book whose mother tried to
kill him and he was still running away from foster
(26:43):
placement that he liked to try to find her on
the streets of Seattle. This is what it is like.
Human attachment. The bond thing is very, very strong. And
I think that foster care has not been the structure
of it as a system has not been a lot
with the way brains develop, the way kids develop into people.
(27:05):
So this issue about attachment and that the system undercuts
it and needs to build it is one thing. The
other thing is efforts like universal basic income that California
is I would say, sort of in the lead on
attempting that again really really recent. I think it was
just in twenty twenty two, right, the California put this
(27:27):
into play with very modest monthly income for young people
who are twenty one and on their own, and it's
a time limited thing. It's like a year or eighteen months.
I mean a lot of people are really skeptical about
universal basic income, right, I know that, and I can
be skeptical. But the assumption that people just want to
(27:50):
sit around and get a six hundred dollars check every
month or one thousand dollars every month, I mean, it's
not a lot of money and that's going to be
cool and fun and just sit around and like party
with their six hundred dollars. I mean it's ridiculous. That
is not Again, it is not how people operate. People
want dignity, they want to feel value, they want to
(28:13):
feel like they're doing something. This is again like a
basic human thing. Most people don't want to just sit
around and get high for their entire lives, you know,
like people want to be doing something and I think that,
I mean, I haven't gone super deep on universal basic income,
but from what I do know medium deep, it does
appear pretty promising.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
And should just see you mentioned that because also there's
also something that's going on in the unhoused community that
there has been pilot programs that have giving out maybe
a couple of more thousand dollars to unhouse people to
be able to find the ways, to find creative solutions
to get them off the street. And contrary to popular belief,
they use that money to get try to get off
(28:54):
the street, find ways to be you know, existing bills,
try to save the money. They did all of the
things that anyone that despite what people say, people just
like being out there, but if you don't give them
the dignity and also a solution that they feel that
they can take part in and feel like it's not
you're being judged to create your own creative solution. Like
(29:17):
with me, when I was in how it was very
difficult for me to get the purchase that and strangely
enough what helped me was creating this show and from
there I got received donations and From there, I was
able to start to navigate and make decisions that, oh,
now I can go to this little hotel, I can
go to this pod share, I can do this, I
(29:39):
can save up a little money to be able to
weigh my way out of the situation. And I think
that's one of the things that's missing with these, you know,
band aid type of solutions, where you just do insight safe,
where Karen Bass knows that she can't keep these people indefinitely,
but you don't give any funding or give any kind
of way of dem to be able to make dignify
(30:01):
housing solutions, dignified solutions to their situation. You're going to
have a revolving door. And it seems like that sounds
like that as promising for the youth, because I'm very
excited to hear that hopefully they can get an increase
in the amount and extension on the program because you know,
one year is not going to be enough.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah, Or that it spreads to more states.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
I don't hear about it too much anywhere else. I'm
sure some other state is trying it, but mostly it
seems to be mostly happening in California, Okay, And you know, Okay,
so that's like a Petri dish, right, Like, that's an experiment.
We can look at it and see. I hope that
we will as a society. I hope we will. I
hope we will pay attention to the results in an
(30:44):
intelligent way.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Nothing is ever going to be magic perfection, but there
are clues that you can use for what works and
build on them. I mean, I'm preaching to the choir here, right,
you know this, yes, yes, But like Wards of the State,
one of the young people in it is this teenager.
She's the one who was eighteen when we started. Name
is Tina. She was like living on the subways in
(31:07):
New York City when she was sixteen years old, foster kid, homeless,
in foster care. Right, she was sort of bouncing around
in foster care, and she was in foster homes, and
she was in group homes, and then she was back
with her mom. Because the system really pushes very very
hard for even though the system is built around in permanence,
(31:29):
it pushes nominally for what it calls stability, and that
is either reunite with your biological family or get adopted.
But there are a lot of kids who are not
going to be adopted, especially if you go into foster
care later if you're an adolescent. Most people only want
to adopt little little kids or babies, or there are
(31:50):
some biological families that are not safe to go back to,
and that was her case. She was returned to her mom.
The situation at home was no better. It was a
pretty pretty rough situation at home. She took off than there.
She was in New York City and she was in
(32:11):
the city's sort of youth shelter, which is for foster kids,
and for various reasons that are in the book, she
was sort of on the run from there as well.
And there she was on the subways in New York City.
A bunch of stuff happened, including crimes that she committed.
She ended up sort of in this court program, which
(32:33):
she did, and completed a court ordered jobs program, which
she did. She's a super bright girl. This girl is smart.
But when she turned eighteen, the facility where she was
living this was now in Ohio. She was sent to Ohio.
She did this court ordered thing. She was living in
a facility. She turns eighteen and they're like okay, goodbye,
(32:55):
you know, like they can't keep her and she had
nowhere to go or do you think she was homeless?
I mean there she was, took a bus to the city,
lands on the street, homeless, right, And this is a
foster care system, like attempting to do something but not really.
There are so many gaps where kids fall through. And
(33:15):
that's this girl. I guess I should say young woman.
She's twenty one now.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
But this is a.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Tough kid, smart girl, really smart, and she's you know,
sleeping in the subway.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
You know, I'm from Chicago originally, and I could tell
you subways sleeping. It's you take a gamble in many
respects of being in house, but like on the subway particularly.
I know you've heard about the Reese's story where the
unhoused woman was set on fire. Sleeping and things that
you take a serious chance. You know, you can never
really be getting the rest that you would if you
were in a house place, because you have to have
(33:50):
your high beams on me.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
That's exactly what she would say. It's profoundly unsafe. This
is a tough girl, not afraid to fight, and she
did not feel safe and she was not safe.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, other thing I would say about the book that
really strikes me. I mean, there's some tough stories in
this book, yes, but what I see our survival stories.
All of these people are fighting every day, not just
for themselves, but to get better, to survive better, to
(34:19):
do better. And every one of them talked to me
for the same reason. Every one of them, you know,
shared their files with me, their stories because whatever decisions
they've made that people may question right crimes that they
have committed, or weird twisted paths they've been on, or whatever.
You know, however you want to debate their decisions, every
(34:42):
one of them talked to me because they wanted to
make the system better for the kids coming up behind them.
And you know that matters. That's a powerful statement, I think,
not only about their own kind of development, like emotional development.
I mean, a lot of kids come out of foster
care with stunted empathy, right, And one of the guys
in the book talks quite a bit about that, But
(35:04):
they have it in some way. They certainly do have
it for all the other foster kids coming up behind them.
They absolutely do have empathy. They do have dawning self
awareness about themselves as part of a much larger system.
I was really moved by that in reporting the book.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
It just sounds so interesting and so intriguing. Where do
we find a book.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
It's everywhere, So you can just go on Amazon or
Barnes and Noble or bookshop dot org. If you prefer
that route, which is a nonprofit route, you can just
get it from your local independent bookseller. So wards of
the state, the long shadow of American foster care. I
call it the long shadow because it's not like you
(35:48):
go into foster care and you are taking care of
through your childhood and then off you go into your beautiful,
shining life. It's not like that at all. It hangs
over you, right, either with a criminal record or just
kind of attachment problems that we just talked about. I mean,
it is shaping the lives of people who have been
(36:09):
through it even. I mean, there are some people in
the book who have gone on to be hugely successful
going to the White House or lawyers. Right. There are
some people in the book who are who have been
quite successful despite a youth in foster care, and yet
they still are shaped by this shadow of the system
hanging over them. It is a big deal, and I
(36:32):
don't think in this country we have reckoned with it
nearly enough?
Speaker 4 (36:35):
What caused you to write this book? Because you say
that you've been doing this for some time. What was
the inspiration that really made you want to take a
deeper look? Because like we know, there's wall is there,
so you know, you seem like you were able to
overcome that.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
How did you say, I'm going to get past this.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Wall, climb this wall, or kick the wall down to
find these these participants or people that want to share
their stories.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
It was a bit of an accident. I did not
planned to write a book about foster care. How it
happened was I was sitting in court. I was there
for that young woman, Mary Anne's sentencing. She was going
to be sentenced for murder. I actually wasn't even there
for her case. I was there because I was maybe
(37:18):
kind of interested in a forensic psychologist who was going
to testify as to what he thought her punishment should be,
what should her sentence be. I was kind of interested
in his work. I thought maybe I would write about that.
He ended up never testifying, he was never called, and
the sentencing itself, which was supposed to be like a
(37:38):
two hour proceeding one day, ended up for various reasons,
stretching over three days, and by the end of it,
I was quite riveted on this girl's case, and I realized, Oh,
this is not just a crime story. This is a
much bigger story. This is a foster care story. And
I had covered child welfare as a journalist, but I
(38:00):
I had not ever looked intensively at adolescens in foster care,
older kids. So that was the impetus. I really wanted
to understand what was it like to be on the run,
What is that experience? Like? I wanted to tell it
through her eyes? How do you think? How do you
understand what you're doing? How did she see herself? I
(38:20):
really wanted to get that. And the deeper I got,
the bigger it got, and the more I realized, oh,
oh wow, there's this whole system that's like feeding kids
into locked cells, and that to me seemed like a
big deal and worthy of a book.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Outstanding.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
Well, I promised you I wouldn't keep you too long,
and I'm trying to keep my word.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Is it okay?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
If I had to invite you back, you know, to updates,
or if you do another book on these kind of things,
I will hopefully invite you back to get your insights.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
On it anytime. Invite me back anytime. I've really enjoyed
this conversation.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Be as well.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
Thank you so much to Claudia for her time and
for her work. You can learn more about her and
purchase the book at the Lincoln the description. Now, if
you have a story you'd like to share that's local
or international, please reach out to me at Widianhouse at
gmail dot com or widian House on Instagram. Once again,
(39:25):
thank you for listening. May we again meet in the
light of understanding. Widian House is a production of iHeartRadio.
It is written, hosted, and created by me Theo Henderson,
Our producers Jamie Loftus, Hailey Fager, Katie Fischel, and Lyra Smith.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Our editor is Adam Wand, our.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Engineer is Joel Jerome, and our local art is also
by Katie Fischer.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Thank you for listening.
Previously on Weedian House.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I think, coming from a British perspective, I'm very mindful
when everyone always wants to point the finger at America
because obviously under Trump it's really really bad. But I
think it's quite a dangerous game because it makes other
countries get away with it, you know, like we have
police brutality here. All the kind of terrible things go
(00:27):
on here, you know, and many people might say we're
the ones who taught America or the worst things. So
I think it's quite important to be aware.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Of what's going on.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Welcome back to Weedian Howse. I'm your host Bo Henderson.
This week we have the author of Wards of the State,
The Long Shadow of American foster Care. Our guest author,
Claudia Rooa is with us and we had a most
enlightening discussion the first on House News. Our first story
(01:19):
comes from Washington, d C. The Justice Department has been
brainstorming new ways to clear encampments. At President Donald Trump's urging,
top Justice officials sent employees in the Office of Justice
Programs and eight question email asking for a VERIR input
on how best to direct resources with the un housed
(01:40):
community and mental illnesses. Here's one of the questions. What
can the Department of Justice do to more efficiently shift
chronic vagrants away from the public square and into a
more concentrated space so that order can be restored and
resources and services can be deployed or effectively. Or this one,
(02:02):
what can the Department of Justice do to increase their
availability and use of involuntary commitment for individuals who otherwise
cannot or will not receive care. Lastly, what can the
federal government do to shift state and local government policies
and behavior to this issue. The Trump administration is moving
(02:26):
away from the housing first model, which is the policy
of placing people in stable housing before trying to direct
them into mental health or addiction services. Trump also issued
an executive order to make DC safe and Beautiful by
directing the National Park Services to remove all encampments from
federal land in the nation's capital. Our second story takes
(02:53):
place in Washington, DC again. On May twenty second, twenty
twenty five, the House Republican voted two hundred and fifteen
to two hundred and fourteen to upend the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program, also.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Known as the EBT or SNAP program.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
They are permanently changing the structure and are cutting three
hundred billion dollars over the next decade. This will take
food from millions of unhoused house families, children, disabled residents,
older adults, and veterans. Also impacted by these cuts will
be farmers, roasters, state and local governments, and the overall economy.
(03:35):
The thirty percent deep slash has opened a door to
starvation strategic and non strategic. Will people be choosing medication
over food because of this new three month time limit rule. Currently,
adults ages eighteen to fifty four must work eighty hours
a month to receive benefits unless they have young children. However,
(03:58):
under the new plan, these work requirements will extend to
parents with children over seven years old and to older
adults up to age sixty four. Over forty two million
people are struggling with food insecurity in the United States.
Not programs help more than forty million people feed their families.
(04:19):
And that's on House News. When we come back, we're
here from author Claudia Row about her new book about
the failures of the broken American foster care system. Welcome
back to William House. I'm THEO Henderson. Before we delve
(04:42):
into our interview with Claudia Row. I want to drop
a fact. Did you know that Medicaid covers one in
three children diagnosed with cancer in the United States? That
is true, and yet Trump recently approved to cut those benefits.
Many times, the ones that suffer are the vulnerable, such
as children who are unable to speak out against injustice.
(05:05):
Answer Miss Roll with her extensive interviews and the challenges
that impoverished children face in Mariada. Ways without further ado,
Missus Claudia wrote about her latest book, Wards of the State,
The Long Shadow of American Foster Care.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Hi, thank you so much for having me on and
for being interested in this topic and how the book
figures into it. So the book is Wards of the State,
The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, And initially when
I got into it, I was shocked to discover the
overlap between foster care and incarceration. The incredible number of
(05:50):
kids who literally go from one state system ward of
the state in one system to ward of the state
in another. Sometimes it's literal a seamless handoff, and the
numbers are really off the charts. Also within that is
homelessness that is somewhat more covered. The incredible numbers of
(06:13):
foster youth who leave the system aging out at eighteen,
some of them just go straight onto the street. You know.
The estimate is like twenty percent of foster kids who
age out will be immediately homeless. Other numbers, you know,
say that like twenty five percent of kids who've grown
up in foster care will experience houselessness by the time
(06:36):
they are twenty six. And there's other data that says
roughly fifty percent of the unhoused population in our country
our former foster youth. This is like ridiculous. We took
kids from their families to purportedly do something better, and
what we've done is create a population just like armies
(07:01):
of future homeless people that has received some coverage, the
connection with incarceration far less. So that's what wards of
the state looks at.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Well, here's the thing too that I remember when in
the earlier days, when I started the show, and I
interviewed a gentleman who was a young man, and he
told me he has been living literally he had a
family dynamic situation where his parents were killed in a
car accident and he went to live with his grandmother,
who was obviously of advanced age, and she passed away
and they placed him in the foster home. But the
(07:33):
foster home was such a condition of abusive situation that he,
at ten years old, just started living on the streets
and he has been living on the streets from then.
And I think one of the conversational points that I
like to point out too, is like one of the
things about houselessness and this new wave of erasing unhoused
or forcing unhoused people in places or environments that they
(07:55):
are erased and invisible because you can't see them, then
there's no house.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
It's problem.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
And I think that's part of it with the foster
care situation is when someone removes them, they have this
belief system that you know, the sunshine and rainbows, you know,
you know, you can walk down the Yellow Brook Road
and everything is wonderful, and it's far from the truth,
because there you left someone from their connective duculus of
a family, and then you got them into some system
that is very abject and very indifferent too. If they
(08:24):
survive or not or survive or thrive, and then so
when they get to become eighteen, there are no tools,
there are no ways of navigating the situation of life.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Even if you are housed then you're not a foster kid.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
It's still difficult, but it becomes increasingly more difficult if
you didn't have someone that shepherd you along the challenges,
the milestones of life, you know, you know, teenage years
and learning how to do a resume, how to present
yourself to employers, how to look for housing, and things
like that, so that those are key skills that sometimes
(08:55):
get overlooked.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah, you said a couple of essential words there, you
said invisible. This is something that frustrated me as a reporter.
So I'm a journalist. I've been covering child welfare and
juvenile justice for like nearly thirty five years, a long time.
And one thing that any reporter who looks at this
is going to encounter is the sort of oh, confidentiality,
(09:19):
and you're dealing with minors and children's privacy, and so
there's this structural you know, laws that allow the state
to shield kids supposedly for their own protection, but really
what it does is shield the state. What it really
does is prevent scrutiny from outsiders, from journalists. Right, And
(09:42):
I'll tell you every young person I talked to for
this book, and there were many, many, every one of
them wanted to talk. I mean, you know, it's sort
of when the state says, oh, confidentiality, as if what
the foster care is something to be ashamed of. The
kids fall. You know, this is supposed to be a
(10:02):
system where we're helping people, right, and what we're doing
at best, I think is warehousing people. That's the good situation, right.
And one thing I found you said this also one
thing I found in really diving in here. Sure there
are people who are abusive in the system, but in
(10:23):
the main that is not the experience of kids in
the system. It's more like this kind of mechanized or
faceless kind of brutality. It's, as you said, indifferent. It's
a system. It's a machine, and kids are just sort
of moved along through the conveyor belt of the machine
(10:44):
from one stop to the next. And it is that
that impermanence and that lack of connection that really seems
to damage kids. That really is what spits young people
out at eighteen or in some case is at twenty one,
poorly equipped to navigate mainstream life jobs. You know, roommates
(11:09):
forget about like marriage and friendships and all that stuff,
but just sort of the basic building blocks of sort
of having a life where you can support yourself to college.
All of that is sort of not normal for kids
who grow up in foster care. And I think that
the structural invisibility of the system prevents us, the outsiders,
(11:33):
the general people, from realizing this, from really seeing that.
You know, half the people around you could have some
kind of connection to the foster care system, but you
would never know. You, as a parent, don't know that
the kids sitting next to your child in school doesn't
go home to you know, what you would call a
normal home. They might not even know where they're going
(11:54):
home to that night, and that has serious impacts on behavior.
And we can talk about the connection with prison if
you want, but that's part of it, you.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Know, And before we get into that part of it too,
because it has I see the interconnectedness with that as
well as how it intersects with the unhoused community too.
Is that people see the acting out or the behavior
that causes appalling or alarm, but not understanding the underroot
causes of it. The symptom is not being addressed. Children
(12:24):
are going to be children no matter what, and I
was an educator. They're going to act out whatever the
environment that they're in, the situational the best way, the
coping mechanisms and the skills that they have or that
they are taught to do. And if you don't have that,
and you have a system that creates this impenetrable wall
that you can't interface with kids to be able to
(12:45):
get building blocks and coping skills for them to be
able to navigate when they do age out, it's.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
A foregone conclusion.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
You're going to meet them and a penetrantary or another
penaut or another institutional holding place for them to be in.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
But let's look a little do that too. Yeh.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah. There are efforts to address various problems in foster care,
but they're kind of nibbling at the edges, right. You know,
there's one side of the conversation. It would be like
the abolition side. We need to just get rid of it.
It's a disaster. And you can see that argument because
the outcomes of foster care are frankly atrocious. We spend
thirty billion dollars every year on foster care in this country,
(13:26):
and you know, we'll be conservative here, We'll say twenty
five percent of kids who leave the system end up
homeless at some point in their life. There's data that
I have in the book that shows kids who have
grown up in foster care are three times more likely
to be incarcerated. There's other data that says, you know,
by the time kids age out of foster care, by
(13:48):
the time they're twenty six, more than half will have
been incarcerated. And that could include like juvenile detention while
you're still in foster care, or could include you know,
a county jail, or it could include state prison for
a serious crime. But that is insane, right, Numbers like
over fifty percent experience lock up. Being conservative, twenty five
(14:10):
percent will experience homelessness by the time they're twenty six.
And for this, this is what we're spending thirty billion
dollars every year for those accos. So you can understand
why abolitionists say this is ridiculous. You can't reform this system.
And I think that there might be something to that.
You know, we've tried, like I said, nibbling at the
(14:31):
edges and tweaking it. Like there's extended foster care, which
allows kids to remain sort of quote unquote under somebody's
roof and there's some kind of state support still happening
until they're twenty one. But there are a lot of
conditions that come with that in certain states, like you
have to be in school or you have to be employed.
These are reasonable conditions. I'm not saying they're not. But
(14:53):
so many young people when they turn eighteen and they've
had the state running their life since childhood and not
in a great way, they're not feeling I they want
to hang around for another three years for more of that.
So it's often very hard to get foster youth to
participate in extended foster care. Yes, there are incredible young
(15:17):
people who manage to do it and somehow get to
college and somehow have fulfilling, productive lives, and some of
them are in my book Wards of the State. But overall,
fewer than five percent of kids who age out of
foster care will ever get a four year college degree.
Fewer than five percent, and fifty nine percent or something
(15:38):
are getting locked up. This is wrong.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
This is wrong.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Let's talk on that a bit, because I was going
back through my mind's eye when you was mentioning that
when I was in high school, and I was like
many people coming from artwork circumstances, and I could get
to imagine someone that's dealing with foster care and they're
dealing with the challenges of high school growing up, and
someone asking what their future is going to be like
(16:05):
where they're going to stay.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Like one of the frightening things.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
For me was going to college because you know, this
is going to be the first time that I'm going
to be matching my wits on my own.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And how am I going to navigate that?
Speaker 4 (16:17):
You know, I can't go and expect the meals that's
going to be cooked, or where am I going to
go to do laundry because you know nobody's going to
be doing by laundry but me, or just the natural things.
How to take the bus, how to navigate the city
because I was leaving Chicago going to somewhere else and
I didn't know that area that was unfeigm and that
(16:38):
caused intense anxiety. I can say this now, but it
being you know, had this big bravado like I could
do it, but it took me a minute to really
navigate and understand how to do that, at least a
junior in college. And that was with having people on
campus that were considered mentors or people that was going
to look out for you because they.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Knew it's an overwhelming experience.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
This is new, all of those things, and now add
to the mix of not having that or having a
subpar type of shepherding, that is again an inevitable conclusion
that you're going to go to a place that's going
to continue to dictate your parameters instead of learning how
to be the one to dictate your own parameters.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
One of the really shocking things that I confronted in
doing this book was how long these patterns have been cycling.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
This is not some recent trend or sudden spike or anything.
This has been the case for decades, maybe for a century.
You know, we've only had foster care for a little
bit more than a century in the way that we
know foster care today. And it's been like this, like
the whole time, just sort of kids, so well, oh yeah,
(17:53):
we took you, We said it was going to be
safer for you, but oh well, and there's really no
kind of reckoning with the outcomes. This has been accepted
for decades, and I found that shocking. And the other thing,
I mean, you know, but anyone who has been eighteen
at any point. I come on, what eighteen year old
(18:16):
can really support themselves with? You know, a well paying job?
And you know, like half a foster youth don't have
a high school diploma. They drop out. So say your
foster kid, say you didn't drop out. Say you're better
than most, right, say you got your high school diploma. Okay,
So what are you gonna do with a high school diploma?
(18:39):
And how are you going to support yourself and get
a job? You're going to need more than that for
a decent living wage. And I'm not talking about luxury.
I'm talking about just basic making your way. And anybody
who lives in a major city knows you can't really
support yourself on a minimum wage job. And that's what
you're gonna get an eighteen year old with a high
(19:01):
school diploma. So this is just reality. And then anyone
who's been a parent would say, yeah, my kid on
their own at eighteen is not going to work. Right.
Anybody who just takes a breath and thinks what happens
to an eighteen year old on their own? Come on,
I mean, it's really obvious what we're setting up here.
(19:22):
So we could talk about some solutions.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Yeah, I was going to say, you know, we were
mentioning a little bit about your book about the incarceration factor.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
What do you find when they're incarcerated?
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Is there help available for them there or because I
think our society also has this delusion, because I noticed
when they're dealing with a house community members is that
there's solutions out there, their help out there, and they're
refusing help, and they're not understanding if they don't look
on with a keen eye, that the solutions are lacking
or in a wanting and you need to really break
(19:55):
it down to explain to them, like you know.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
These are not really solutions.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
These are solutions to hide the or the person or
the people, but not really solve the problem.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
It's in the entirety.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Yeah, the word solution is a problem here, right, because
these are not magic fixes exactly. It's not like, oh,
do this and do that and it's all good. It's
not like that. They are attempts to mitigate some of
the worst aspects. And that's what I mean, like we
kind of nibble at the edges, and I don't mean
to minimize the value of that. Any improvement is some improvement. Indeed,
(20:28):
So your question about services in lock up one of
the more interesting things in the book. So I'll just
quickly summarize, even though we're just talking about really serious
social policy questions here, the book is presented through the
eyes of six characters, six young people, six real people.
They're all real people, and they all are former foster youth.
(20:52):
One of them was still in foster care when we
started working together on this book. She was eighteen. She's
the youngest and she's just about to turn twenty one now.
And the oldest person is sixty years old and got
a life sentence very shortly out of Washington State foster care.
So that's the span, right, We've got somebody in their
(21:14):
late teens, early twenties and somebody sixty years old. The
point was to say, hey, this has been going on
a long time. This is generations of people. You know,
you got a baby boomer on one end, you got
what gen z or something on the other, and it's
still the same thing, right, Okay, So within that the
opening character and I want to emphasize I say character,
(21:37):
this is a real person, not based on truth, This
is an actual real person. This is journalism okay, right,
So she had been on the run from foster care.
As many many kids in foster care do. They run
from their places, and this doesn't mean they're actually running,
they're just not where they're supposed to be. They're out
(21:57):
and about. When she was on run, she was trafficked,
and she eventually ended up shooting a man in the head,
and she was arrested and charged with murder. I don't
want to give away too much of the book, but
one of the really fascinating things was, for a number
of reasons, this young woman she was nineteen when I
(22:21):
met her, and when she was sentenced. She committed this
crime when she was sixteen, and then she sat in
juvie for a couple of years. After she got sentenced,
she had the opportunity, through an unusual Washington state program,
to go to a youth facility, even though by this
point she was twenty years old. And the idea was, oh,
(22:42):
you know, a youth facility will be more focused on rehabilitation,
and she'll get education and counseling and job training and
all this stuff. Right, Well, there are a lot of
problems with that program. However, for her, it had an
incredible transformative effect. And it wasn't because the services in
(23:02):
lock up were so good. What it was was stability.
She was actually in one place for several years where
she knew she would be fed, she would be safe,
no one was going to jump her, and she was
going to have the same adult case manager working with
her all the time. There was going to be stability, consistency,
(23:25):
and opportunity for some kind of human attachment to one
consistent person, and safety. Just those like basic level things
created such a transformation in this young person that the
argument her defense had attempted to make the argument that
(23:45):
state government, the state foster care system, was in some
way to blame partly culpable for her crime. And when
you saw the effect of a stable reality, not luxuryous,
not anything. In fact, the services were kind of crappy,
but it was simply the stability and safety, there was
(24:08):
a massive transformation. The rest of that story is, you know,
you'll have to read the book because it's not a
perfect Unicorns and Rainbow's story, of course, but I bring
it up to your point about services and lock up
sometimes they are in fact better than what young people
are getting in the child welfare system, which is a
(24:29):
pretty serious indictment.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Right, yes, yes, We'll be back with more from Claudia
afters dis break.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Welcome back. This is theo Henderson Lewenian House.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
Here's the rest of my interview with Claudia wrote, you
were emageing earlier about there are some solutions that you
wanted to bring up or at some well, recommendations.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
What would you recommend?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
So there are a couple of things going on regarding
foster care. There are some efforts because you know, one
of the most damaging aspects of foster care is the
like I said before, the impermanence, right, So there are
some efforts to work to increase attachment of the young
person with a stable adult, which really matters far more
(25:17):
than we as a society have kind of admitted. It
matters for brain science, brain development, like chemical level stuff,
and it has a direct effect on behavior or frankly,
lack of being able to control your behavior. The lack
of attachment has sort of chemical brain chemical ramifications. There's
(25:38):
a little bit on brain chemistry in the book, just
a little not too deep, so addressing that finding ways
to create more attachment. So a lot of people may
have heard about kinship care This is sort of the
current leading edge where social workers will try to place
a foster youth with a relative or you know, even
(25:59):
a CLO's family friend or like a teacher who might
have a close connection with that kid. Even that, even
placing kids with relatives used to be until quite recently, absolutely,
if not forbidden, strongly discouraged, because the idea was, oh,
if you if you come from a family with problems,
you should obliterate any trace of that and then you'll,
(26:21):
like you said, you'll go on to this shining rainbow life,
which is just absurd because it's not how people's hearts
and minds work, right. They have attachment, They have bonds,
even to parents who were imperfect or even abusive. I mean,
there's a guy in the book whose mother tried to
kill him and he was still running away from foster
(26:43):
placement that he liked to try to find her on
the streets of Seattle. This is what it is like.
Human attachment. The bond thing is very, very strong. And
I think that foster care has not been the structure
of it as a system has not been a lot
with the way brains develop, the way kids develop into people.
(27:05):
So this issue about attachment and that the system undercuts
it and needs to build it is one thing. The
other thing is efforts like universal basic income that California
is I would say, sort of in the lead on
attempting that again really really recent. I think it was
just in twenty twenty two, right, the California put this
(27:27):
into play with very modest monthly income for young people
who are twenty one and on their own, and it's
a time limited thing. It's like a year or eighteen months.
I mean a lot of people are really skeptical about
universal basic income, right, I know that, and I can
be skeptical. But the assumption that people just want to
(27:50):
sit around and get a six hundred dollars check every
month or one thousand dollars every month, I mean, it's
not a lot of money and that's going to be
cool and fun and just sit around and like party
with their six hundred dollars. I mean it's ridiculous. That
is not Again, it is not how people operate. People
want dignity, they want to feel value, they want to
(28:13):
feel like they're doing something. This is again like a
basic human thing. Most people don't want to just sit
around and get high for their entire lives, you know,
like people want to be doing something and I think that,
I mean, I haven't gone super deep on universal basic income,
but from what I do know medium deep, it does
appear pretty promising.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
And should just see you mentioned that because also there's
also something that's going on in the unhoused community that
there has been pilot programs that have giving out maybe
a couple of more thousand dollars to unhouse people to
be able to find the ways, to find creative solutions
to get them off the street. And contrary to popular belief,
they use that money to get try to get off
(28:54):
the street, find ways to be you know, existing bills,
try to save the money. They did all of the
things that anyone that despite what people say, people just
like being out there, but if you don't give them
the dignity and also a solution that they feel that
they can take part in and feel like it's not
you're being judged to create your own creative solution. Like
(29:17):
with me, when I was in how it was very
difficult for me to get the purchase that and strangely
enough what helped me was creating this show and from
there I got received donations and From there, I was
able to start to navigate and make decisions that, oh,
now I can go to this little hotel, I can
go to this pod share, I can do this, I
(29:39):
can save up a little money to be able to
weigh my way out of the situation. And I think
that's one of the things that's missing with these, you know,
band aid type of solutions, where you just do insight safe,
where Karen Bass knows that she can't keep these people indefinitely,
but you don't give any funding or give any kind
of way of dem to be able to make dignify
(30:01):
housing solutions, dignified solutions to their situation. You're going to
have a revolving door. And it seems like that sounds
like that as promising for the youth, because I'm very
excited to hear that hopefully they can get an increase
in the amount and extension on the program because you know,
one year is not going to be enough.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah, Or that it spreads to more states.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
I don't hear about it too much anywhere else. I'm
sure some other state is trying it, but mostly it
seems to be mostly happening in California, Okay, And you know, Okay,
so that's like a Petri dish, right, Like, that's an experiment.
We can look at it and see. I hope that
we will as a society. I hope we will. I
hope we will pay attention to the results in an
(30:44):
intelligent way.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Nothing is ever going to be magic perfection, but there
are clues that you can use for what works and
build on them. I mean, I'm preaching to the choir here, right,
you know this, yes, yes, But like Wards of the State,
one of the young people in it is this teenager.
She's the one who was eighteen when we started. Name
is Tina. She was like living on the subways in
(31:07):
New York City when she was sixteen years old, foster kid, homeless,
in foster care. Right, she was sort of bouncing around
in foster care, and she was in foster homes, and
she was in group homes, and then she was back
with her mom. Because the system really pushes very very
hard for even though the system is built around in permanence,
(31:29):
it pushes nominally for what it calls stability, and that
is either reunite with your biological family or get adopted.
But there are a lot of kids who are not
going to be adopted, especially if you go into foster
care later if you're an adolescent. Most people only want
to adopt little little kids or babies, or there are
(31:50):
some biological families that are not safe to go back to,
and that was her case. She was returned to her mom.
The situation at home was no better. It was a
pretty pretty rough situation at home. She took off than there.
She was in New York City and she was in
(32:11):
the city's sort of youth shelter, which is for foster kids,
and for various reasons that are in the book, she
was sort of on the run from there as well.
And there she was on the subways in New York City.
A bunch of stuff happened, including crimes that she committed.
She ended up sort of in this court program, which
(32:33):
she did, and completed a court ordered jobs program, which
she did. She's a super bright girl. This girl is smart.
But when she turned eighteen, the facility where she was
living this was now in Ohio. She was sent to Ohio.
She did this court ordered thing. She was living in
a facility. She turns eighteen and they're like okay, goodbye,
(32:55):
you know, like they can't keep her and she had
nowhere to go or do you think she was homeless?
I mean there she was, took a bus to the city,
lands on the street, homeless, right, And this is a
foster care system, like attempting to do something but not really.
There are so many gaps where kids fall through. And
(33:15):
that's this girl. I guess I should say young woman.
She's twenty one now.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
But this is a.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Tough kid, smart girl, really smart, and she's you know,
sleeping in the subway.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
You know, I'm from Chicago originally, and I could tell
you subways sleeping. It's you take a gamble in many
respects of being in house, but like on the subway particularly.
I know you've heard about the Reese's story where the
unhoused woman was set on fire. Sleeping and things that
you take a serious chance. You know, you can never
really be getting the rest that you would if you
were in a house place, because you have to have
(33:50):
your high beams on me.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
That's exactly what she would say. It's profoundly unsafe. This
is a tough girl, not afraid to fight, and she
did not feel safe and she was not safe.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, other thing I would say about the book that
really strikes me. I mean, there's some tough stories in
this book, yes, but what I see our survival stories.
All of these people are fighting every day, not just
for themselves, but to get better, to survive better, to
(34:19):
do better. And every one of them talked to me
for the same reason. Every one of them, you know,
shared their files with me, their stories because whatever decisions
they've made that people may question right crimes that they
have committed, or weird twisted paths they've been on, or whatever.
You know, however you want to debate their decisions, every
(34:42):
one of them talked to me because they wanted to
make the system better for the kids coming up behind them.
And you know that matters. That's a powerful statement, I think,
not only about their own kind of development, like emotional development.
I mean, a lot of kids come out of foster
care with stunted empathy, right, And one of the guys
in the book talks quite a bit about that, But
(35:04):
they have it in some way. They certainly do have
it for all the other foster kids coming up behind them.
They absolutely do have empathy. They do have dawning self
awareness about themselves as part of a much larger system.
I was really moved by that in reporting the book.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
It just sounds so interesting and so intriguing. Where do
we find a book.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
It's everywhere, So you can just go on Amazon or
Barnes and Noble or bookshop dot org. If you prefer
that route, which is a nonprofit route, you can just
get it from your local independent bookseller. So wards of
the state, the long shadow of American foster care. I
call it the long shadow because it's not like you
(35:48):
go into foster care and you are taking care of
through your childhood and then off you go into your beautiful,
shining life. It's not like that at all. It hangs
over you, right, either with a criminal record or just
kind of attachment problems that we just talked about. I mean,
it is shaping the lives of people who have been
(36:09):
through it even. I mean, there are some people in
the book who have gone on to be hugely successful
going to the White House or lawyers. Right. There are
some people in the book who are who have been
quite successful despite a youth in foster care, and yet
they still are shaped by this shadow of the system
hanging over them. It is a big deal, and I
(36:32):
don't think in this country we have reckoned with it
nearly enough?
Speaker 4 (36:35):
What caused you to write this book? Because you say
that you've been doing this for some time. What was
the inspiration that really made you want to take a
deeper look? Because like we know, there's wall is there,
so you know, you seem like you were able to
overcome that.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
How did you say, I'm going to get past this.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Wall, climb this wall, or kick the wall down to
find these these participants or people that want to share
their stories.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
It was a bit of an accident. I did not
planned to write a book about foster care. How it
happened was I was sitting in court. I was there
for that young woman, Mary Anne's sentencing. She was going
to be sentenced for murder. I actually wasn't even there
for her case. I was there because I was maybe
(37:18):
kind of interested in a forensic psychologist who was going
to testify as to what he thought her punishment should be,
what should her sentence be. I was kind of interested
in his work. I thought maybe I would write about that.
He ended up never testifying, he was never called, and
the sentencing itself, which was supposed to be like a
(37:38):
two hour proceeding one day, ended up for various reasons,
stretching over three days, and by the end of it,
I was quite riveted on this girl's case, and I realized, Oh,
this is not just a crime story. This is a
much bigger story. This is a foster care story. And
I had covered child welfare as a journalist, but I
(38:00):
I had not ever looked intensively at adolescens in foster care,
older kids. So that was the impetus. I really wanted
to understand what was it like to be on the run,
What is that experience? Like? I wanted to tell it
through her eyes? How do you think? How do you
understand what you're doing? How did she see herself? I
(38:20):
really wanted to get that. And the deeper I got,
the bigger it got, and the more I realized, oh,
oh wow, there's this whole system that's like feeding kids
into locked cells, and that to me seemed like a
big deal and worthy of a book.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Outstanding.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
Well, I promised you I wouldn't keep you too long,
and I'm trying to keep my word.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Is it okay?
Speaker 4 (38:44):
If I had to invite you back, you know, to updates,
or if you do another book on these kind of things,
I will hopefully invite you back to get your insights.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
On it anytime. Invite me back anytime. I've really enjoyed
this conversation.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Be as well.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
Thank you so much to Claudia for her time and
for her work. You can learn more about her and
purchase the book at the Lincoln the description. Now, if
you have a story you'd like to share that's local
or international, please reach out to me at Widianhouse at
gmail dot com or widian House on Instagram. Once again,
(39:25):
thank you for listening. May we again meet in the
light of understanding. Widian House is a production of iHeartRadio.
It is written, hosted, and created by me Theo Henderson,
Our producers Jamie Loftus, Hailey Fager, Katie Fischel, and Lyra Smith.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Our editor is Adam Wand, our.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Engineer is Joel Jerome, and our local art is also
by Katie Fischer.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Thank you for listening.
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