October 2, 2025 • 38 mins
In this episode, Kiran Chawla sits down with Tommy Sigman who at 21 years of age has authored his second book based on his experience in Louisiana’s Foster Care system.
At just 15 years old Tommy authored his first book titled “The Greatest Advantage aimed at those children in the foster care system guided them to new heights of possibility, with his second release Tommy examines a system he says is broken in Louisiana and provides his version of a blueprint to fix it.
Chapters
02:07 Meet Tommy: A Young Author
05:25 From Trauma to Triumph
08:04 The Role of Foster Families
11:20 Breaking the Cycle
19:37 The Next Chapter: "Broken by Design"
24:02 The Need for Systemic Change
29:28 DCFS
33:50 Becoming a Foster Parent
Local Sponsors for this episode include:
Neighbors Federal Credit Union:
Another Chance Bail Bonds:
Dudley DeBosier Injury Lawyers
Sound and Editing for this audio podcast by Envision Podcast Production:
Tags: #louisianaunfiltered #kiranchawla #podcast #unfilteredwithkiran #news #louisiana #TommySigman
At just 15 years old Tommy authored his first book titled “The Greatest Advantage aimed at those children in the foster care system guided them to new heights of possibility, with his second release Tommy examines a system he says is broken in Louisiana and provides his version of a blueprint to fix it.
Chapters
02:07 Meet Tommy: A Young Author
05:25 From Trauma to Triumph
08:04 The Role of Foster Families
11:20 Breaking the Cycle
19:37 The Next Chapter: "Broken by Design"
24:02 The Need for Systemic Change
29:28 DCFS
33:50 Becoming a Foster Parent
Local Sponsors for this episode include:
Neighbors Federal Credit Union:
Another Chance Bail Bonds:
Dudley DeBosier Injury Lawyers
Sound and Editing for this audio podcast by Envision Podcast Production:
Tags: #louisianaunfiltered #kiranchawla #podcast #unfilteredwithkiran #news #louisiana #TommySigman
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is sponsored by Deli de Bojer injury lawyers
fighting for those who've been hurt and deserve to be heard,
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Our team is here to protect your rights and get results.
You focus on healing, will handle the rest.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Called four four four four four four four or.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Visit delidboja dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Responsible attorney James Pelcha Betrouge.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
What if at just fourteen years old, everything you knew
was taken from you, your home, your family, your stability.
That's the moment our guest's life was turned upside down
when he was placed in Louisiana's foster care system. He
(00:54):
remembers the hopelessness, the sadness, the way children are often
made to like they're nothing more than victims of their circumstances.
But instead of letting that define him, he made a choice,
a choice to survive. At sixteen, while most kids are
(01:15):
just trying to get through high school, he was writing
his first book, a book meant to tell other children
in foster care that their story did not have to
end in tragedy, that they could succeed as well. Kids
have come back to him saying that book changed their lives. Now,
(01:39):
at twenty one, he's preparing to release a second book,
one that pulls back the curtain on what he calls
a broken system inside the Department of Children and Family Services.
It's a raw, unfiltered look at foster care and a
call for change. This conversation will open your eyes, challenge
(02:05):
what you think you know, and stay with you long
after it ends. I'm Kieren Challa and this is Louisiana Unfiltered.
(02:28):
Welcome back to everyone. This week we are joined by
somebody who, all of a sudden, I now feel like
I am not accomplished enough. Twenty one years old and
he has just published his second book. Tommy, thank you
so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
So I guess first off, let's start with tell us
what this book is about.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, so, this book basically encompasses the tire blueprint for
what I view to be the solution to fix foster care.
I think foster care is multiple policies in place that
are keeping it in the state that it's in, which
is four thousand foster kids, no foster families. We're not
recruiting new families, we're not maintaining families. Most majority of
the kids become homeless or get go to prison, get
(03:12):
on drugs immediately after they age out, and it's a
real problem. It's a crisis, especially here in Louisiana. So
this book is the solution for how we fix this.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
And I started to ask you this before we got
going that what is your background? What gives you this
information and knowledge to even write this book.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, so I was actually in the system as a
fourteen year old. I had my case opened up when
I was a little older. Most kids coming when they're younger.
I was a teenager. You know, my mom had some
mental health issues and some things going on in her life,
and it just wasn't really a safe situation with her.
So I ended up going to my dad's. But I
was at my dad's only for a short period because
he went to prison for drugs. He had bad meth problems,
(03:53):
haroin problems, so he was badly off on drugs. So
what that led to was it led to me essentially homeless.
I had nowhere to go, nowhere to live. So they
the state got involved. They found out I moved in
with a foster family. It was a foster family recruited.
Actually it was my teacher. So they opened up their
home to me. I moved in with them, and I
(04:14):
pretty much immediately realized that when you go into foster care,
there's no resources, there's nothing to teach you. How do
you process and cope with what you just went through?
You know, it's for a kid to end up in
foster care, you got to really go through a barrier
of trauma to end up in that position. For a
kid to get there, it means they were extremely neglected,
(04:34):
abused physically, sexually, things like that. And all these kids
they go into foster care, and what the state tells
you is we're going to make you go to a therapist,
and the therapist. What the therapist told you is Okay,
even though you've been through all this extreme trauma, the
reason you're not happy and you're sad or you feel
anxious is because you have anxiety and depression and you
(04:56):
need medication. So these kids that grow up in this
traumatic council, I think, Okay, I am I am broken.
My brain's broken. I need medicine, and that's my fault.
It's my fault, and that's all they're given. So I
decided I'm going to write a book, and the purpose
of the book is to teach these people. You teach
these kids, how do you take this trauma and take
(05:16):
what you went through and put it into more positive
energy for your life? How do you become something successful
on the other side of that. And it talks about
how to set goals, how to find mentors, strategies on
making money, on finding jobs, things like that. It's a
complete outline for how to go from the worst situation
and train your mind to become successful. So the state
(05:37):
got involved and they put a stop to it. They
came to my school one day they said, hey, you
can't release this book. That's the first one though, that
was the first one.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
So let's back up. This is your second book. What's
the name of the first one? When was that released?
How old were you? What's that one about?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So the first book is it's called The Greatest Advantage.
I was sixteen when I published that book. I was
fifteen when I wrote it. So that book, that's the
book that encompassed is how to take how to become successful,
on how to take all the trauma and pain you
went through and process it in a healthy manner. The
goal of the book was really for other foster kids,
because it was the only resource for them to teach
(06:12):
them how to overcome what they went through. So this
state came and got came into that and they said, hey,
we don't want you to release this book. You're not
allowed to release it. And their argument was because I'm
a ward of the state, and we said.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
No, you're a word of the state.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Award of the state, meaning you're in custody of the state.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Okay. And then who from the state came to you.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
The state sent my social worker and an attorney, one
of their attorneys and my social workers. So they came
to me and they said, hey, you can't release this book.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
So DCFS, they said, your response to this.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
My response was, well, I asked him, I said, is
there any order, any judicial order saying I can't release it?
And their response was just no, your guardian and they
said no. So I released the book anyways, So a
week later we did a big press release, a big
book launch, and it immediately sold thousands of copies. It
was an Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Walmart target within a week.
(07:15):
So there was nothing they could do to stop it
from that point. So what they did from there is
they basically sent out a silent press release to all
these journalists that were showcasing me, and they said, if
you have Tommy on your show when you're further we
are going to sue you as a state of Louisiana
on what grounds Because I was a minor and they
were saying, as are his parent, he's not allowed to
(07:37):
go out and speak on this book, or he's not
allowed to do media in general. They were saying, I
was breaking my own confidentiality because when you're a foster kid,
there's confidentiality laws to protect that kid. They were saying,
I was breaking my own confidentiality by exposing my story
in what I was doing. But what they were really
afraid of is they were afraid I was going to
say something that would make them look bad and bring
(07:59):
live ability to them.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Well, unfortunately, in the last few years, we've kind of
seen that onion. The layers, and I mean layers peeled
back when it comes to DCFS, from hearings to committees
to secretaries being pulled out of the job. We're seeing
it first handed. You, however, were in it. I think
(08:26):
one of the most important things is the teacher, the
family who took you in talk to me about them, like,
how big of a role did they play in your life?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah? They were massive. So that was the first It's
interesting because two things happened out of that first Off,
it brought me on a more personal level, brought me security.
I had a family for the first time, I had,
you know, people that took me in as their own.
And my whole life up to that point was really
just survival. It was staying afloat, surviving, making sure I
was okay. This was the first time I had a
(08:56):
family type circumstance where I get okay, I can actually
eath and relax, and it was different. But what it
really taught me was it taught me about how DCFS
operates because foster care. My entire first year of being
with that family, foster Care was religiously or relentlessly trying
to put me back in with one of my parents.
They were trying to make a way for me to
(09:18):
go back in with a family member, even though I
had a family that I was staying with and it
was clearly working out in a good placement. Their goal,
the foster cares entire goal is biology over permanency. They
want you to be back with your family no matter what.
That's protocol. And I could understand it because I'm saying, okay,
my entire life, I struggled. You know, my dad is
(09:41):
in jail because he had possession of meth and heroin
and this was his thousandth time going to jail. Why
are we trying to force me to go back with
him when I have a loving family that's here, that's
keeping me in their house and things are going well.
And it was because it was protocol.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
How was this determined? Were these conversations you were having
with a human being there or was this hey all email?
What was going on?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So you have like a monthly hearing when you're in
foster care, you have a regular hearing where what happens
is you have a social worker, and then if you
have an attorney or if you have a cost of
worker and they're supposed to supply you an attorney. In
foster care, you have a monthly hearing where they review
your case. They say, here's what's going on, here's the
status of where he's staying, here's the status of his parents.
And the social worker will tell you whether they think
(10:28):
should happen, They think we should stay here, or they
think that we should he should go back here. But
the protocol is always to put them back. That is
the culture of foster cares to put them back. And
there's a lot of cases I can tell you stories
where it comes out extremely detrimental and it harms the kids.
And that's really where a lot of kids lose their lives.
And you see these stories of kids that die on
fetanyl and these babies and all these terrible tragedies. That's
(10:50):
because the social worker. The protocol is always is tell
the judge at their case hearing, we want to put
the kid back with this family, his biological family, even
if it's going well, even if it's safe, even the
kid's making progress, we want them back in with his parents.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
And the truth is sometimes some people just are not
fit to be parents.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
One hundred percent. And typically if a kid ends up
in that position, people don't realize the level of trauma
it has to go through to get there. It's not
a parent, you know, takes away the television or is
even verbally emotionally abusive. It's a parent neglects you to
the point where DCFS thinks your life is in danger.
That's what has to happen for the kid to be removed.
So the point that has to get to where it's
(11:29):
a safe, stable family for the kid, it almost never happens.
It almost never ever works out that I've ever seen
a kid goes back with his family and it was
better than the foster family he was with.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
What inspired you to write your first book? You were
fourteen when all this happened. You were fifteen when he
started writing that book. That that's young.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It was sad. I was going. So when I went
to this therapist and I told her, hey, look I'm
this is my situation, this is my life. Is what
happened to me. The therapist tells you, okay, so it
sounds like you're really sad. Would you say you're depressed,
I'd say, no, I'm not depressed. I think I went
through some difficult circumstances. But I think it's I think
it was a good thing for me overall and for
character development, and I think I'll use it in a
(12:11):
positive manner and the same way with anxiety. They push
depression anxiety in these kids. So I told the state,
I'm not going to this therapist anymore. I don't I
don't like what you guys are making me do. So
their response was they said, okay, well will you get
a group therapy? Will you go meet with other kids
in the therapist? And I said, you know what, sure,
And this is a good experience to go meet these
(12:32):
other foster kids as well. So I go in these
group therapy sessions and it is the saddest thing on
the planet, all of these kids, all of them, and
I've met I've met probably one hundred different foster kids.
Every single time. It's this belief that I'm this victim.
No one loves me, nobody wants me, there's nobody here
for me. It is at you're destroyed, You're mentally destroyed
(12:54):
by a kid as a child, and you don't see
any hope, you don't see the future. You think life
is over, and all you get to teach you how
to deal with that is a therapist telling you, yeah,
you need medication, you have depression anxiety, and that's all
there was and still is. So I said, this is terrible.
This is not how you should view this. I don't
think I'm a victim. I think I'm a survivor. I
(13:14):
think I've triumphed. I went through this bad situation but
every great person in history had to go through some
terrible circumstances to become the type of person to be
able to go become great and do great things. So
I've always viewed my situation as an opportunity. I'm saying,
I'm more motivated, I'm more driven, I'm going to get
more done than everyone else my age because they're comfortable.
(13:35):
I'm not comfortable. I'm motivated want of better life for
myself and my kids in the future. One day and
I thought, why is this philosophy not being taught to
other foster kids. Why are they being encouraged that they're
depressed and that they have anxiety. So I wrote the
book about my formula and my prescription for how I
think of foster kid, what his frame should be when
(13:57):
going through situation like this. So I thought I saw vision. Hey,
you know, because when I went to these group therapy sessions,
I would preach the type of things I'm saying right now,
and it would completely make the kids do a oneint eighty.
And because they were seeing it for me too, that
was part of the thing.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
They are I'm not.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
I'm not a bureaucratic worker coming in telling them, hey,
it's gonna be okay. I'm saying, hey, I'm in the
same position, and it's gonna be okay because we're gonna
make something better out of ourselves. And they would say, oh,
my god, you're right, and they would buy the book.
So many kids were buying the book once it was out,
and they said, this completely changed how I view my
situation because it wasn't being preached to them. So I
saw the need for it, and I just said, somebody
(14:36):
has to get this in their hands.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
So have you kept in touch with anyone who perhaps
bought the book and says, hey, this turned my life around.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, yeah, plenty of them. There's another young man that's
actually a real estate agent at New Orleans. He was
in foster care. He read the book, and me and
him still talk to this day, and he's doing well
for himself and his little His siblings are in foster
care and he preaches the same things to them, and
he's I would say that's an example of where the
book potentially turned around a generational curse. You know, he
(15:04):
read it and he saw it and he said, wow, you
know I'm not just a victim. I'm going to be
the guy my family that turns us around, and I'm
going to make sure my siblings follow my tracks, and
now all of them are doing better.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
I guess I don't know how to really ask what
I'm about to say that at fifteen, you're still a kid,
your brain's not fully developed yet, that you're being told
you're a victim, you're being told you're depressed. You're said
how are you able to step out of that and
look at it from the outside and say, actually, I'm
(15:36):
none of that, and I want to do something different.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I think when you go through severe kind of trauma
as a kid, or you know, you just go through things.
Where my parents taught me was I didn't really have
much examples of what to do. You know. I joke
with this about my dad a few years ago when
we did talk. He said, you know, he said, my
role is of dad is I taught you everything what
not to do, And we kind of joke, you know,
that's he feels better about. I'm like, yeah, yeah, you're right.
(16:02):
You know, so I was a kid and I've watched
my dad, you know, they he had severe drug problems.
You know, I saw what that world looks like of
people that are all smoking meth together and they're all,
you know, doing these degenerate discussing activities and it wasn't safe.
And as a kid, you kind of or even as
a human, you have a thought to yourself of, Okay,
this is what my life is. I can choose to
(16:24):
follow in this or I can choose to be miserable.
I can choose to be angry, to be hateful. But
why would I make that choice? Why would I decide? Okay,
I'm going to even with my parents. Now, I'm not
hateful towards my parents. I don't hate my mom or
my dad because I'm happy with who I am today
and I could not have become who I am if
it was not for them. You know, I could choose
(16:46):
to be hateful, but why would I want to do that? So,
even as a kid, Okay, am I going to decide
to be a screw up because my parents were? Because
they both became failures. I'm going to become a failure. No,
I'm going to go so extreme in the other direction
that I'm going to make sure i'd become the opposite,
and I bring other people with me.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
How big of a role did your foster parents play?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
My foster parents were massive. I went through a few
different foster families, so I was with the teacher for
about two years. I went through another foster family, then
one more before I aged out. So I was with
three foster homes in total, and I was with another
family before I was technically in foster care, kind of
off the table type of situation, but all of them
were huge. It was interesting because when you grow up,
(17:29):
especially in foster care, I've kind of got to see
all the different sides of life. Like I went from
nothing and then I went with one family, you know,
very normal family. I was an atheist going into it.
The dad was a pastor, so it took about a
year of you know, doing this before I finally said,
oh my god, you know, I want to give my
life to God. So I became a Christian from that family.
(17:51):
Then the next family did things completely differently. They operated
in a completely different way. So I got to see
how they do things, how they operate, you know, the
relationship to dynamic and the rules they have with their kids.
And then same with the next So it was it
was pretty interesting just get all these different experiences and
all these different you know, ways of life. I thought
it's pretty give me a pretty good, uh, pretty good
(18:12):
idea of how a parent or be an adult.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Well, excuse my ignorance on this. Why were you? Why
did you go through three different families?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
You know, there's a few different things. One of them,
the first one I moved out from, well, the first
family I was with, it was a single mom and
she had two kids, and she basically took me in
under the position of you need a family, you need
somewhere to stay, and we want to help you, but
we understand it's temporary because the state's looking for somewhere
or for another family member for you to go. So
(18:45):
I was with her, and she realized, Okay, this kid
doesn't have any other family that's going to take them. Now.
Am I in a position to have this kid here,
who's fourteen at the time, until he's eighteen? I don't
think so. So I ended up. She told me, hey,
you know, you can't stay here if this is not
a I'm not in the means to be able to
take care of you. You know, she's struggling as it is.
(19:06):
It's a single mom. She did her best and whatnot,
but it wasn't really a great position to her so
that's why I went to a different family, and that
family it was all three different, different, separate reasons.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Okay, I guess. But as a child goes through you
to be bounced around.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Oh you think nobody wants you, You think that you know,
I'm a burden. You think that, Oh, you know, I'm
with this family, but they're a family, and they're taking
me in pretending I'm part of the family, but I
know deep down I'm not really in the family. Like
if there was a choice, you got to pick one
of your kids, well I would be the outcast. And
(19:43):
you have all these thoughts. Everyone, even kids that were
adopted as kids, you know, everyone kind of or fostered
and whatnot. They all have these thoughts of I'm not
equally in with the tribe as much as they are.
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basically a guide to other kids in your situation.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Exactly what is part two?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
What's the name? When's it coming out? What is it about?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So this next book, are you're saying, ah, yes? So
this next book it's called Broken by Design and the
subtag is how Foster Care destroys lives in the blueprint
to fix it. So this book is a breakdown of
how do we fix the foster care system? Because while so,
what happened after that first book was released and I
went through all this backlash with the state. This got
(21:53):
me a lot of publicity, you know, brought a lot
of publicity and attention, but it led to a lot
of other opportunities and the foster care advocacy world. So
I was teaching classes. I was teaching life skills classes
to foster care through DCFS for about a year. I
was a lobbyist as hard this lobbyist organization with these
other aged out foster kids. This was before I was
aged out. I was the youngest to ever do it.
(22:13):
It was meant for aged out foster kids, but they
took me in because of the book and whatnot. So
I was lobbying in the capital with other foster kids
on behalf of certain policies and laws to be changed.
And I heard their experiences and we all had that.
We all it's a universal experience. Every foster family has
the same difficulties with the state and the same bad experiences.
Same with all the kids. We all have the same feelings.
(22:36):
So we go to the capital and we lobby and
that's when I got my first real taste of Okay,
this is how this operation's run, this is how things
are being done and why these policies are in place,
and now I can see it. So now my goal
is really I want to bring light to these issues
that way we can actually fix these policy issues that
are keeping the state which it's in. So this new
(22:57):
book is all just highlighting what those issues are and
the solutions on how to fix it.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
So I don't want you to give away the whole book.
I guess what is the biggest thing that you see
dead is broken.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I'll say this, there's two things. There's two things, primarily
that almost all of the issues with foster care everywhere universally,
sem from these two issues. And one of them, the
first one, is the belief that the kids should be
reunified with their biological parents. Almost every time, every single time,
that hurts the kids, it hurts the foster parents, it
(23:29):
hurts everybody involved, including even the state. And I'll elaborate
on how, but these kids it's not a safe situation
ever to go back with these parents. Nine out of
ten times it's not right because of what the kid
had to go through. I know little girl. I know
a girl that from five years she was molested by
her biological dad, and the judge tried to say, it's
protocol and we don't have enough evidence of this to
(23:51):
force her to go back. When she was sixteen and
she was advocating this is what happened to me. There's
no way. So these kids, they don't want to go back.
It's not safe. And in fact, another story is there
was a young man named Gerard and he was a
guy I lobbied with with this organization. His story was
he was taken out of foster care. I'm sorry, he
was taken out of his home into foster care because
(24:12):
his dad was so physically abusive, and the state came in.
They said, it's not safe for this kid to stay here.
We're going to remove him and take him out. He
was taken out and after a few months of his
dad following the case plan, meaning doing what he's supposed
to do on paper to get him back. He just
had a job and he promised he didn't do drugs.
Is really all the case load case plan entails. They
(24:33):
told Girard, hey, we're going to put you back with
your parents and your dad. And he said, I'm not
going to go back. It's not safe. I refuse to
do it. And they said it's protocol. He's following the
case plan. We're going to put you back. He said,
I will not go back, no matter what you tell me.
And he was fighting at tooth and nail in between
that period that he was supposed to go back and
that he did. His dad killed everybody in the house
(24:55):
and then killed himself. The state was trying to force
that young man to his own death, and he said,
I will not do it. And but what happens is
if Gerard would have went, he would have been reunified.
And even if he would have been part of that
tragedy and his life would have been lost in that day,
his case would have been closed. He was reunified, and
the state would have hoped that people like you guys,
(25:16):
like journalists in the media, would have never got a
hold of his story and no one would have found out.
And that's what episode lot of these kids, they reunify
them and whatever happens from there, they hope, they hope
for the best. But the reason that's so detrimental, and
the reason this is an issue for bigger than just
the kids. Is first off, it's obviously awful for the kids,
but the way that it plays out is that these
(25:36):
kids end up back in foster care. Most of these
kids come back into the system a few years later,
so this state has all these extra cases, all of
these cases that they have, they had these kids were
previous cases that the state has because they put them back.
The average kid comes back into care about two or
three times after reunification, so the state has this case
(25:58):
load problem that they can't ress off. And on the
flip side as well, the kid that his dad beats
him when he's six years old, who goes into care,
goes back with his dad. He follows that cycle until
he's a teenager and now he's a foster kid. As
a teenager, he's a foster kid who's a teenager, and
now nobody wants to adopt him. Now nobody wants to
(26:18):
take him in. He can't go get a permanent family.
His window is time period that he would have been
able to get adopted and have a permanent family and
have a safe backbone for his life was removed because
the state wanted to give enough a thousand chances to
his biological family.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Why why do families not want teenagers?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Because back to the level of trauma that's required for
a kid to end up in foster care. When somebody
is sixteen years old and they've lived their life that
long with that many drug you know, drugs around them
and just violence occurred to them, it really it'll mess
you up. It messes a lot of people up. A
lot of teenagers do a out and become homeless or
(27:01):
get on drugs and things like that. Now there's a
lot of teenagers that are great, that just need a
safe placement, but people are afraid of that risk of
you can manage a six year old with six year
old problems are a lot smaller than sixteen year old problems.
And that's what people are afraid of, is that that unknown.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
So that's one of the biggest things that you say
is broken. But you said that there were two things.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, So that's the first thing is we need to
end the goal of reunification. In fact, reunification should honestly
be the secondary option to adoption and permanency if possible.
The second thing that this is the biggest thing, is
that we put the most incompetent people in leadership for DCFS.
Secretary Marquita Walters was the secretary that was in charge
(27:45):
that did not want my book in the hands of legislators.
When I was lobbying to the capital, I was giving
my book to all the legislators because I wanted them
to see it to see what's going on in foster care,
so that way they can they know what's going on
and they can make laws and whatnot appropriately. She didn't.
She didn't want the book to get out. She was
trying to stop it. They came to me at the
Capitol and said, hey, she wants you to stop giving
(28:06):
out these books. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. And
the last, the last secretary that we just had, David Matlock.
I met with him a few months ago and I
knew immediately, I'm like this, this guy is not able
to He's not he's not he's not capable of fixing
this thing. He doesn't know what's going on. They get
these government workers that aren't even really affiliated with the
state or i'm sorry, with child welfare, and they put
(28:26):
them in charge to manage the manage this whole thing.
You can give the director of DCFS to playbook. Hey,
here's what you have to do to recruit foster families,
manage case slows. Here's the entire blueprint. And they won't
be able to do it because they put people that
are too incompetent in the position. So you have you
have to have a A organization is always a reflection
(28:47):
of the leader and who's at the top every company,
every CEO. If the company performs well, it's because of
the CEO, and if it fails, it's because of the CEO.
Because it's with the company. Is a reflection of a leader.
And DCFS just puts to everybody whoever wants a position
in charge. It seems like they just put somebody new
in the position. And this is a lady that's coming
from I believe the healthcare space. She's coming from another
(29:09):
government sector and they put her in. And I was
doing research yesterday for the interview to try to find
what experience does she have with child welfare and I
couldn't find anything. I'm not saying it's not there, but
you'd have to really dig to find it. So you
need to have an effective, competent leader that understands the system,
that's really familiar that is going to be in charge
to manage this thing.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Is there a response or did you even reach out
to DCFS for this second book?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
The second book?
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Now, I mean, have you even sounded the alarm to
DCFS that hey, this is what's happening as somebody who
came out of this system, you've got to stop xyz.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Well, when I went so these a lot of these
issues that I'm talking about, like reunification, these were the
issues that we were lobbying with that organization. We were
going to the capital and we were going and we
were saying legislators, we would have the committee and we
would basically talk to them, hey, this is the story.
They heard Gerard's story about his father that killed everybody.
(30:09):
We talked to them and say we need to end reunification.
And the legislator said, well, we already abolished that a
long time ago. That's not a state or that's not
a legislative issue. That's not a law that DCF has
to do that. It was at one point, this is
what their response was. It was at one point and
we heard all these stories and we overturned it. This
(30:29):
is a culture within DCFS that this is what they
think is the right thing to do. And this is
what they always push for.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
It's their protocol.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It's their protocol because it leaves liability from them when
you put a kid. When you put a kid and
with an adopted family, if that parent can come back
and sue and say that my kid, they terminated my rights,
and that parent can sue. But if you take the
kid and you put the kid back with the biological family,
(30:58):
no one can come sue. There's no one to come
after you. So it's a big self fulfilling liability machine,
is what it is at this point.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
But the kids fall victim.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And the kids fall victim.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
So I guess if there's one thing you can say
to dcfs today, what are you saying.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I say, if you're a social worker or if you're involved,
we should Most of these social workers are indoctrinated to
think the kids should go back with the biological family.
And that's why it's too It's so important who they're
putting in charge. You need someone that's really from the
system to be in charge of it and take this
by the horns and get this thing right. Because you
(31:37):
put a government worker that has no involvement into the
system to manage it, and they're hearing the oh, you
take the kid out, you give the parent time to recover,
and you put the kid back. It sounds really great
in theory, unless you've actually experienced it to see how
this plays out and see what happens to these kids,
you really don't know. So I would say to all
the social workers that we're told and that they were
(31:59):
trained as or their training and their onboarding process, that
think that telling the judge that putting the kid back
is the right decision is almost never the right decision.
But a lot of them know that. A lot of
them know that it falls to the top of DCFS.
What we really have to do is put in competent leader.
So my real advice and word out there specifically would
(32:19):
be to the governor who puts in who appoints the
secretary of DCFS, I would say, he needs to put
someone like me, truthfully that's been through the system in
that position or in some type of advisory position to
make sure this thing is done correctly.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
What would you say is your goal for writing book
number two?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I really wanted to get in the hands of the
right people, like the governor and the people that are
in charge of DCFS because I want them to see.
I want them to see and hear how this thing
plays out. And what I mean by that is a
lot of these things that are preached, like reunification and
(33:01):
you know, the parents are the parents are going to
get there, get themselves together and give the kids back
and whatnot. People that aren't in the system have no
idea what happens. In fact, recently I met with the
guy that he was called by the governor. He's a
big he's got he's a big guy, and that's in
the pro life space. He does a lot of pro
life advocacy things like that. And the governor called him
(33:21):
and they met, and he said, we have a crisis
of no foster families. We have no foster families and
we don't know how to go get them. I need
you to go get get us the foster families. Well,
this guy calls me and he says Tommy, and me
and him met and he says, the governor called me
and told me that we need to go get foster families. Tommy,
(33:41):
you're actually from this world. What do we need to
do to go get foster families? And that's when it
was clear to me, Oh my goodness, the governor called him,
and he called me. No one knows how to solve this.
No one knows what's going on. This is such a
niche little government department that no one that's actually even
from the system sticks or around long enough to go
back and say this is what she got to do,
(34:02):
because they are all fighting for survival, or they're all
they become homeless, or those that make it out and
do well say I'm never getting involved in this again.
This was such a terrible experience. They try to force
me back into an unsafe situation. I hate foster care.
That's my mom's position. My mom was a foster kid
and she hates foster care because they kept trying to
force her back into a situation and then she never
(34:24):
got adopted and she never got her life on the
right track, and then it ended up with me. So
my goal is I want the people that are capable
of making the changes, that are in charge that just
don't have enough information on how this system works and
what the root problems are to read this and say, oh,
this is it. Now, I understand why things are going on. Well.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
To our listeners, if somebody's out there and you've touched
their lives and said, hey, they want to now become
a foster parent, why should they? And how did they
do it?
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Becoming a foster parent is one of the most selfless
things you can ever do as a person. You're helping
a kid that you don't need to do it. You're
opening your home for that child. But that's the single
handedly most selfless thing that you can do as a
Christian as a person that then will have the biggest
impact on that kid's life. Like, the only reason that
I think I turned out well is I went with
good foster families. I went with good, protective foster families
(35:17):
that raised me the right way, that taught me what
I needed to learn, and it had the biggest impact
on my life. And now you know, as I get
older and I have a family and whatnot as well,
I can attribute a lot of that, a lot of
the reason that I'm on the path I'm on to them.
So I would say to the foster families, a lot
of foster families don't foster or stopped fostering because they're
afraid that they're going to fall in love with the
(35:39):
kid and they're gonna raise this kid and they're gonna
love it like their own and the state's gonna come
in and rip it out and put the kid back
with the family that it wasn't safe with in the
first place. And I'd actually have to give us a
piece of advice to those families because I think this
is extremely important to know. And this is how I
was able to manage my case as well. And this
this created a lot of issues between me and foster
(36:01):
care because I never just moved them. I never moved
around as they wanted me to. I never just went
back with the family because I understood this right here.
If you've taken a foster kid, there are ways that
you can be part of the management of that case
to make sure that kid is in a safe, healthy position.
So you can take in a child and you can
make sure that child has an attorney. The kid's supposed
(36:22):
to be granted an attorney from the state, but they
usually aren't. Make sure the kid has an attorney, and
then also make sure the kid has a cost of worker,
which is a court appointed advocate for the kid in
the case to oversee the case and tell the judge
this is what needs to happen for this kid. So
everybody that's watching this, if you decided taking a foster kid,
make sure if you make sure that kid has an
attorney and a costle worker, that kid is a lot
(36:44):
more likely to have a successful case management plan, meaning
to stay with you, to not be put back in
a dangerous situation, and you can completely change that kid's life.
And also, everyone always says this is an issue and
one day I want to get involved. One day I
would be open to adopting or taking it a kid.
But when the time is right for my life. There's
(37:05):
never a perfect time. There's never a time that this.
Now everything is in order, and now is the perfect
situation for you to do it. It's just a matter
of if you're capable of doing it. It's now or never,
you know what I mean, it's never. All the stars
aren't gonna lign. If you want to do it and
it's something that's important or you believe to be important,
and you have the means to do it, you should
take it a foster kid.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
So how do you sign up?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
You can reach out to me. There's a contact form
on my website on Tommy Sigmund dot com. There's a
contact form if you want to become a become a
foster parent. You can reach out to me on there.
I'll connect to you with the classes or with the
right social worker or typically what most people do is
they reach out to another foster parent or a social
worker because you have to contact dcfs and get information
from the classes. But if you're watching this on Tommy
(37:49):
Sigmund dot com, put in the contact form I want
to I'm considering becoming a foster parent or wherever you're
at and if you have given even if they have questions, Hey,
I'm thinking about it, but I don't know because of X,
Y or Z, then they can call me and we
can we can discuss it.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Spell out the website.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It's Tommy T O M M Y sigmund S I
G M A N dot com.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Okay, Tommy, we really appreciate you coming on. You've opened
I'll say this doing journalism for a few decades now
and this was a very insightful interview for me. I've
learned so much and it's all thanks to you opening up.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
I appreciate it absolutely. To our listeners, we appreciate you
and as always, we will see you on the next
episode of Louisiana Unfiltered,
This episode is sponsored by Deli de Bojer injury lawyers
fighting for those who've been hurt and deserve to be heard,
from crashes on the road to injuries on the job.
Our team is here to protect your rights and get results.
You focus on healing, will handle the rest.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Called four four four four four four four or.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Visit delidboja dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Responsible attorney James Pelcha Betrouge.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
What if at just fourteen years old, everything you knew
was taken from you, your home, your family, your stability.
That's the moment our guest's life was turned upside down
when he was placed in Louisiana's foster care system. He
(00:54):
remembers the hopelessness, the sadness, the way children are often
made to like they're nothing more than victims of their circumstances.
But instead of letting that define him, he made a choice,
a choice to survive. At sixteen, while most kids are
(01:15):
just trying to get through high school, he was writing
his first book, a book meant to tell other children
in foster care that their story did not have to
end in tragedy, that they could succeed as well. Kids
have come back to him saying that book changed their lives. Now,
(01:39):
at twenty one, he's preparing to release a second book,
one that pulls back the curtain on what he calls
a broken system inside the Department of Children and Family Services.
It's a raw, unfiltered look at foster care and a
call for change. This conversation will open your eyes, challenge
(02:05):
what you think you know, and stay with you long
after it ends. I'm Kieren Challa and this is Louisiana Unfiltered.
(02:28):
Welcome back to everyone. This week we are joined by
somebody who, all of a sudden, I now feel like
I am not accomplished enough. Twenty one years old and
he has just published his second book. Tommy, thank you
so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
So I guess first off, let's start with tell us
what this book is about.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, so, this book basically encompasses the tire blueprint for
what I view to be the solution to fix foster care.
I think foster care is multiple policies in place that
are keeping it in the state that it's in, which
is four thousand foster kids, no foster families. We're not
recruiting new families, we're not maintaining families. Most majority of
the kids become homeless or get go to prison, get
(03:12):
on drugs immediately after they age out, and it's a
real problem. It's a crisis, especially here in Louisiana. So
this book is the solution for how we fix this.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
And I started to ask you this before we got
going that what is your background? What gives you this
information and knowledge to even write this book.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, so I was actually in the system as a
fourteen year old. I had my case opened up when
I was a little older. Most kids coming when they're younger.
I was a teenager. You know, my mom had some
mental health issues and some things going on in her life,
and it just wasn't really a safe situation with her.
So I ended up going to my dad's. But I
was at my dad's only for a short period because
he went to prison for drugs. He had bad meth problems,
(03:53):
haroin problems, so he was badly off on drugs. So
what that led to was it led to me essentially homeless.
I had nowhere to go, nowhere to live. So they
the state got involved. They found out I moved in
with a foster family. It was a foster family recruited.
Actually it was my teacher. So they opened up their
home to me. I moved in with them, and I
(04:14):
pretty much immediately realized that when you go into foster care,
there's no resources, there's nothing to teach you. How do
you process and cope with what you just went through?
You know, it's for a kid to end up in
foster care, you got to really go through a barrier
of trauma to end up in that position. For a
kid to get there, it means they were extremely neglected,
(04:34):
abused physically, sexually, things like that. And all these kids
they go into foster care, and what the state tells
you is we're going to make you go to a therapist,
and the therapist. What the therapist told you is Okay,
even though you've been through all this extreme trauma, the
reason you're not happy and you're sad or you feel
anxious is because you have anxiety and depression and you
(04:56):
need medication. So these kids that grow up in this
traumatic council, I think, Okay, I am I am broken.
My brain's broken. I need medicine, and that's my fault.
It's my fault, and that's all they're given. So I
decided I'm going to write a book, and the purpose
of the book is to teach these people. You teach
these kids, how do you take this trauma and take
(05:16):
what you went through and put it into more positive
energy for your life? How do you become something successful
on the other side of that. And it talks about
how to set goals, how to find mentors, strategies on
making money, on finding jobs, things like that. It's a
complete outline for how to go from the worst situation
and train your mind to become successful. So the state
(05:37):
got involved and they put a stop to it. They
came to my school one day they said, hey, you
can't release this book. That's the first one though, that
was the first one.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
So let's back up. This is your second book. What's
the name of the first one? When was that released?
How old were you? What's that one about?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So the first book is it's called The Greatest Advantage.
I was sixteen when I published that book. I was
fifteen when I wrote it. So that book, that's the
book that encompassed is how to take how to become successful,
on how to take all the trauma and pain you
went through and process it in a healthy manner. The
goal of the book was really for other foster kids,
because it was the only resource for them to teach
(06:12):
them how to overcome what they went through. So this
state came and got came into that and they said, hey,
we don't want you to release this book. You're not
allowed to release it. And their argument was because I'm
a ward of the state, and we said.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
No, you're a word of the state.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Award of the state, meaning you're in custody of the state.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Okay. And then who from the state came to you.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
The state sent my social worker and an attorney, one
of their attorneys and my social workers. So they came
to me and they said, hey, you can't release this book.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
So DCFS, they said, your response to this.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
My response was, well, I asked him, I said, is
there any order, any judicial order saying I can't release it?
And their response was just no, your guardian and they
said no. So I released the book anyways, So a
week later we did a big press release, a big
book launch, and it immediately sold thousands of copies. It
was an Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Walmart target within a week.
(07:15):
So there was nothing they could do to stop it
from that point. So what they did from there is
they basically sent out a silent press release to all
these journalists that were showcasing me, and they said, if
you have Tommy on your show when you're further we
are going to sue you as a state of Louisiana
on what grounds Because I was a minor and they
were saying, as are his parent, he's not allowed to
(07:37):
go out and speak on this book, or he's not
allowed to do media in general. They were saying, I
was breaking my own confidentiality because when you're a foster kid,
there's confidentiality laws to protect that kid. They were saying,
I was breaking my own confidentiality by exposing my story
in what I was doing. But what they were really
afraid of is they were afraid I was going to
say something that would make them look bad and bring
(07:59):
live ability to them.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Well, unfortunately, in the last few years, we've kind of
seen that onion. The layers, and I mean layers peeled
back when it comes to DCFS, from hearings to committees
to secretaries being pulled out of the job. We're seeing
it first handed. You, however, were in it. I think
(08:26):
one of the most important things is the teacher, the
family who took you in talk to me about them, like,
how big of a role did they play in your life?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah? They were massive. So that was the first It's
interesting because two things happened out of that first Off,
it brought me on a more personal level, brought me security.
I had a family for the first time, I had,
you know, people that took me in as their own.
And my whole life up to that point was really
just survival. It was staying afloat, surviving, making sure I
was okay. This was the first time I had a
(08:56):
family type circumstance where I get okay, I can actually
eath and relax, and it was different. But what it
really taught me was it taught me about how DCFS
operates because foster care. My entire first year of being
with that family, foster Care was religiously or relentlessly trying
to put me back in with one of my parents.
They were trying to make a way for me to
(09:18):
go back in with a family member, even though I
had a family that I was staying with and it
was clearly working out in a good placement. Their goal,
the foster cares entire goal is biology over permanency. They
want you to be back with your family no matter what.
That's protocol. And I could understand it because I'm saying, okay,
my entire life, I struggled. You know, my dad is
(09:41):
in jail because he had possession of meth and heroin
and this was his thousandth time going to jail. Why
are we trying to force me to go back with
him when I have a loving family that's here, that's
keeping me in their house and things are going well.
And it was because it was protocol.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
How was this determined? Were these conversations you were having
with a human being there or was this hey all email?
What was going on?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So you have like a monthly hearing when you're in
foster care, you have a regular hearing where what happens
is you have a social worker, and then if you
have an attorney or if you have a cost of
worker and they're supposed to supply you an attorney. In
foster care, you have a monthly hearing where they review
your case. They say, here's what's going on, here's the
status of where he's staying, here's the status of his parents.
And the social worker will tell you whether they think
(10:28):
should happen, They think we should stay here, or they
think that we should he should go back here. But
the protocol is always to put them back. That is
the culture of foster cares to put them back. And
there's a lot of cases I can tell you stories
where it comes out extremely detrimental and it harms the kids.
And that's really where a lot of kids lose their lives.
And you see these stories of kids that die on
fetanyl and these babies and all these terrible tragedies. That's
(10:50):
because the social worker. The protocol is always is tell
the judge at their case hearing, we want to put
the kid back with this family, his biological family, even
if it's going well, even if it's safe, even the
kid's making progress, we want them back in with his parents.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
And the truth is sometimes some people just are not
fit to be parents.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
One hundred percent. And typically if a kid ends up
in that position, people don't realize the level of trauma
it has to go through to get there. It's not
a parent, you know, takes away the television or is
even verbally emotionally abusive. It's a parent neglects you to
the point where DCFS thinks your life is in danger.
That's what has to happen for the kid to be removed.
So the point that has to get to where it's
(11:29):
a safe, stable family for the kid, it almost never happens.
It almost never ever works out that I've ever seen
a kid goes back with his family and it was
better than the foster family he was with.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
What inspired you to write your first book? You were
fourteen when all this happened. You were fifteen when he
started writing that book. That that's young.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It was sad. I was going. So when I went
to this therapist and I told her, hey, look I'm
this is my situation, this is my life. Is what
happened to me. The therapist tells you, okay, so it
sounds like you're really sad. Would you say you're depressed,
I'd say, no, I'm not depressed. I think I went
through some difficult circumstances. But I think it's I think
it was a good thing for me overall and for
character development, and I think I'll use it in a
(12:11):
positive manner and the same way with anxiety. They push
depression anxiety in these kids. So I told the state,
I'm not going to this therapist anymore. I don't I
don't like what you guys are making me do. So
their response was they said, okay, well will you get
a group therapy? Will you go meet with other kids
in the therapist? And I said, you know what, sure,
And this is a good experience to go meet these
(12:32):
other foster kids as well. So I go in these
group therapy sessions and it is the saddest thing on
the planet, all of these kids, all of them, and
I've met I've met probably one hundred different foster kids.
Every single time. It's this belief that I'm this victim.
No one loves me, nobody wants me, there's nobody here
for me. It is at you're destroyed, You're mentally destroyed
(12:54):
by a kid as a child, and you don't see
any hope, you don't see the future. You think life
is over, and all you get to teach you how
to deal with that is a therapist telling you, yeah,
you need medication, you have depression anxiety, and that's all
there was and still is. So I said, this is terrible.
This is not how you should view this. I don't
think I'm a victim. I think I'm a survivor. I
(13:14):
think I've triumphed. I went through this bad situation but
every great person in history had to go through some
terrible circumstances to become the type of person to be
able to go become great and do great things. So
I've always viewed my situation as an opportunity. I'm saying,
I'm more motivated, I'm more driven, I'm going to get
more done than everyone else my age because they're comfortable.
(13:35):
I'm not comfortable. I'm motivated want of better life for
myself and my kids in the future. One day and
I thought, why is this philosophy not being taught to
other foster kids. Why are they being encouraged that they're
depressed and that they have anxiety. So I wrote the
book about my formula and my prescription for how I
think of foster kid, what his frame should be when
(13:57):
going through situation like this. So I thought I saw vision. Hey,
you know, because when I went to these group therapy sessions,
I would preach the type of things I'm saying right now,
and it would completely make the kids do a oneint eighty.
And because they were seeing it for me too, that
was part of the thing.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
They are I'm not.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
I'm not a bureaucratic worker coming in telling them, hey,
it's gonna be okay. I'm saying, hey, I'm in the
same position, and it's gonna be okay because we're gonna
make something better out of ourselves. And they would say, oh,
my god, you're right, and they would buy the book.
So many kids were buying the book once it was out,
and they said, this completely changed how I view my
situation because it wasn't being preached to them. So I
saw the need for it, and I just said, somebody
(14:36):
has to get this in their hands.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
So have you kept in touch with anyone who perhaps
bought the book and says, hey, this turned my life around.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, yeah, plenty of them. There's another young man that's
actually a real estate agent at New Orleans. He was
in foster care. He read the book, and me and
him still talk to this day, and he's doing well
for himself and his little His siblings are in foster
care and he preaches the same things to them, and
he's I would say that's an example of where the
book potentially turned around a generational curse. You know, he
(15:04):
read it and he saw it and he said, wow, you
know I'm not just a victim. I'm going to be
the guy my family that turns us around, and I'm
going to make sure my siblings follow my tracks, and
now all of them are doing better.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
I guess I don't know how to really ask what
I'm about to say that at fifteen, you're still a kid,
your brain's not fully developed yet, that you're being told
you're a victim, you're being told you're depressed. You're said
how are you able to step out of that and
look at it from the outside and say, actually, I'm
(15:36):
none of that, and I want to do something different.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I think when you go through severe kind of trauma
as a kid, or you know, you just go through things.
Where my parents taught me was I didn't really have
much examples of what to do. You know. I joke
with this about my dad a few years ago when
we did talk. He said, you know, he said, my
role is of dad is I taught you everything what
not to do, And we kind of joke, you know,
that's he feels better about. I'm like, yeah, yeah, you're right.
(16:02):
You know, so I was a kid and I've watched
my dad, you know, they he had severe drug problems.
You know, I saw what that world looks like of
people that are all smoking meth together and they're all,
you know, doing these degenerate discussing activities and it wasn't safe.
And as a kid, you kind of or even as
a human, you have a thought to yourself of, Okay,
this is what my life is. I can choose to
(16:24):
follow in this or I can choose to be miserable.
I can choose to be angry, to be hateful. But
why would I make that choice? Why would I decide? Okay,
I'm going to even with my parents. Now, I'm not
hateful towards my parents. I don't hate my mom or
my dad because I'm happy with who I am today
and I could not have become who I am if
it was not for them. You know, I could choose
(16:46):
to be hateful, but why would I want to do that? So,
even as a kid, Okay, am I going to decide
to be a screw up because my parents were? Because
they both became failures. I'm going to become a failure. No,
I'm going to go so extreme in the other direction
that I'm going to make sure i'd become the opposite,
and I bring other people with me.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
How big of a role did your foster parents play?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
My foster parents were massive. I went through a few
different foster families, so I was with the teacher for
about two years. I went through another foster family, then
one more before I aged out. So I was with
three foster homes in total, and I was with another
family before I was technically in foster care, kind of
off the table type of situation, but all of them
were huge. It was interesting because when you grow up,
(17:29):
especially in foster care, I've kind of got to see
all the different sides of life. Like I went from
nothing and then I went with one family, you know,
very normal family. I was an atheist going into it.
The dad was a pastor, so it took about a
year of you know, doing this before I finally said,
oh my god, you know, I want to give my
life to God. So I became a Christian from that family.
(17:51):
Then the next family did things completely differently. They operated
in a completely different way. So I got to see
how they do things, how they operate, you know, the
relationship to dynamic and the rules they have with their kids.
And then same with the next So it was it
was pretty interesting just get all these different experiences and
all these different you know, ways of life. I thought
it's pretty give me a pretty good, uh, pretty good
(18:12):
idea of how a parent or be an adult.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Well, excuse my ignorance on this. Why were you? Why
did you go through three different families?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
You know, there's a few different things. One of them,
the first one I moved out from, well, the first
family I was with, it was a single mom and
she had two kids, and she basically took me in
under the position of you need a family, you need
somewhere to stay, and we want to help you, but
we understand it's temporary because the state's looking for somewhere
or for another family member for you to go. So
(18:45):
I was with her, and she realized, Okay, this kid
doesn't have any other family that's going to take them. Now.
Am I in a position to have this kid here,
who's fourteen at the time, until he's eighteen? I don't
think so. So I ended up. She told me, hey,
you know, you can't stay here if this is not
a I'm not in the means to be able to
take care of you. You know, she's struggling as it is.
(19:06):
It's a single mom. She did her best and whatnot,
but it wasn't really a great position to her so
that's why I went to a different family, and that
family it was all three different, different, separate reasons.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Okay, I guess. But as a child goes through you
to be bounced around.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Oh you think nobody wants you, You think that you know,
I'm a burden. You think that, Oh, you know, I'm
with this family, but they're a family, and they're taking
me in pretending I'm part of the family, but I
know deep down I'm not really in the family. Like
if there was a choice, you got to pick one
of your kids, well I would be the outcast. And
(19:43):
you have all these thoughts. Everyone, even kids that were
adopted as kids, you know, everyone kind of or fostered
and whatnot. They all have these thoughts of I'm not
equally in with the tribe as much as they are.
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one zero zero seven seven. So your first book was
basically a guide to other kids in your situation.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Exactly what is part two?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
What's the name? When's it coming out? What is it about?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So this next book, are you're saying, ah, yes? So
this next book it's called Broken by Design and the
subtag is how Foster Care destroys lives in the blueprint
to fix it. So this book is a breakdown of
how do we fix the foster care system? Because while so,
what happened after that first book was released and I
went through all this backlash with the state. This got
(21:53):
me a lot of publicity, you know, brought a lot
of publicity and attention, but it led to a lot
of other opportunities and the foster care advocacy world. So
I was teaching classes. I was teaching life skills classes
to foster care through DCFS for about a year. I
was a lobbyist as hard this lobbyist organization with these
other aged out foster kids. This was before I was
aged out. I was the youngest to ever do it.
(22:13):
It was meant for aged out foster kids, but they
took me in because of the book and whatnot. So
I was lobbying in the capital with other foster kids
on behalf of certain policies and laws to be changed.
And I heard their experiences and we all had that.
We all it's a universal experience. Every foster family has
the same difficulties with the state and the same bad experiences.
Same with all the kids. We all have the same feelings.
(22:36):
So we go to the capital and we lobby and
that's when I got my first real taste of Okay,
this is how this operation's run, this is how things
are being done and why these policies are in place,
and now I can see it. So now my goal
is really I want to bring light to these issues
that way we can actually fix these policy issues that
are keeping the state which it's in. So this new
(22:57):
book is all just highlighting what those issues are and
the solutions on how to fix it.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
So I don't want you to give away the whole book.
I guess what is the biggest thing that you see
dead is broken.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I'll say this, there's two things. There's two things, primarily
that almost all of the issues with foster care everywhere universally,
sem from these two issues. And one of them, the
first one, is the belief that the kids should be
reunified with their biological parents. Almost every time, every single time,
that hurts the kids, it hurts the foster parents, it
(23:29):
hurts everybody involved, including even the state. And I'll elaborate
on how, but these kids it's not a safe situation
ever to go back with these parents. Nine out of
ten times it's not right because of what the kid
had to go through. I know little girl. I know
a girl that from five years she was molested by
her biological dad, and the judge tried to say, it's
protocol and we don't have enough evidence of this to
(23:51):
force her to go back. When she was sixteen and
she was advocating this is what happened to me. There's
no way. So these kids, they don't want to go back.
It's not safe. And in fact, another story is there
was a young man named Gerard and he was a
guy I lobbied with with this organization. His story was
he was taken out of foster care. I'm sorry, he
was taken out of his home into foster care because
(24:12):
his dad was so physically abusive, and the state came in.
They said, it's not safe for this kid to stay here.
We're going to remove him and take him out. He
was taken out and after a few months of his
dad following the case plan, meaning doing what he's supposed
to do on paper to get him back. He just
had a job and he promised he didn't do drugs.
Is really all the case load case plan entails. They
(24:33):
told Girard, hey, we're going to put you back with
your parents and your dad. And he said, I'm not
going to go back. It's not safe. I refuse to
do it. And they said it's protocol. He's following the
case plan. We're going to put you back. He said,
I will not go back, no matter what you tell me.
And he was fighting at tooth and nail in between
that period that he was supposed to go back and
that he did. His dad killed everybody in the house
(24:55):
and then killed himself. The state was trying to force
that young man to his own death, and he said,
I will not do it. And but what happens is
if Gerard would have went, he would have been reunified.
And even if he would have been part of that
tragedy and his life would have been lost in that day,
his case would have been closed. He was reunified, and
the state would have hoped that people like you guys,
(25:16):
like journalists in the media, would have never got a
hold of his story and no one would have found out.
And that's what episode lot of these kids, they reunify
them and whatever happens from there, they hope, they hope
for the best. But the reason that's so detrimental, and
the reason this is an issue for bigger than just
the kids. Is first off, it's obviously awful for the kids,
but the way that it plays out is that these
(25:36):
kids end up back in foster care. Most of these
kids come back into the system a few years later,
so this state has all these extra cases, all of
these cases that they have, they had these kids were
previous cases that the state has because they put them back.
The average kid comes back into care about two or
three times after reunification, so the state has this case
(25:58):
load problem that they can't ress off. And on the
flip side as well, the kid that his dad beats
him when he's six years old, who goes into care,
goes back with his dad. He follows that cycle until
he's a teenager and now he's a foster kid. As
a teenager, he's a foster kid who's a teenager, and
now nobody wants to adopt him. Now nobody wants to
(26:18):
take him in. He can't go get a permanent family.
His window is time period that he would have been
able to get adopted and have a permanent family and
have a safe backbone for his life was removed because
the state wanted to give enough a thousand chances to
his biological family.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Why why do families not want teenagers?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Because back to the level of trauma that's required for
a kid to end up in foster care. When somebody
is sixteen years old and they've lived their life that
long with that many drug you know, drugs around them
and just violence occurred to them, it really it'll mess
you up. It messes a lot of people up. A
lot of teenagers do a out and become homeless or
(27:01):
get on drugs and things like that. Now there's a
lot of teenagers that are great, that just need a
safe placement, but people are afraid of that risk of
you can manage a six year old with six year
old problems are a lot smaller than sixteen year old problems.
And that's what people are afraid of, is that that unknown.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
So that's one of the biggest things that you say
is broken. But you said that there were two things.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, So that's the first thing is we need to
end the goal of reunification. In fact, reunification should honestly
be the secondary option to adoption and permanency if possible.
The second thing that this is the biggest thing, is
that we put the most incompetent people in leadership for DCFS.
Secretary Marquita Walters was the secretary that was in charge
(27:45):
that did not want my book in the hands of legislators.
When I was lobbying to the capital, I was giving
my book to all the legislators because I wanted them
to see it to see what's going on in foster care,
so that way they can they know what's going on
and they can make laws and whatnot appropriately. She didn't.
She didn't want the book to get out. She was
trying to stop it. They came to me at the
Capitol and said, hey, she wants you to stop giving
(28:06):
out these books. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. And
the last, the last secretary that we just had, David Matlock.
I met with him a few months ago and I
knew immediately, I'm like this, this guy is not able
to He's not he's not he's not capable of fixing
this thing. He doesn't know what's going on. They get
these government workers that aren't even really affiliated with the
state or i'm sorry, with child welfare, and they put
(28:26):
them in charge to manage the manage this whole thing.
You can give the director of DCFS to playbook. Hey,
here's what you have to do to recruit foster families,
manage case slows. Here's the entire blueprint. And they won't
be able to do it because they put people that
are too incompetent in the position. So you have you
have to have a A organization is always a reflection
(28:47):
of the leader and who's at the top every company,
every CEO. If the company performs well, it's because of
the CEO, and if it fails, it's because of the CEO.
Because it's with the company. Is a reflection of a leader.
And DCFS just puts to everybody whoever wants a position
in charge. It seems like they just put somebody new
in the position. And this is a lady that's coming
from I believe the healthcare space. She's coming from another
(29:09):
government sector and they put her in. And I was
doing research yesterday for the interview to try to find
what experience does she have with child welfare and I
couldn't find anything. I'm not saying it's not there, but
you'd have to really dig to find it. So you
need to have an effective, competent leader that understands the system,
that's really familiar that is going to be in charge
to manage this thing.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Is there a response or did you even reach out
to DCFS for this second book?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
The second book?
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Now, I mean, have you even sounded the alarm to
DCFS that hey, this is what's happening as somebody who
came out of this system, you've got to stop xyz.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Well, when I went so these a lot of these
issues that I'm talking about, like reunification, these were the
issues that we were lobbying with that organization. We were
going to the capital and we were going and we
were saying legislators, we would have the committee and we
would basically talk to them, hey, this is the story.
They heard Gerard's story about his father that killed everybody.
(30:09):
We talked to them and say we need to end reunification.
And the legislator said, well, we already abolished that a
long time ago. That's not a state or that's not
a legislative issue. That's not a law that DCF has
to do that. It was at one point, this is
what their response was. It was at one point and
we heard all these stories and we overturned it. This
(30:29):
is a culture within DCFS that this is what they
think is the right thing to do. And this is
what they always push for.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
It's their protocol.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It's their protocol because it leaves liability from them when
you put a kid. When you put a kid and
with an adopted family, if that parent can come back
and sue and say that my kid, they terminated my rights,
and that parent can sue. But if you take the
kid and you put the kid back with the biological family,
(30:58):
no one can come sue. There's no one to come
after you. So it's a big self fulfilling liability machine,
is what it is at this point.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
But the kids fall victim.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And the kids fall victim.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
So I guess if there's one thing you can say
to dcfs today, what are you saying.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I say, if you're a social worker or if you're involved,
we should Most of these social workers are indoctrinated to
think the kids should go back with the biological family.
And that's why it's too It's so important who they're
putting in charge. You need someone that's really from the
system to be in charge of it and take this
by the horns and get this thing right. Because you
(31:37):
put a government worker that has no involvement into the
system to manage it, and they're hearing the oh, you
take the kid out, you give the parent time to recover,
and you put the kid back. It sounds really great
in theory, unless you've actually experienced it to see how
this plays out and see what happens to these kids,
you really don't know. So I would say to all
the social workers that we're told and that they were
(31:59):
trained as or their training and their onboarding process, that
think that telling the judge that putting the kid back
is the right decision is almost never the right decision.
But a lot of them know that. A lot of
them know that it falls to the top of DCFS.
What we really have to do is put in competent leader.
So my real advice and word out there specifically would
(32:19):
be to the governor who puts in who appoints the
secretary of DCFS, I would say, he needs to put
someone like me, truthfully that's been through the system in
that position or in some type of advisory position to
make sure this thing is done correctly.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
What would you say is your goal for writing book
number two?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I really wanted to get in the hands of the
right people, like the governor and the people that are
in charge of DCFS because I want them to see.
I want them to see and hear how this thing
plays out. And what I mean by that is a
lot of these things that are preached, like reunification and
(33:01):
you know, the parents are the parents are going to
get there, get themselves together and give the kids back
and whatnot. People that aren't in the system have no
idea what happens. In fact, recently I met with the
guy that he was called by the governor. He's a
big he's got he's a big guy, and that's in
the pro life space. He does a lot of pro
life advocacy things like that. And the governor called him
(33:21):
and they met, and he said, we have a crisis
of no foster families. We have no foster families and
we don't know how to go get them. I need
you to go get get us the foster families. Well,
this guy calls me and he says Tommy, and me
and him met and he says, the governor called me
and told me that we need to go get foster families. Tommy,
(33:41):
you're actually from this world. What do we need to
do to go get foster families? And that's when it
was clear to me, Oh my goodness, the governor called him,
and he called me. No one knows how to solve this.
No one knows what's going on. This is such a
niche little government department that no one that's actually even
from the system sticks or around long enough to go
back and say this is what she got to do,
(34:02):
because they are all fighting for survival, or they're all
they become homeless, or those that make it out and
do well say I'm never getting involved in this again.
This was such a terrible experience. They try to force
me back into an unsafe situation. I hate foster care.
That's my mom's position. My mom was a foster kid
and she hates foster care because they kept trying to
force her back into a situation and then she never
(34:24):
got adopted and she never got her life on the
right track, and then it ended up with me. So
my goal is I want the people that are capable
of making the changes, that are in charge that just
don't have enough information on how this system works and
what the root problems are to read this and say, oh,
this is it. Now, I understand why things are going on. Well.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
To our listeners, if somebody's out there and you've touched
their lives and said, hey, they want to now become
a foster parent, why should they? And how did they
do it?
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Becoming a foster parent is one of the most selfless
things you can ever do as a person. You're helping
a kid that you don't need to do it. You're
opening your home for that child. But that's the single
handedly most selfless thing that you can do as a
Christian as a person that then will have the biggest
impact on that kid's life. Like, the only reason that
I think I turned out well is I went with
good foster families. I went with good, protective foster families
(35:17):
that raised me the right way, that taught me what
I needed to learn, and it had the biggest impact
on my life. And now you know, as I get
older and I have a family and whatnot as well,
I can attribute a lot of that, a lot of
the reason that I'm on the path I'm on to them.
So I would say to the foster families, a lot
of foster families don't foster or stopped fostering because they're
afraid that they're going to fall in love with the
(35:39):
kid and they're gonna raise this kid and they're gonna
love it like their own and the state's gonna come
in and rip it out and put the kid back
with the family that it wasn't safe with in the
first place. And I'd actually have to give us a
piece of advice to those families because I think this
is extremely important to know. And this is how I
was able to manage my case as well. And this
this created a lot of issues between me and foster
(36:01):
care because I never just moved them. I never moved
around as they wanted me to. I never just went
back with the family because I understood this right here.
If you've taken a foster kid, there are ways that
you can be part of the management of that case
to make sure that kid is in a safe, healthy position.
So you can take in a child and you can
make sure that child has an attorney. The kid's supposed
(36:22):
to be granted an attorney from the state, but they
usually aren't. Make sure the kid has an attorney, and
then also make sure the kid has a cost of worker,
which is a court appointed advocate for the kid in
the case to oversee the case and tell the judge
this is what needs to happen for this kid. So
everybody that's watching this, if you decided taking a foster kid,
make sure if you make sure that kid has an
attorney and a costle worker, that kid is a lot
(36:44):
more likely to have a successful case management plan, meaning
to stay with you, to not be put back in
a dangerous situation, and you can completely change that kid's life.
And also, everyone always says this is an issue and
one day I want to get involved. One day I
would be open to adopting or taking it a kid.
But when the time is right for my life. There's
(37:05):
never a perfect time. There's never a time that this.
Now everything is in order, and now is the perfect
situation for you to do it. It's just a matter
of if you're capable of doing it. It's now or never,
you know what I mean, it's never. All the stars
aren't gonna lign. If you want to do it and
it's something that's important or you believe to be important,
and you have the means to do it, you should
take it a foster kid.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
So how do you sign up?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
You can reach out to me. There's a contact form
on my website on Tommy Sigmund dot com. There's a
contact form if you want to become a become a
foster parent. You can reach out to me on there.
I'll connect to you with the classes or with the
right social worker or typically what most people do is
they reach out to another foster parent or a social
worker because you have to contact dcfs and get information
from the classes. But if you're watching this on Tommy
(37:49):
Sigmund dot com, put in the contact form I want
to I'm considering becoming a foster parent or wherever you're
at and if you have given even if they have questions, Hey,
I'm thinking about it, but I don't know because of X,
Y or Z, then they can call me and we
can we can discuss it.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Spell out the website.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It's Tommy T O M M Y sigmund S I
G M A N dot com.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Okay, Tommy, we really appreciate you coming on. You've opened
I'll say this doing journalism for a few decades now
and this was a very insightful interview for me. I've
learned so much and it's all thanks to you opening up.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
I appreciate it absolutely. To our listeners, we appreciate you
and as always, we will see you on the next
episode of Louisiana Unfiltered,
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