There are over 400,000 children in foster care in the United States right nowand if we’re honest, most of us don’t feel that number… because we’ve learned not to. We’ve learned how to look past it, how to believe it’s too big, too broken, too far removed from our own lives to matter. But here’s the truth: these are not statistics. These are children, children who have been moved, uprooted, and reshaped by trauma in ways most of us will never fully understand. Children whose behaviors we question instead of asking what happened to them. Children who age out of the system every year thousands of them without family, without support, without someone saying, I see you, you matter. And we wonder why they fall into every other system we’re trying to fix.
The hardest part of this conversation is recognizing that the system isn’t broken because of one thing it’s broken because we keep trying to fix it the same way. More policy. More funding. More homes. And yes, we need more foster homes but what we actually need are prepared homes. Supported homes. Trauma-informed homes. Because placing a child who has lived in survival mode into a house without the tools to hold that reality doesn’t heal anything it continues the cycle. We have to stop asking, What’s wrong with these kids? and start asking, What has happened to them? And even deeper than that what has happened to us as a society that we’ve allowed this to become normal?
But this is where the conversation shifts from overwhelming to personal. Because it’s easy to say, this is too big, I can’t fix this. And you’re right you can’t fix all of it. Neither can I. But we can do something. We can support the foster family down the street. We can start a conversation. We can mentor, donate, show up, ask better questions. Because change doesn’t start with systems it starts with people willing to care enough to act. The ripple always begins with one. And maybe the real question isn’t how we fix foster care… maybe it’s whether we’re willing to stop looking away long enough to see these children for who they are: not invisible, not broken but worthy of love, support, and a different story.
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Until next time, keep shining bright!
- Corree
