Kiddos with Chicks

Foster Youth and Social Determinants of Health

Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the non-medical conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and grow older. These factors dictate a vast majority of overall well-being and life expectancy, often outweighing genetics or direct medical care.

Viewing their experience through a "social determinants of health" lens can help individuals, communities, populations, and governments better understand the many factors that influence their health and well-being.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur before the age of 18. These experiences—such as abuse, neglect, and household instability—disrupt a child’s sense of safety and stability, and can lead to lifelong health, behavioral, and economic challenges.

When it comes to foster youth and alumni:

• What is the real intention of ACES?
• How could the system better support physical and emotional safety?
• How could the system better help youth develop coping mechanisms and heal from trauma?
• How could the system better listen to youth concerns, including rights violations?

Foster care youth and alumni are at risk of overmedication. For example, trauma in young children can lead to be behavior that looks like ADHD. The multiple systems that serve foster youth can do more to equip and empower them when it comes to:

• Developmental Assets
• Developmental Relationships
• Alternatives to “talk therapy”

When it comes to education access and quality, resources have increased from when I "aged out" foster care. But college costs and other challenges have increased as well. Areas for improvement include:

• K-12 and Post-Secondary Supports
• Value of Cross-Systems Coordination

Foster youth aren't widgets on an assembly line. The environments we come from before entering foster care, the environments we are entrusted to during our time in care, and the level of care, thought and intention that is given to where we end up living afterwards -- each has an impact on us. This includes:

• Economic Stability: Before, during and after foster care
• Improved Transitions: Providing resources to support youth after they leave foster care to improve economic stability

A Harvard-Casey study demonstrated that foster care youth experience PTSD at a higher rate than Vietnam war veterans. Our rate of PTSD was five times higher than the general population. This points to:

• The need for trauma-informed care
• The importance of equipping and empowering young people to handle PTSD after foster care, by providing them with tools and helping them build coping skills.

Suits for Success 2026

Suits for Success welcomes additional professional clothing donations, to be given to current and former foster youth, ages 14-24, at the 2026 Leadership and Life Skills Summit.

We are looking for professional clothing items that current and former foster youth can wear to the workplace and during other important events in their lives.

Do you have clothing that is just sitting in your closet, that is still in great condition — but you literally know that you will never wear it again? 

Let the outfits that once brought you joy — and are still in great shape — bring joy to others, by donating them to Suits for Success. 

Going Out Like People Do

Lunch with the hubby today...

Birthday with the Kiddos

My birthday was filled with cuddles. Three days worth!

Link to more photos.

Some of my core beliefs

As former foster youth, we have the opportunity to:

• Seek to build a future that is brighter than our pasts
• Make things better for the next generation of foster youth
• Advocate to elevate the voices of young people in and from the foster care system

There is a way to make things better for others who have experienced our situation.

We have a responsibility to listen to our younger siblings of the foster care system. 

Volunteering behind the scenes is rich with purpose. I say this as someone who has been volunteering my time to support the OHIO YAB since 2006 -- almost 20 years. 

As a former foster, I volunteered my time before that as well. I went back to my prior placements, including group homes and emergency shelters, to seek to support current residents and give them hope. 

Steaksgiving 2025

 Just a glimpse of hubby love:

Window of Tolerance

I've been researching something called the Window of Tolerance. There are many images online that try to capture it in different ways. This is one of them.

We do our best work when we are in the Optimal Zone:

But things can happen that lead to hyper-arousal:

When that happens, what can we do to get back to feeling calm again?

Taking Care of My Candle

I was recently working on an assignment from a legislator to map out examples of young people in Ohio who lost their lives to abuse, including specific details on how these losses could have been protected. 

This assignment was an important one.

It also broke my heart:

• I’m a fixer - and I wanted to go back in time and fix each situation. 
• I’m a protector - and I wanted to step in to protect each child. 
• I expected myself to just push through, but there was an ache in my throat, and a feeling of danger in my nervous system that I needed to listen to...

Sometimes I think that those of us who have been at this work for a long time can expect ourselves to be super-human. Which isn’t really fair to ourselves. 

I’m trying to listen to my body this year, and take time to make sure I’m being attentive to my own needs. It’s a growth area. I’m calling it: Taking care of my candle. 

We had a Security Day at my workplace last year, and one of the trainers shared the quote above. He said that we need to normalize compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress as part of our work. He pointed out that it would be inhuman if we were able to witness such painful things and had no emotions about it and didn’t care. 

This is likewise true when it comes to how foster care advocacy work can intersect with both primary trauma and secondary traumatic stress. The next step is figuring out what to do, and how to care for ourselves when this happens. Not IF — but WHEN. 

As a late night worrier who wakes with renewed hope...

There is something about sleeping on a problem that reinvigorates creativity. 

See the Light

In 2025, I will hold onto hope and continue to work with others to brainstorm, identify and create proactive solutions.

My heart gets heavy with worries on some days. I worry about threats to resources that support current and former foster youth, such as Pell Grant funding, JobCorps, and iFoster AmeriCorps. I worry about loss of personnel and supports that transition age youth rely on. And so much more.

But the world doesn’t need my anxiety - it needs my persistence. It needs my brain to keep thinking creatively. It needs my heart to stay strong. It needs my mindset to stay grateful for the many others who care as well.

May 2025 Visit with the Kiddos

Link to more photos

Proud of:

• Edward for coming up with excellent alliteration (Going on a Picnic, Going to the Toy Store, etc.) and for helping with all the rules to different games.
• Fran for doing an entire dance show for us, complete with awesome costumes.
• William for being a good listener, and coming up with so many rhymes.
• Ginnie for the great job she did swimming and cutting out the craft at the library.

Additional highlights:

• Edward did a great job with his drone.
• Fran made me a beautiful bracelet. 
• Williams was very respectful with his Nerf guns.
• Ginnie did two amazing rock n roll dances. 
• 
  

Library Funding Matters

The world needs more safe places, and we as advocates can become the safe people we lacked in our younger lives. We can create resources that never existed when we were younger. We can surround ourselves with fellow difference-makers and, together, accomplish great things. 

In my adult life, I serve in two roles. As a foster care alumni advocate and as a librarian. There have been many times in my life when books provided me with a lifeline when I needed it. 

This is one of them:

As a teen, in between foster care placements, I spent two weeks at an emergency shelter. The first night I spent there, eight girls jumped me and beat me up. It wasn’t anything personal; they were hurting and the pain and anger they were each experiencing made them look for a temporary scapegoat. 

At that particular time and at that emergency shelter location, staff were neither highly paid nor highly trained. It was a minimum wage job, and I’m not sure if they received any trauma or de-escalation training at all. The staff member on duty didn’t intervene in the moment. But later, he let me know that I had two sleeping options: in the room with other residents, or I could lock myself in “the book room.”

So I did. For two weeks, I locked myself in the book room every day while I was there. I read every book on the shelves - and as I read them, my mind traveled far away and far beyond that emergency shelter. I lost myself in books, until I was moved to the next placement.

Words have power. Books have power. They can take you to a better place when you are in a negative one. When a situation makes you feel powerless, and you are not sure how long it will last - books transport you. 

But my love for libraries goes far beyond just that. Because public libraries provide so much more than books. They are a “third place” for people to gather and build community. 

Library services include school help centers, after school snack/summer lunch, Kindergarten readiness classes, reading buddies to support students in Grades K-3, and resource pathfinders for teens and young adults. 

Libraries also serve as a Safe Place for youth in crisis. I have the utmost respect and appreciation for Huckleberry House (and for Star House as well).

Teens and young adults need and deserve safe spaces and safe places, as they navigate challenges and complications, while seeking to lay the groundwork to build successful futures. 

Building Bridges With Potential Future Allies

I never endorse a political candidate, and always strive to remain bipartisan. But I have seen some recent posts saying very negative things about United States Senator Jon Husted, and I wanted to speak up on a personal level. 

Ohio has two freshman U.S. Senators right now, and we need to give both of them a chance. It takes time to adjust to Washington D.C., and this is a particularly complicated year. 

My hope is that we as foster care youth, alumni and ally advocates will be able to work with both Ohio Senators on policy that will benefit the nation. This is what we have done in the past; partnering with both Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator Rob Portman's offices on a regular basis during our annual trips to DC between 2013-2020. 

Some things you might not know about former Lt. Governor Jon Husted:

1.) He started his life in a foster home before being adopted.

2.) He worked tirelessly on the Governor's Office of Workforce Transformation. 

3.) He and his wife deeply care about foster youth. This has been demonstrated in many ways, including their support of FosterHub's work to create transitional housing and life skills preparation for foster youth in Appalachian Ohio. 

4.) In 2024, over 3,800 families used Ohio's Adoption and Foster Care portal, launched by Lt. Governor Jon Husted's InnovateOhio. This was double the number of annual inquiries prior to the creation of this fully online resource.

We don't make allies by attacking them. I care and understand the urgency when it comes to reaching our political officials - as a former foster youth and an advocate, I experience that sense of urgency as well. 

5.) Below is a photo of U.S. Senator Jon Husted during a 2023 Foster Care Month Event, listening to one of our youth leaders share her insights. Look at the smile on his face as he is listening to her...

2025: Gearing Up

In 2025, my hope is that each of us continue to move forward to make a positive difference, regardless of obstacles:

^ I've posted the beginning of this quote before - but I like the end part as well.

2025: Thinking Ahead

As we move forward as foster care youth and alumni advocates into this uncertain New Year, there are both challenges and opportunities ahead.

There will be times when it’s incredibly important to take a deep breath, focus on what we want to accomplish, and then keep moving forward, regardless of the wind on our faces or obstacles in our path.

I hope we take time to remember that we are not alone, nor powerless. We are strong. We are resilient (as children and teens, we didn’t have the choice NOT to be). We are visionary and determined. We see how things could be made better so clearly that the outcome is almost physically tangible in our minds and hearts.

There is warmth in our hearts in the midst of winter. We have weathered storms and stayed rooted to our goals. 2025 is a year that will require hope and determination. And we have both.

FosterHub Groundbreaking of Future Transitional Housing and Training Center

Link to more photos.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025 marked the groundbreaking of FosterHub's future Transitional Housing and Training Center. Next will come the building demolition. Then the architect will get to work. The estimated date for residents to be able to move in is May 1, 2026.

Foster care alumna Michelle Mays has poured so much of her heart and time into this project. I was inspired by how much work happened behind the scenes in order to make yesterday's groundbreaking a reality. Governor DeWine had wanted to do something big for Appalachia. He dedicated funding for transformational projects, that needed to be locally driven, with the goal of having an immediate and lasting community impact.

The process of choosing which projects to fund was competitive:

• As a staff member from Nationwide Children's Hospital shared: "Making history is not easy."
• But, as a representative from the Appalachian Children Coaltion shared, choosing to support FosterHub was an easy decision: "Because this is more than a building; it's a promise - a beacon of hope and a model of what's possible." 
• Representatives from the Jewish and Christian faiths were there, and one of them quoted Jeremiah 29:11 regarding: "Plans to give you a future and a hope."

Second Lady Tina Husted is a champion of this initiative. During the event, she gave Michelle Mays a lovely painting that she had created of a bridge that Michelle had run to as a child. She shared that her husband was adopted, and that his biological father had recommended an abortion. She talked about how, while growing up, she was inspired by a foster parent named Mrs. Cory, and how her 12 foster youth had a good life because someone loved them. 

Belated Christmas With the Kiddos

Link to more photos. 

Along with some acrostics:

Excellent at making legos.

Demon Slayer fan.

Wants to go skating with Grandpa Nathan and Nana Lisa.

An amazing, caring and patient big brother. 

Really good at explaining how to play games, such as Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza.

Dances with glow sticks.

Friendly and loving to other people. 

Really loves dancing and gymnastics.

Always kind to animals.

Nature lover like her mama.

Nail technician extraordinaire. 

Interested in sewing clothing.

Excellent at styling hair and making bracelets.

Willing to listen to Pirahnas Don’t Eat Bananas over and over again. 

Identifier of chickens and their personalities.

Loves telling silly knock knock jokes. 

Likes building. 

Interested in cooking, chemistry and crafts.

Able to read books to Nana Lisa.

Mixes up random ingredients to see what will happen sometimes.

Great at climbing.

Interested in helping make meals. 

Nature loving kiddo.

Not letting feeling sick keep her from smiling and having fun with her family. 

Interested in books, which makes Nana Lisa (the librarian) very happy.

Excellent at keeping up with her older siblings.

And the kiddos made this one:

Nice to everyone.

Apple colored lipstick

Necklace helper.

Amazing storyteller

Loving

Igloo person (because I'm of Swedish heritage and rarely feel cold)

Silly

Awesome 

Holding on to Hope

We do our work with vision. And we do our work with hope. 

We who are foster care advocates will have days of disappointment. We will weather waves of grief over those we have lost, and those we worry that we are losing. 

We will also have experiences that fill us with deep, fierce - and, in that moment, fearless - joy. 

There will be times when we are able:

• To witness a wrong that we experienced and be a force in that moment for making things better. 
• To empower the formerly voiceless and listen to the amazing and powerful things that they have to say, and the recommendations and solutions that they have to offer. 
• To help plan and facilitate impactful opportunities, and witness the synergy of bringing others together. 
• To see the smiles on their faces and feel the warmth of love fill our heart. 
• And so much more.

Let those moments imprint themselves upon your heart. Capture them in photographs. Hold them tight in your heart and remember them when a day seems dark and the world feels full of apathy. 

We - have - hope.

Belated Thanksgiving With The Kiddos

 Link to more photos.

Edward's birthday gift

Edward making LEGOs

Frannie and Carly

William: "I can chew my hair now!"

Ginny loving her ice cream.