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Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black, fond of greater Cleveland, Inc.. Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, October 4th.

I'm Marty Ulhle the president and CEO of Community West Foundation.

We're very proud to partner with the City Club on today's forum, a community West Foundation.

We are dedicated to advancing the health and well-being of our community.

Many of you know us for the grants that we provide to nonprofits addressing essential needs like housing and food.

Our work goes far beyond just writing checks.

The collaborations and the work with all of our agencies.

Last year, we were proud to award $3.2 million to over 100 incredible organizations across Cleveland, western Cuyahoga and Lorain County.

We're on track to do that again this year.

And our friends from Ma'am actually receive our largest grant.

They are our largest grantee partner.

And thank you for being here.

Now, I know the city club is a secular place, but I want you to understand that our commitment is really driven by a verse from the Bible, which is probably familiar to all of us.

It's the one in Matthew 25 that says, Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

These brothers and sisters would certainly include the more than 16,000 children who are part of Ohio's foster care system.

About 2200 of them in Cuyahoga County.

Roughly a thousand of these young people age out of the system every year.

This is a particularly vulnerable group.

They're 18, officially adults, but many of them just aren't ready for everything that comes with that.

They're more likely to face homelessness, unemployment, food insecurity.

Agencies are working to fill the gaps, but many opportunities remain.

Before we get started, I'd like to take a moment to recognize our grantee partners here today who helped fill the gaps.

A place for me with Kate Lodge fostering Hope.

Fostering Hope.

Missy Tom's Transformations by Cleveland Angels with Gretchen Dub's and Charity led by Maria Barela.

Please visit their tables if you have not had a chance to say hi to these leaders in their work.

We are without our speaker, Adrian Macklemore.

I'll repeat this for the radio audience.

Due to changes in his availability, we are rescheduling his appearance for a later date.

We are very pleased to continue the conversation on aging out of foster care with a panel of leading voices in the field.

Joining us to discuss how we can improve outcomes for foster youth.

David Merriman, Director, Department of Health and Human Services for Cuyahoga County, which provides safe and appropriate placement for children in county custody.

Bob Johnson, program director at Community of Hope, a nonprofit that connects young adults who have experienced foster care with groups of volunteers and mentors.

One of our community, West grantees, and Kai Saga, director of street outreach at Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.

Another one of our grantees, and Kai aged out of the foster care system herself and brings a real lived experience in this work.

Moderating the conversation, we're thrilled to have City Club CEO Dan Miles drop Dan as a friend of the foundation and of me and a real supporter of this community.

If you have a question for our speakers, you can text it to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the second half of the program.

Members and friends of the City Club please join me in welcoming our guests today.

Marty, thank you so much.

And I want to extend a special welcome to the members of your board and your staff.

It's really a pleasure to have Community West in the House with us today.

I'm Dan Lathrop, and I'm going to shepherd this conversation a little bit.

But really, the most important person on the stage right now is Kai Sagar.

Thank you, Dan.

Well, it's truly I mean, I know David and Bev will agree with me when I say we are so fortunate that you're here and that you're willing to share your story of aging out of the foster care system, which is a journey that from which we can learn quite a lot.

And so I'd like to ask you to start with your story.

Thank you so much.

Disclaimer I am a little bit nervous this morning, so bear with me, you guys.

But starting with my lived experience with entering into the foster care system in Cuyahoga County, I entered into the system when I was about 14 to 15 years old due to, I would say, just disagreements with my sexuality at the time, with my biological family and that turned into a little bit of teenage rebellion and just some generational dysfunction that needed to be unlearned.

I felt like at that time, through my journey through foster care, it was it was a bit rough.

I won't get into full detail about that.

But shortly after I age out of foster care at 18, I did struggle with going down a path of housing instability and homelessness and through that I did have support.

But again, at a young age it was really hard to cling on to anyone looking to support you when a lot of times you could you didn't feel like you could trust adults or authority at that time.

Can you take.

Us to the the the weeks surrounding your 18th birthday?

Yes.

So ultimately, I ran away from my foster home when I was about 17 years old.

So when I age out of foster care, I was technically a wall.

My face was on the news.

It was super embarrassing.

I was.

I was in hiding.

I stayed with my girlfriend at the time and I was safe.

I was stable.

I wasn't doing anything dangerous.

I just didn't feel like I could trust my foster parent.

At the time, there were dysfunctions going on with the caregivers I was provided with.

I was in and out of, I think, five different homes within the four years I was in foster care.

So it was really hard to claim anything or anyone besides who I chose to be around me.

And once I got wave there, my face was on the news.

I was like, This can't be happening.

So again, I did have support.

It's like I mentioned.

And, um, Allen Pittman was one of the social workers from my foster care agency staff at the time, and he was like, You have to let people know that you are safe.

So I got the number to the detective that was over my case, and.

This was a missing persons case.

Yes.

And I called the detective like, Can you take my face off the news because I'm safe.

I'm okay.

I'm okay.

And they were like, Well, we need to verify this.

So, um, right.

Like the day before my 18th birthday, I did meet with the detective.

The detective verified that I was okay.

My face was taken down off the news, and a couple of days after I turned 18, I was officially emancipated through court, and it was super happy for me.

Yeah.

So I tell us about what it means for you or what it meant for you then to be emancipated.

But also you had this whole world in front of you and how prepared were you to manage that?

Yeah, I think that everybody has a notion that when a young adult is turning 18, they think they know everything.

So I thought I knew everything.

I thought I had it all figured out, but I did it.

That was the reality of the situation.

I still did cling on to certain people that were supporting me.

But again, I had to go down the path of navigating the streets.

I was navigating relationships that weren't the healthiest for me, navigating, not talking to my family at the time.

Um, yeah, navigating the streets.

But there was a big sense of freedom for me to be able to do what I want and figure it out the way I want it.

But again, we as young adults do fall down just past uncertainty and that's kind of what happened there.

You experienced housing instability then?

Yes, I was in that relationship that I spoke about, and when that didn't work out, I faced housing instability for about a year or so before I got connected to a place for me.

How did you manage not having a home?

Um, couch surfing, making friends that I wasn't supposed to necessarily make, or moving around with different family members.

Just people that I knew at the time.

And it's very peculiar that I work with the shelter systems now when I was that age, you know, I'm fresh out of high school.

My main focus is high school things.

I had no knowledge of a shelter in Cuyahoga County.

Those are things that just don't cross your mind.

So you kind of just figure out your path with which, you know.

I want to just acknowledge something.

You've you've spoken somewhat vaguely and purposefully vaguely about about your experience navigating the streets, friends that you probably shouldn't have made friends with.

And that is, I just want to acknowledge that that is implying a whole lot.

You're not going to go into that right now, but people can use their imagination, I'm sure.

Yeah, for sure.

I want to turn now we're going to come back to your story for sure.

I do want to spoiler alert your mom is here.

Your biological mother is here.

And I feel like we should acknowledge that as well, that there's a happy ending in there.

My best friend, Nikki, emotional.

Okay.

Well, I'm really glad that there is that that that's where things are right now.

David Merryman, I want to turn to you from a sort of larger public policy standpoint.

Case story is so important.

Help us understand what how emblematic her story is.

Thanks, Dan.

And first, I want to thank you for inviting us to be here today.

I think about a couple of years ago when when you hosted a conversation through one community reads with Andrea Elliott and the Invisible Child and you brought in a national expert.

But what I know is this story is local.

Its resources are local.

The leadership is local.

And I don't think you could have a better champion than Kay, who I've worked with for a couple of years now.

And I think her story is as compelling as anything I read in Invisible Child.

So thank you for your courage, for sharing, and for being here today.

I do what I want to give the context.

I do also just want to point out Jackie Fletcher was supposed to be here today in the spirit of standing in front of you and wanting to hear from you and also share what's going on.

She called me this morning with a she lost her voice due to a cold.

And so you're stuck with me.

But our team is in the back.

I'll ask them to raise their hands.

That includes County Councilwoman Yvonne Conwell.

We also have Robin Martin from the director of the Family Children First Council, and then Laura Brewster from the prosecutor's office and two of our social workers.

And I think sometimes these conversations can get very live and someone might have a question about their own experience.

We brought some of our team here.

If someone has a question and they don't want to share it publicly, we want to hear what you need to hear or you need to tell us or what you want to learn.

But we also don't necessarily want to have everybody put their story out there.

The way I think Kai has been really thoughtful and how she has so that that's available and we're here with the team.

So let me tell you a little bit about the numbers and the context.

Any and every year we could get over 30,000 calls to our hotline, six nine, six kids asking us about is there a concern, is there a concern for a child?

You know, calls from a teacher, from the neighbor, from a family member, from a clergy member.

We end up investigating over 10,000.

And so the numbers are very significant.

We have 2200 kids in custody right now.

And those are those kids.

Each represents an individual life.

I think it's easy for us to think in terms of foster care, foster kid.

But I have to say, each of those is a child with their own unique experiences.

And we have to be cautious how we generalize and how we think of them as at times a problem.

I think they are our children and we all have an obligation to care for them as a as a civil society.

So we have 100 and about 130 youth age out of foster care every year.

We have 900 kids that are in permanent custody.

That means our plan is not to send them home.

The plan is to find another option for them.

Hopefully an adoptive parent and our team search for those do a great job with finding adoptive parents, especially for young children.

As a society, we don't do a great job of finding permanent homes for adolescents, especially one they have needs if they're involved with the Alcohol and Drug and Addiction Service Board, or they have services from the Developmental Disability Board or they have health care needs.

And so what I would say to your listeners, we need you, we need your support, we need you to open up your homes.

And also, I think, share your resources.

And I think we'll talk about that.

But I want to also caution this conversation because I think as you see success is possible.

And I said there's 900 kids in long term.

I'm not long term foster care, but permanent custody and 130 children age out every year.

I was just talking to Greg and Monica from my team and they said, you know, a couple of weeks ago we had a high school graduation ceremony with 70 kids graduating out of foster care.

This is a cautionary story that we have here.

There are youth aging out poorly, but there are also successes.

And I think as a community, our challenge is to find those successes, to lift them up and to grow them.

And I think that's why we're here.

I want to turn to Bev Johnson now.

Bev, Community of Hope is one of the kind of well-paved pathways to the success that David is talking about.

Tell us about the program and how it works.

Okay.

Thank you.

First of all, again, I'd like to thank you all for inviting us here today.

And I think that this is an opportunity for us to reach out to the community and make them aware of what's going on and to get their involvement.

Community of Hope was birthed out of a need for young people, age and out of the foster care to have support.

My predecessor, who has gone on to glory worse, was a social worker at the county and she saw the need, so she decided to start.

At the time it was called Open Table.

Since then, we've gone to a nonprofit called Community of Hope.

We changed it to Community of Hope because community is a connection and the young people said it, a connection that gives us hope.

So that's why we changed the name to Community of Hope.

What we do is we reach out to churches, fraternities, different partner organizations for young people that are denied the foster care system, that want somebody in their life to help them navigate this thing called life that they have not experienced before.

So we have like three or four people that wrap themselves around a young person and they help them navigate life.

Our whole objective is for them not to be homeless, fall through the cracks, fall prey to human trafficking or repeat the cycle.

So when we have these young people, these people wrap themselves around them, they help them with all kind of resources.

They are there.

They become the extended family.

They build that trust, they build their friendship, they build their relationship.

They build their community from their extended family.

The unique thing about our organization, it has no end date.

Most of our young people we found when we first started that they were saying that the open table concept only once a year.

We found during that six month period our kids start dropping off and we wondered why.

And because they were beginning to feel abandoned again.

They're going to leave me anyway.

So let me before the boom is drop.

Let me just leave.

So we decided that we were not going to have end date.

So our oldest community is ten years old.

So at that point, so at that point, they're no longer a community, they're family.

They have someone to share their birthdays with, their holidays with someone to share the experiences that they're going through, someone to help them just navigate life.

Young people, when they're exiting the foster care system, have little or no support, and they have no idea how to navigate life.

Most of them have been nourished, but they haven't been nurtured.

There's a difference.

They've been fed, but they haven't been taught how to grow.

So that's where we come in.

We teach them the things that they did not learn, life skills, how to navigate life, how that you don't put boiling water in a plastic boiling water into a microwave or into an oven, You know.

Little stuff.

Little stuff, you know, that we take for granted.

So we give them that sixth sense of belonging.

We give them that sense of dignity.

Most of our young people said it felt like they were invisible, that they weren't seen.

One young person said it was like a little kid walking across the street with nobody to hold their hand.

So we take up their slack.

We come in and we bridge that gap and we give them the families and the tools that they need.

Most of our people, they come in and volunteer and we're looking for volunteers all the way, all the time.

Somebody with a passion, somebody with love by with a concern, not just anybody just looking to get another tool in their arsenal or to get another hole in their bill.

We're looking for somebody that has a passion to love these young people because that's what they haven't had love.

Let me jump in for a second here, because you were on a roll.

It was great.

But yes, yes.

Fab Johnson, she's here all week.

It's three shows daily.

Chi was a client?

Yes.

Of Community of Hope.

Yes, she was.

Were you there when she arrived?

Of course.

Tell me and tell me what it was like when Ty arrived.

Tell me what your impressions were.

Well, first of all, when I was very reluctant and went, Amber was still with us.

She would just pester Kai every day until she got card consent.

What about karate?

What about criterias?

Is that you have to be stable, housed, working or in school and willing to have people in your life.

Most of the time, young people that are in the foster care system, they have trust issues.

They're so happy to be free.

They don't want to hear anybody telling them what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and what to do.

So most of them are reluctant about having people in their lives.

So it takes a while for them to realize that they don't know how to navigate this being called life, even though they think they're grown.

That was Kai and and many of the other ones that we have.

But Kai finally consented to having a community.

When I started, she had eight people.

When we first started, we had more people rapping themselves around the young people.

Since that time, our young people said there was too many people.

They didn't want people staring at them like they were a project.

Sky Let me turn to you as the project.

What was that like for you?

I was very reluctant.

I was I was not open to having eight strangers in my life.

I didn't think that they would care about me, love me.

That was something that was foreign.

The caregivers that I had when I was in foster care, it was it was in and out of it.

So I was open to trusting.

But everything you shared with me earlier, too, that there were some some real racial differences between you and the community.

Oh, yeah.

Oh.

Most of the volunteers for Community Hope are white, and I'm like, I don't want eight white people sitting around me.

I deal with that when I'm in staffing that foster care, you know what I'm saying?

So I didn't know what that would look like.

And Amber was a white lady who was pestering me to join this program.

I really didn't know nothing about until I groups that actually love her and see her as a friend and a mentor in my life.

And I'm like, okay, well, whatever she's talking about, it must make a difference.

And I really have to open myself up to accepting extra support because I had a one year old son at the time and I want it.

I know I want it better for him.

And I'm like, you know, his success depends on the support that I saw and loves that I surround him with.

So I was giving my table of eight wonderful women and my relationship with them did grow.

It was awkward at first.

It was so weird.

Um, but they grew to be like my bonus moms over time.

And there was one specific person whose application I read and was like, This person is not open enough and being vulnerable.

They haven't gone through anything in their life.

Like, I don't think I want them on my table.

They haven't been able to like, we'll see.

And I'm actually the closest with that person now.

So but that's an interesting little detail there about how people will fill.

Your volunteers will fill out an application and the client the it's just age out of foster care gets to gets to read those.

You're not you're not just prescribing you know we're assigning a group.

Oftentimes this is the first opportunity that young people have voice and choice.

So we give them applications and they read through them and they pick someone this they can relate to someone that's had a similar experience or someone this in a particular skills said or a profession that they're interested in going in.

And then sometimes you also ignore them and say, Well, we're just going to keep her around anyway.

Sometimes.

Sometimes, you know, it's advise and consent.

Not exactly.

Yeah.

What was the absolute hardest thing, Kai, about aging out?

Oh, that's a great question.

Um, I think the absolute hardest thing about aging was just the unknown.

I feel like there was a lot of things or conversations that I should have had with my caregivers at the time or shelter that I should have had at the time.

So I think that not knowing what I will go through as an adult, not knowing what to expect in adulthood and how to navigate relationships, how to ask for a raise at a job, how to talk to a landlord.

Those were things that I had to navigate by myself.

Mm hmm.

David is the thinking about Kai's journey and the work of Community of Hope makes me wonder about upstream solutions.

What can be done or what is being done when youths are 15, 16, 17 to prepare them for becoming emancipated?

You know, Dan, it's a it's a great question as well.

And I think I would represent Jackie Fletcher in my answer first by saying that is an important point, but we need to be farther up the stream even from that.

And we need to be doing prevention and we need to be in the community with our partners, hearing from them what their experiencing and what their needs are, so that we're we're in with schools, we're in with community based organizations, and we're all together wrapping around children.

Because if the expectation is that the Protective Service Agency, the Children and Family Services is going to stop all these incidents from occurring, well, we're going to respond when they occur.

We need the community to help us to stop abuse and neglect.

And I think that's a key.

Now, when when you have an adolescent come into the system and there may be some dependency issues and so there's not abuse and there's not neglect, but the parent doesn't have the ability to care for the child while things get even more complicated, because our ability to stop a child from running away is pretty limited.

But we're not going to tackle someone and potentially restrain them.

And I think a lot of times what we end up struggling with is having quality programs and resources.

Yeah, if I could speak to some of the previous work and some of the present work that's being done with the county, I would love to do that.

Um, when I was Asian, out of foster care, there was an independent living department and since that has been exonerated, my independent living worker, Kimberly Mitchell, that was my lady.

She was, she was one of the people that I clung to for support when I was navigating, you know, everything on my own.

And so since that department has gone, I'm like, Oh, who's helping the young people that are aging out, learn things about living independently?

And so a few years ago, through the Annie Casey Foundation that I'm a part of, I do national foster care advocacy.

I did some study around policy advocacy, and they challenged us all with a project around policy advocacy.

And I started a project called Project Transition, and I worked closely with Jackie Fletcher and Monica Johnson on that project to provide an embed ongoing support for young adults that will age out of foster care.

They don't have another choice.

And so now I believe that they will be hiring independent navigators within each department and county now.

And I'm so happy just to see the fruits of that work.

So now people, young adults, will have navigators that will be following their case around what they want to learn as they're going to be independent and young adults overseeing their case plan more sufficiently so that they are not aging out with a sufficient plan.

Even if they don't have a sufficient plan, they have somewhere where they can go back to for support.

And we do have an amazing a massive patient unit.

Again, a shout out from this information.

I'm going to.

Congratulations.

That is that's really that's really great.

I just want to make sure I understand, though, that represents David, an upgrade from the previous department of independent of I can't I can't even remember what it's called Emancipation Unit.

So yeah so a decision was made at a point by prior administration to do a general this model and have every worker learn the skills and make a commitment to doing this.

But I think the challenge becomes having a practice as a child welfare worker 20 years ago for a couple of minutes and the the needs of a family with a small child as opposed to a family with a child with developmental disabilities as opposed to an adolescent, are very different.

And having these generalist services just has not worked.

So I think what what you're hearing is Jackie Fletcher hearing from the community in need and Jackie and the DCFS team saying, let's build this together, let's do this in a partnership because we can't do it alone.

And we need we need leadership from the community and we're open to that.

And we will share decision making.

We will share authority.

And I think as a community, we can solve these problems by working together.

And I know Jackie Fletcher and her entire team, there's over 700 child welfare workers and staff that I'm representing in this.

We're all open to that.

We all committed.

And and then back to Beth.

Go ahead.

I just want to highlight as far as sharing power is something that's very important and I want to highlight youth with lived experience.

So for young adults that are in the system that will age out of foster care, seeing them as the experts in their own lives, seeing their stories as important and valuable, empowering them to know that things may not have been the brightest, but you can be a super important to me.

And then involving them not only in the planning for their own lives, but the planning for policies and how changes need to be made within a system.

As well as I'm giving a shout out, shout out to a place for me.

They really did a great job at making me feel important in realizing my power and my voice and gave me a seat to say, What do you want to do?

How do you want to create your job description?

And how do you want to create your role?

What do you want to advocate for?

And put me in positions of power to be able to do that.

And with the Project Transition Project actually sitting with the Director of Children and Family Services, listening to a plan that I thought out and actually implementing it into policy is just like beyond belief.

So when you say like, I'm the most important person here on stage, I don't necessarily think so because my success really depends on the people that support me and push me forward.

And so we're we're calling people forward to be foster parents and to be a part of communities.

I think that is really important because kids are only as successful as their support system supports them to be, or lack thereof.

She said it.

She said what she wanted to say.

Thank you to you because I think it's so important that we understand that the young people that we are serving and that allow us to serve them, they have a voice and oftentimes sitting at the table, we try to make decisions that we don't have any understanding about.

So it's important not only for them to be at the table, but for them to be the table so that they can tell us what they have need of and then we can cater around those needs.

So it's important that all our partners that are represented in the room today, that we all work together and create this environment where our young people coming out of foster care can thrive instead of just survive.

We're going to bring in questions from the audience in just a second.

And one more question for you, Kai.

In your work with the Northeast Ohio Coalition on the Homeless, as a director, street outreach, how often are you seeing encountering somebody who reminds you of you?

Oh, all the time.

It's really hard to not take work home, you know, And in my position as a director now, I'm not doing that direct service with working hand-in-hand with folks.

So it is a little bit better for me in my heart because my heart is really in this work and it is disheartening to see people that look exactly like me.

But the good part about it is I get to coach a wonderful team and they get to coach me as well.

On how to engage with those folks and to to be the change that you want to see.

Thank you so much.

If you're just joining us, we're about to begin the audience Q&A that if you're just joining us is for our livestream and radio audience.

I'm Dave Meltzer, a CEO here at the City Club.

And we're talking about challenges that come with aging out of the foster care system here in Cuyahoga County, but also across the state and across the country.

Kai Saga is with us.

She's the director of Street outreach, as I said, for the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, also known as Naoc.

Beverly Johnson is sitting to my right.

She's program director at Community of Hope.

You can look them up if you want to get involved.

They they along with a lot of other organizations listed on our website, have real opportunities for volunteers and also stepping in at the last minute with a panel of people who stepped in at the last minute as David Merriman of the kind of Cuyahoga County.

He's the director of the Department of Health and Human Services there.

So we do welcome questions from everyone City club members, guests, all of you here today with us and those of you joining us via livestream and the radio broadcast.

If you'd like to text a question for our speakers, you can text it to 3305415794.

The number again is 3305415794.

Let's have our first question, please.

QUESTION It says in Missouri, foster children age out at 21, not 18, like Ohio.

In your opinion, does Missouri have a better system?

David Merriman That's a great it's a great question.

I actually we want to understand what that age difference means.

And I just a very quick plug.

My colleague Rachel and I recently submitted a grant to an organization called Youth Villages to assess emancipation, as well as create an expectation that every youth leaving every public system needs leaves with a plan.

And I actually I'm curious about that because.

21 is actually that that's actually a that's later and there's more maturity but you don't stop maturing until 2526.

And I have to worry that we choose these arbitrary numbers.

And when you can vote and when you can drink and when you can buy a gun and what like what's behind that?

Who whose interests are we serving?

That's a good question.

I want to look into it.

But I got to say, the half of this, this discussion that I don't think we've been able to represent is my boss, Chris Ronayne, challenged me to say, hey, listen, don't just think about DCFS, think about the entirety of the system, what's happening in the developmental disability system, what's happening in juvenile court and the state justice system, because kids are aging out of those systems as well.

And so we're actually applying for this grant to try to ensure that we're, number one, aware of how all those systems operate.

So it's not just kids aging out of DCFS that have these emancipation staff, but the same for the juvenile court, the same for the state system.

How do we ensure that this is a this is a county, this is a city, this is a civic standard that every kid, when they leave every public system, leads with a plan that they designed and that they're committed to.

And I do want to highlight the BRIDGES program that we have, which is an extension of foster care in Ohio.

We do have the Bridges program where every young adult who age out is entitled to housing.

They get a subsidy for housing and case management until they turn 21.

So there is that gap of support.

Unfortunately, everyone doesn't choose to go down that path.

It is a choice to be involved in bridges and there are requirements.

So and to the issue with that is it's like Davis said, we want to put an age on everything, whether it be 1821.

We have to understand that most of our young people have been traumatized, so they're behind the spec spectrum.

So even though we recognize the fact that the average brain doesn't mature to 25 or 26, most our programs stop at 24.

So that's when our young people really fall into crisis.

So we have to put an age is on things and recognize what's behind the young person.

The trauma that they've experienced, all they've gone through in terms of their childhood.

I agree with that.

I just also want to add to that that there are eligibility requirements to this program.

I think those youth have to be employed or they have to be in education or training program.

And it's important for us to lift those youth up that are motivated, that are working on their success.

But I am worried about the youth that aren't in those programs.

Who are we concerned about?

Who are we focused on?

And that's what Chris is saying.

Everyone makes these programs available to everyone.

Yes.

And that's what I think we're all challenging.

Yes.

So our next question.

Um, my name is Chris.

I was going to act from a system point of view.

How are we creating more mental health support for you for aging out?

And the reason why is because.

Sometimes when we look at aging out, we.

Think of it as a physical.

Journey, mostly by like housing and stuff like that.

But as a person who is also like a mental journey, you have to be mentally prepared.

And mentally open, who modify to the.

Process of aging out.

So I want to say like, how can we support youth.

More mentally and how.

Can we, um, how can we promote the mental supports you for age now so they can be mentally open to help mentally open to the new journey and just mentally open to being You must be that youth.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for that question.

Kai.

Yeah, thank you, Chris, for your question.

Um, I think that when we are in foster care, we're provided with so many resources like therapy and things that are just so unorthodox for a normal teenager that when, when that comes to me, it's been out of care.

Sometimes we're not as open to going back to therapy or going back to adult.

That's a quote unquote professional.

So I think calling in, again, like we said on our community to just be a normal support, a normal mentor, just a normal person in a young adults life is kind of a first step that we can take.

Um, I do think that there should be a highlight on mental health throughout your journey while in foster care, but in a more natural way.

I think our approach to self-care and mental health while in foster care, again, it's unorthodox.

It doesn't feel normal for a young person.

It's already not normal for you to be in foster care.

So to be in foster care and to see a therapist once a week and then see a social worker again twice a month or something like that, it is.

It's weird.

So I think we can get creative at reimagining how we approach that for young adults.

And then with support as we're providing with ongoing or extended case management after they age out.

I don't know if you guys want to add to that.

I know in particular with Community of Hope, because we understand and most of our organizations that are here today are trauma informed because we realize that all of our young people have experienced trauma.

So we have a social counselor that we have keep on call.

So when our young people run into, we have someone to it to attach them to or to send them to.

Like I said, a lot of our young people that are exiting foster care have been take have taken so much medication in the foster care system.

When they age out, they don't want to take it anymore, whether they realize they need it or not.

So that's going to take some community, some coasting, some some trusting in order for us to help them connect with someone.

We have a couple of people now that we're working with because they've aged out and they didn't want to take any more medication because they overmedicated them.

So it took us a while to get them to build up trust enough to take them to a counselors.

They will be able to help assist them with their mental health.

Can I can I just lift up Ed's point?

And I think if you didn't hear it, I'm going to repeat it.

Trust, trust and trust.

And I think we need to first go where we've done wrong and have to have some accountability to move forward.

I also think we also should recognize that a lot of our youth don't trust us to share anything or the most important parts of their lives with us.

We surveyed youth in foster care and more than 30% responded that they are LGBTQ or somewhere within the continuum.

And I our society doesn't trust them.

I don't think our services are ready to support them in the way that we need to.

And we have to acknowledge that we have to change it.

And DCFS, we are.

But I think it's a larger issue.

And if we don't support the needs of youth in foster care, especially when they have an illness.

And Chris, I'm glad that you shared this and for your courage in stepping forward.

But also there, you know, there needs to be protection is into adulthood of these youth, especially when, frankly, many families won't protect them.

And I think we're still struggling with that.

Thank you.

Forgive me for my coughing.

My asthma allergies are all over the place today, but I do just want to add in when it comes to support, I'm calling in like all child welfare professionals, caregivers X, Y, and Z, to just embed love into your work for young adults, whether you're in foster care or not, are very privy to emotions.

They're emotionally charged.

And so they can they can tell when someone actually cares about them or not.

And us as adults, we go home into our respective spaces.

We're surrounded by family or we're surrounded surrounded by people that we love.

And that's like the number one thing.

Thank you so much.

That's like the number one thing that alleviates our minds and creates, though, for me that that supports mental health.

Being in love, being surrounded by love, supports mental health.

And a lot.

Of our young people.

To piggyback our whole case.

A and Davis ID number one thing is trust.

The second thing is transparency, honesty and authenticity, because our young people are street savvy and they know fake when they see it.

So if you're not going to be open and honest and transparent and authentic with them, they're not going to trust you enough into their lives to be able to help them in system.

Such good points.

Such good points.

Thank you.

Our next question.

Hi, everybody.

My name is Russell Lange, and I am I FOSTER Today, AmeriCorps intern.

I emancipated out of the system when I turned 18.

My question to Kai is, how has your lived experience prepared you in your professional career?

Has it allowed you to better serve the community?

I think so.

I think, again, having people that supported me and empower me to be authentic and to be transparent about my story has done wonders in regards to the relationships that I'm able to build with people professionally.

And when we work with participants, our clients.

Before my time in New York, I was a navigator with a place for me, so I'd be a peer to peer support and working with young adults that literally walked the same path or somewhat similar as me was super radical.

Those relationships were something that you can't find anywhere else.

For a young adult to know.

Like this person actually went through what I went through.

Um, it created a bond that you can't really explain.

I've had so many people think like, I think you saved my life in those moments, like mean everything to me to be able to just walk hand-in-hand with someone who looked just like me.

A lot of times I'm working with professionals who have gone to school for social work and things like that, who literally just won't know the things that I know in order to create those relationships, because I actually know the resources.

I know what the person is feeling.

So it's been awesome to be able to be a mediator between young adults, experience in foster care and homelessness and professionals.

I get to speak both languages between each other, and I've seen that work out pretty well.

It's helped me a lot.

Thank you.

Our next question, I think, is in the center aisle here.

Um, this is going on.

Yes.

Um, my name is Steve Shanley.

I'm from SNAP, and I did have a question for Ty.

Um, how can you support a friend who is in the foster care system?

Um, I think you can support a friend who's in the foster care system by just being a normal friend.

I think that I mentioned this before.

Being in the foster care system is normal.

So when we go to places like school, recreation centers, any event, even at home, we do our best to try to feel normal, listen to them, even though their story may look nothing like yours, be a friend and also be someone that they can trust because they don't see that a lot.

And I think the most important thing is to be to listen.

A lot of our young people, they don't need to talk.

They need you to listen and listen with your heart and not necessarily with your ears, because they'll tell you everything they need to know.

If you just learn how to listen with your heart.

Great advice.

Our next question.

Hello, my name is Kyle Williams and I'm also from Mercy Corps, some high school.

And I wanted to know what are your opinions that the U.S. foster care system has been underfunded and also, oh, are you worried that that it'll continue to be underfunded by state, national and local leaders?

DAVID Oh, yeah.

Well, so first I want to first acknowledge the generosity of Collier County voters.

We have a Health and Human Service levy.

We passed one just a bit ago and our community chooses to go beyond state and federal funds and a lot of communities, a lot of counties in Ohio don't have that.

So, yeah, it's not there's not enough money.

Those same funds are the funds that fund senior services, that funds universal pre-kindergarten, that workforce services, reentry services, homeless services.

And there is an element it's a zero sum game in that someone's got to win for someone to lose or someone has to lose for someone to win.

And so, no, there's not enough federal or state resources.

I'm going to do something very controversial.

Mike DeWine has been pretty good on child issues.

He has.

And and I think there's an element of politics in my response.

But I need to say we've got to move beyond politics.

We got to call it what it is.

And if a Republican governor in a state such as ours steps forward and starts investing in services, we should say thank you.

I can tell you right now, Chris Ronayne has made this addressing the placement crisis.

His number one health and Human service priority.

And I'd say it's in the top three of overall, along with the jail and a couple other major service areas.

We need the resources, but I also have to say we've got a lot of resources and we need to do better with them.

And at the end of the day, we will not fix these problems alone.

It takes the community and it takes DHHS working with the Adams Board and the Juvenile Court and the Board of Developmental Disabilities, the Education Service Center.

And Jennifer Dodge, she's leaning in.

People want to lean in.

I think we can do this together if we have a partnership, a public private partnership that's committed to our all needs, but the needs of these children.

I think we've mentioned, you know, heterosexism and and LGBTQ community.

How do how does that maybe explain a little bit deeper how that intersects with the foster care system there and why there's a disproportionate number of people that are that are experiencing homelessness from aging out of foster care, that identify as LGBTQ.

And then I think my second question is also like systemic and has structural racism and how that's intersecting with foster care system.

If you could spend some time, explain explaining that for our audience.

Thank you for that question.

Kai, can we start with you?

I know that a large percent of young adults that enter the foster care system into the foster care system because of their sexuality.

I was one of them, and I don't think we focus enough on that aspect of it while they're spending time in care.

I really have never had any conversations with anyone, whether it was a social worker or my caregivers around my sexuality.

So creating resources, I feel like while young adults are in care is something I feel like should happen.

There are some resources in the community for young adults that are LGBTQ, but I don't think we should just focus on this population enough in there, there's a portion of them entering the system because of that, and then when they exit the system, there's a lot of housing instability that comes with that.

Being in a place where feel dignified, being in a place where you feel comfortable, heard and seen.

It's not widely accepted.

It's not something that we see a lot.

So I don't know that there's anything or any resources that are teaching professionals and caregivers to not be a part of systematic oppression when it comes to the LGBTQ community and also the racial aspect of it as well.

I don't think it's a topic of conversation.

I think the topic of conversation is while they in care, are they safe?

Do either of you want to take on the structural racism question?

Well.

Well, first, thank you.

Thank you for bringing it up.

It has to be acknowledged that the term is disproportionality.

Why?

Why is it that 60% of our kids, the kids that are in custody, are black, whereas that's, you know, 20, 30% of any any community in in Ohio?

And so what what I just would say is that children come into custody because of abuse, neglect or dependency.

Abuse is pretty clear.

Right?

We all understand children should not be abused.

But what's the state of our mental health system?

What's the state of our our our substance abuse system?

Do they have the resources to meet parents needs?

I know most parents don't wake up in the morning thinking I want to abuse my children.

What is going on with parents?

I'm really worried about parents.

I have to say that there's a growing body of evidence to say that parents are struggling right now, not just children, and we have to confront that.

But then let's talk about neglect.

Neglect and poverty looks so similar.

The difference is between neglect and poverty is like sort of intense maybe.

I don't know.

It's and we end up getting referrals to look at homes where I can tell you my own experience going into a home, seeing very little resources, but seeing those parents cared for that child and they gave them everything they had and they worked within their community because they live within communities to make sure their needs were met.

I walked back out the door because I don't think we should be taking custody of children because they're poor.

However, neglect and poverty look pretty similar and the last is dependency and when parents can't meet children's needs or frankly, parents are afraid of their own children because there isn't a quality behavioral health system to meet the adolescent community's needs.

And I just will say the state is standing up to so high rise program and they're putting forth a good faith effort.

It's still in development.

So I think we're working on it.

But, you know, if at the end of the day, poverty is driven by racism in our country and the lack of of behavioral health care is driven by a sense that that's somebody else's problem.

But we know it's not.

A quick question is how might we align this work?

What do we need from our higher ed partners?

Yeah, is that what you're saying?

What might you need?

Thank you.

Beverly.

So, thanks, Andrew.

We're partners with Andrew and because of our young people, a lot of them are don't want don't know what they want to do when they leave the foster care system.

We're glad that the college is open.

They have a workforce programs.

Cleveland State has a Scarlet Sullivan Decker program.

So the colleges are just coming in and helping our young people.

But what we need further than that, Andrew, which you can really help us with, is young people.

Young people are not college material.

Some need skills, you know, professions that they can go into, into, and that doesn't involve the regular transitional college.

So that's what a lot of our young people need because we have a workforce.

360 in a couple of other programs, but we need more engagement from the community with other resources that our young people can get involved in so that they can gain gainful employment.

Thank you so much.

Beverly Johnson David Merriman Case.

I want to remind all of you, these people, a week ago, these people did not know they were going to be sitting on the stage.

They've done Phantom.

Tastic.

Thank you.

I want to thank all of you as well, because forums like this are made possible thanks to generous support from people just like you and in fact, from many of you yourselves.

And I want to also acknowledge that our form today is presented in partnership with the Community West Foundation.

Mardi Uly, thank you so much to you, your colleagues and your board members.

Really appreciate your partnership today.

I also want to say a special offer, a special shout out to our friends from M.S.

Squared STEM high schools.

And a lot of you guys this week.

Thank you so much.

And thank you as well to the guests at tables hosted by a place for me, collaborative charity Cleveland Angels, Community of Hope Community, West Foundation, Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services, Fostering Hope Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries and the Northeast.

Ohio Coalition on the Homeless for the Homeless Pardon me.

Up next, said to sit.

Yes, please.

A round of applause.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Yeah, all of you.

Right up next Tuesday, October 8th, Dr. Kate Anderson Foley, education policy expert, will join us to outline how to close achievement gaps.

Sarah Ellicott of Minds Matter.

Cleveland will moderate in a week from today, will be in the Allen Theater Playhouse Square broadcasting live with our friends from the Future Land Conference.

Key Banks.

Janelle Smith, Whigham will be in conversation with Everett Taylor, CEO of Kickstarter.

You can get tickets to those and everything else we're doing at City Club dot org.

That brings us to the end of our forum.

I want to thank you all once again.

I'm Dan Waltrip.

This forum is now adjourned.

Thank you.

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