Episode #10 - "Offering Opportunities to be Normal"

In our final episode of the season, Angela wraps up the series speaking with Amanda Metivier, the Associate Director of the Child Welfare Academy at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and Steve Pemberton, the Chief Human Resources Officer at Workhuman and the author of two books, A Chance in the World and The Lighthouse Effect.

Welcome to INNOVATE! In Season One, host Angela Tucker highlights 20 REFCA Champions who are inspiring a Re-Envisioning of Foster Care in America. These visionary leaders are using their wisdom, expertise and lived experiences in foster care to transform the foster care narrative from Alaska to New York, California to Missouri, the Pacific Northwest to New England.

To learn more about INNOVATE!, the Re-Envisioning Foster Care in America (REFCA) Movement and the Treehouse Foundation, go to treehousefoundation.net. As always, be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast to be notified when new episodes are released.

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ABOUT THE HOST:

INNOVATE! host, Angela Tucker, is a REFCA Champion and a nationally recognized mentor, entrepreneur, educator and consultant. Angela is a transracial adoptee who, having been adopted from foster care by a white family, grew up in a city that was demographically just 1% Black.

She is the Founder of The Adopted Life, a child-welfare consulting business where she strives to center adoptee stories and bring clarity and truth to narratives about race, class and identity.

Angela has produced The Adopted Life 3-part web series where she interviews transracially adopted youth. She is the host of The Adoptee Next Door podcast 

where she amplifies adult adoptee voices to showcase the wide spectrum of experiences. Her own adoption experience searching for and reuniting with her birth family is the subject of the documentary CLOSURE. 

Angela's first book is scheduled for publication in spring 2023 (Beacon Press).

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Angela Tucker - Host & Producer

Nicholas Ramsey - Editor & Producer

Judy Cockerton - Executive Producer

Distributed by smallhand.us

Transcript

Angela: 0:01

From the Treehouse Foundation, welcome to"Innovate," a podcast that features the voices of the reenvisioning foster care in America champions, folks who are working diligently to change the foster care narrative across the country.

Amanda: 0:18

We actually passed a another piece of legislation, but it really promoted normalcy, giving youth opportunities to do what everybody else in society is doing. Plan a sports team, get a driver's license practice, being a member of society. Our system is set up to protect, and it's not really built, especially for teens and for young adult, we just need to be offering up opportunities to be normal.

Steve: 0:41

As a result of navigating adversity gave me a skillset that I still have to this day. So I see problems differently. I, I cut through drama faster, I think quicker than most people. And that all came from navigating struggle. And when we begin to talk to young people, especially those in foster care who are in some adverse waters themselves, you know, you should always speak to young people in the language of their dreams and not their circumstances, cuz the circumstances is not their doing the dreams. On the other hand, you still have some power over those in the ability to make them come true.

Angela: 1:21

In 2010, the Treehouse Foundation launched a movement to Re-Envision Foster Care in America. And in addition to hosting eight national conferences, Treehouse also honors foster care alumni who are inspiring a"re-envisioning of foster care" through awarding them with this honor for their outstanding leadership and innovation. My name is Angela Tucker. I am a transracial adoptee, and I spend a lot of my time mentoring youth adopted from foster care. I am honored to be named a REFCA champion, and I am your host. Today on"Innovate", I'll be speaking to REFCA champs, Amanda Matir and Steve Pemberton. Amanda is the associate director of the office of youth empowerment, a partnership between university of Alaska child welfare academy and facing foster care in Alaska, an organization. She co-founded Amanda entered foster care at the age of 17 and then aged out. But at the age of 23, she became a foster parent to a teenager facing foster care in Alaska, created a statewide safety net for young people living in foster care while investing in innovation, in the areas of advocacy, training, and peer support. She is a two time graduate of university of Alaska with a bachelor's and a master's in social work and through her advocacy, she has paved the way for youth and alumni of foster care. Really believing that giving young people in foster care, the tools to educate, inform, and inspire local state and national decision makers is the key to systemic change. Steve Pemberton is the author of the books, the lighthouse effect, and a chance in this world, which is about how he found refuge in books during an abusive foster care experience, his dark complexion paired with the Lou eyes and the SL last name meant that he was kind of a mystery to people and no one knew what to make of him. Steve was the first person in Walgreen's, a hundred plus year history to hold the position of chief diversity officer overseeing the company's global efforts to create and maintain a diverse and I environment that reflects the culture he currently serves as the chief people officer for war human. Congratulations on being named a RKA champion and welcome to the show.

Amanda: 3:50

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Steve: 3:51

Thank you very much. Honored

Angela: 3:54

You two don't know each other. You've never met in person, even though both of you are doing incredible work. So it really awesome to join both of you together in this conversation. One thing that I think you both have in common is a concept of having like a mentor. I would love to hear from both of you about that and why that's so important for youth and foster care.

Amanda: 4:17

I feel like a lot of people have been force to me along the way, and as I was making my transition out of foster care and I, I feel like I've now as an adult really fallen into that role for other young people. When I was making my way out of foster care, I had a, a foster parent that was really, really dedicated to me when I was placed in foster care. I had been involved with an juvenile justice system and then was taken in by state child protection and was just a real mess. I dropped outta high school. Didn't really know like my path in life or what I was gonna do. And I continued to get in trouble and really do anything and everything possible to get kicked out of this house and drive these people nuts. And my foster mom would just show up, be, you know, like wake me up every morning. You're like, okay, what are we gonna do today? And how are we gonna do it? What's the plan. And I think she just really modeled, you know, like what it means to be a mentor, to be a role model, to be a caregiver like by showing up and continuing to believe in me. And then as I made my way down my professional career path and I was fortunate enough to work under two former directors of, of child protection for our state. The first was my field instructor when I was in the social work program. The second was my, my recent boss who retired. And so I, I learned about, you know, a lot about the world and child welfare from them, but also just what it means to be a good human.

Steve: 5:38

The term mentor actually comes to us from ancient times. It's uh, from the ID. If you've read that when dishes is heading off to war, uh, you know, fairly certain, he's not gonna return. He assigns to someone, the responsibility of taking care of his family, that person's name was mentor. So it has great significance and mentors. Aren't just people. They're also moments too. In the early years in foster care, I didn't have mentors. It was actually more the absence of them. But I did interactions though. And those interactions, a gift of a box of books and encouragement from elementary school teachers to keep doing well in school, a, a kind word from a construction crew, those, those interactions or mentor-like as well. And I think that's important to note cause<affirmative>, sometimes we think we're just too busy to take on the awesome responsibility of being a mentor. We don't have time. We have our own lives and I'm not sure the bar is that high. Sometimes I think it's just, it's an interaction. It's a moment of seeing not the circumstances, but the possibilities. And that happens in those small moments, whether it's using someone's name when they're serving you, you know, tho those are mentoring like moments too, because it says, I see your humanity for me specifically, the single most influential person in my later years was John Sykes, the high school teacher who took me in when I was a 16. And I quite literally had nowhere to go. And John would, would, would tell you that I had as much of an impact on him as he did on me. You know? So the mentor mentee relationship is a dual relationship is just not one way.

Angela: 7:37

That is so powerful. Steve, I love expanding the definition of mentorship to including what you've called, like mentorship, like moments. I love it. Amanda, can you tell me about your journey from dropping out of high school to graduating from college? And I'm wondering, do you have any mentor moments that guided you?

Amanda: 8:01

I came into foster care as a teen, which I know is, is rare. Actually wasn't placed in foster care until I was 17. My family was involved with child protection for a lot of years, but the, the state didn't take custody until I was 17. And my, my sister was 13 and we went to stay with a family friend. So by then I was like two years, three years behind I, it was a junior in high school. I really hadn't been to school much. I probably had an eighth grade education I could read and write, um, terrible at math still. So coming into foster care, I feel like my sister and I were really fortunate to stay together, to be with people we knew, but we always joke about how we were like, like a pack of woots. We were like, wow, animals, right? Like we had all these street smarts. We knew how to get around on the bus and you know, like all these sketchy places in town and steal food and everything we needed to survive. We knew how to do. But when it came to just showing up and functioning as like a normal member of society, whatever normal is, we, we hadn't had that figured out yet. And so my foster parents were incredible supports. Um, but I had a case worker at the time who actually says back, you know, cell phones were new and we had landlines, but he actually call me every single day. And I would like scream the phone calls. And he's like, Hey Amanda, it's Tom. You know, we really gotta talk. We're gonna be 18 soon. We gotta figure it out. What are you gonna do with your life? You gotta get in school, you gotta do something. And I'd be like, you know, sitting on the couch, eating Dorita. I was like, not today, Tom. I'm not gonna figure out my life today. But he really pressed me. And my boss, mom press me like, you know, I think just out of like spite to get them off my back, I, I went and took my test for my GED, right, finished that. And then I had made this big plan. I was gonna go to beauty school and it was the same time that the federal legislation actually had passed at the education and training voucher to the cha act.

Angela: 9:53

Let me interrupt here real quick and define the Chay act for listeners who may not know what that is in 1999, president Clinton signed this bill into law that was championed by Senator John Chay. And it makes funds available for youth and foster care between the ages of 18 and 21 for expenses, such as room and board while attending college.

Amanda: 10:19

And so my kid showed up one day for a home visit and he said, this money just came out and he had this like kind of cheesy flyer with all these dollar signs on it. And he said, you could go to college. Like, there's no way I'm gonna college. Right? Like, I, I can barely pass the GED test. I, you know, my education is just not there. So I thought about it and I thought about it and I thought maybe I really can go to college. So I submitted an application to our, our public university. It's an open enrollment college. So not knowing at the time that basically everyone gets in got accepted<laugh> at that same time, our, our public institution also, um, decided they were gonna start offering a small number of street tuition waivers. So I got the education training voucher. I got the tuition waiver and I enrolled in college. I was in all remedial classes that first year. And, uh, my caseworker came for another visit. He said, what are you gonna do? You know, you gotta figure out a degree program. What are you gonna do? So I thought about it again and how much he had helped me and how much my foster parents had helped me. And I was like, I wanna be a social worker, wanna help other people. It changed the whole trajectory of my life.

Angela: 11:24

Steve, when Amanda said, you know, she really did kind of apply to undergrad out of spite, trying to get people off her back.<laugh> I, somewhere that you also kind of sorta got revenge on the families that had told you, you were worthless and awful things by setting your sites on achievement. Is that accurate?

Steve: 11:54

<laugh> I'm actually so getting revenge, to be honest about it. I mean, everything that they told me I could not do, I was not capable of. I ordered them at every turn and, you know, in some ways had they known how much I was going to defy them, they probably, in hindsight, wouldn't have taken me in. These were people who were manipulating the system and they were taking in children for money. They were presenting this facade of being kind and caring and understanding. They had everybody fooled from my elementary school teachers and middle school teacher to social workers. They won awards for taking in foster children. And they were so shrewd and their gele even as a young boy, I mean, I knew what I was up against because any<affirmative> case worker who got too close to the truth, they would place a call to the department and that social worker would be gone. Uh, there was a period of time where over the course of four years, a social worker never came to see me. And at the same time, you know, there telling me what I can't do. And you know, I'm just a young boy. So defiance to me was I was going to do very well in school. And then once I heard about this thing called college, which was the courtesy of a middle school counselor in seventh grade, who also in describing college showed me as a place that you could go for four years and you didn't have to go back home if you didn't want to. Well,<laugh> that had my attention because that meant freedom. And I resolved that once I got away from them<affirmative> I was never gonna go back. As it turned out. I did. What I did not anticipate was that they were gonna get in the way of me going to college, not completing forms, not even signing the fee waiver for me to take a standardized test. They had already taken my childhood. They were trying to have my future too. You couldn't have that. I wasn't gonna allow that. So I took great joy. Angela define them, my great joy actually. And in some days I won those battles and some days I didn't, but I was always defying them. And one of the, the foster families rules was that I was to tell no one what was happening in that home. And that's the rule that I violated the day I left. That's the rule I violated when I went to college. That's the rule I violated, uh, when I became a husband and father, that's the rule I especially violated when I wrote a book about it As a result of navigating adversity gave me a skillset that I still have to this day. So I see problems differently. I, I cut through drama faster, I think quicker than most people. And that all came from navigating struggle. And when we begin to talk to young people, especially those in foster care who are in some adverse waters themselves, you know, you should always speak to young people in the language of their dreams and not their circumstances. Cause the circumstances is not their doing the dreams. On the other hand, you still have some power over those and the ability to make them come true.

Angela: 15:38

Amanda, how did you develop your voice in advocating for youth in foster care with legislators? Could you share a little bit about that?

Amanda: 15:46

It 19 when I started college and at that same time or state, uh, started a youth advisory board, same case worker called me and said, the state's starting this youth advisory board. And we'd love to hear from you. And I'm like, no, one's gonna listen to us right on policy, you know, changes, systemic changes. Like nobody's gonna listen to a bunch of teens, right. And he's like, no, I really think you should show up. I think you should show up. Um, so I, I show up to this meeting and, and there's, you know, like maybe eight young people from across the state for the first time in my life, all the shame and all the guilt and everything that came with having been in foster care and the experience with my family just kind of melted away. And I felt so connected to these other young people. And we started meeting regularly. And then we came up with this whole policy agenda of like, oh, we to see foster care now extended to 21. We want youth to be able to reenter, right. If they run away at 16 and get released, we want youth to be able to, you know, live in dorm housing or be able to access mentors or even orthodontia was one of our asks. So we came up with this laundry list of policy items and we kind of shopped it around. We took it the director of the child protection agency at the time. And she was like, there's nothing we can do with this list. You know, good luck. So we started going out and speaking, like, you know, at conferences and at trainings and sharing our story and talking about why these things were important. Well then the attorney general for our state came down and said that youth in foster care could no longer speak publicly without court order. So they really just want us to shut up.<laugh> stop talking about these as issues and stop telling your stories. So we actually, um, contacted, you know, like some of the adult supports who had been, you know, helping us a long way. And we were like, can we get an attorney? We don't really know, you know, how, how this works, but we know that like we have a first amendment, right. And they can't really tell us that we can't talk. And so we got a call from a, a state lawmaker who is also an alumni of foster care. Um, we told him what was going on and he just gets up and walks across the room and picks up the phone and calls the attorney general. We're like, oh my God. And so he had this big interpretation of this statute overturned, but then that legislator sponsored every single item in our policy agenda of the bill. So over the next two years, all of those items, we got care extended to 21. We got reentry, we got additional funding for higher education, for support, for dorms, for mentors. And then for the orthodontia, we actually sued the state of Alaska for ly necessary orthodontia for, for teens on Medicaid. Um, and one, a class action lawsuit.

Angela: 18:19

Steve, can you share ways that your understanding of foster youth has informed how you today, even as the chief people's officer at work human, the chief diversity officer, are there things that you're implementing because of what you know, that perhaps other companies don't don't do

Steve: 18:45

Well, just has some context for that answer. Foster to care in America is today a humanitarian crisis. Uh, we're seeing on a percentage basis, more children entering the system than they did during the time that really accelerated foster care in America. And that was the end of the civil war. So clearly something attic is happening when you're seeing this kind of influx now, and it's really driven by a combination of factors, massive income inequality, which has this avalanche effect on society, family separation, record levels of addiction, record levels of incarceration, levels of children entering into foster care. You know, for people who push back on the importance of, uh, spending programs and social programs, I say, well, society pays a price. No matter if, if you do nothing, you're going to pay a price. So if you don't repair one system, they're going to become part of another system. So when you're aging out, as I did, you have 25 to 30,000 young people a year in America, aging out of the system, been through multiple foster placements, might not have a lot of skills, might not have access to information the way that Amanda and I did. And so what happens to those people? Well go visit, you know, a detention facility or a jail and ask by show of hands. How many who are in the foster care system? You'd be amazed. The number of hands that'll go up, the stunning numbers on sex trafficking. Again, overwhelming number of those are of people, young people who have been in foster care and traffickers know or believe that nobody's looking for them. Nobody cares about those kids. So what can we do as organizations? And what can we do? Uh, as, as in my world, as an employer, you know, you turn 18. And the way that, what that looks like is that on 17, the state society says it has a responsibility to you, and you're 17 on Tuesday, your birthday's on Wednesday, you turn 18 on Wednesday. Society can say, we've met our obligation to you and you're on your own. So my focus, uh, you know, has been as an example, uh, something I did at, when I was at Walgreens that created internships for kids in New York career aging, outta the foster care system, to introduce you to the world of work. So that if college was an immediate possibility, you could at least like, this is maybe your chance. And, and then I think the other is never stepping away from those experiences. And there's a sacrifice to that to be perfectly honest, because a number of people who, who have read, um, my first book or watched the movie of it, and, you know, they kind of wanna gimme a hug because I think some part of it, they, they feel sorry for me. Uh, but they should understand. I never felt sorry for me. I didn't then, and I don't now, but if they want to help you, you, you can certainly employ, um, a young person who's in foster care. Like you can do that. Uh, I mean, those, those things matter and the more and more people like me who have this perception that you wouldn't think I've come from that, the more that we say, well, actually, yes, I do. I think it, it, it awakens people to what's possible, you know, as opposed to, oh, that's, I'm so sorry that happened. And it's coming from this place of empathy. And lastly tell you that, that that's really, you know, hope personify, right. You know, hope I, I, I understand it's universality. I mean, I'm saying how powerful it is. Um, but, but hope is a passive thing. It just, it, it suggests that you wait,<laugh>, you know, you can hope for a lot of things, but you have to get up and get moving. It's something that you have to do.<affirmative>. And when you have this meeting of those who have this desire to better the situation of circumstances, and you have somebody who meets you halfway, uh, then I, I think the narrative becomes completely different, becomes not just life changing, but generation changing too. At least it has been for me,

Amanda: 23:08

I think so much too, when I, when I think about, um, like what you're talking about with job opportunities and, and learning how to show up, right? Like for so many young people it's learning to, to be on time and how to interact with right. Anyone that you encounter or meet. And so much of that is like learning to be emotionally intelligent and how you interact with society. And it takes practice, right? You don't just wake up one day and know how to do this. We actually passed a, another piece of legislation, but it really promoted normalcy. And that's what I, I think of here too, is, you know, like giving youth opportunities to do what everybody else in society is doing, right? Plan a sports team, get a driver's license, get a job, practice being a member of society. I see so many now that are, um, really just like entrapped by the system in that they go to individual therapy and group therapy, and they've got like a full calendar every day. And they're, you know, pulled away from society in two, can't participate in getting a job, right. Even if it's at the, the drag through at burger king, right? You're learning customer service skills. You're learning how to interact with people. You're learning how to navigate D difficult conversations, right? If you have an angry customer and so, so much comes with just normal opportunities, and those are the skills that you develop to set the stage for the rest of your, our life. And so our system is set up to protect, and it's not really built, especially for teens and for young adults. And so as much as we, you know, pass these extensions and offer more resources, I think really we just need, need to be offering up opportunities to be normal.

Steve: 24:42

There is no deeper memory I have. Then what Amanda just described. I wanted to be normal. You know, I wanted to go to football games and I wanted to, you know, run track and play basketball. And I wanted to do the things that I saw my peers doing. Uh, and when you walk through the world with the label, you know, you don't, and it gets assigned to you. It doesn't mean you want it. Or he is, you know, been fascinated by referring to young people in crisis as at risk or disadvantaged, or, I mean, you've never met a young person who describes themselves that way of 13, 14 years you ask'em who you are. They don't say, well, you know, I'm, I'm disadvantaged. You know, you know, they don't say that, uh, that's what I was getting at earlier, when I said, uh, you, you talk to, to, to young people in, in foster care and the language of their dreams and not the circumstances, cuz the circumstances is the adult need to put a frame of reference around which they themselves can barely explain. So some, some part of care has to be spent talking less about what you've come from. Cause you inherited all of that. You didn't create that. You were just a child, you didn't create that. But now as you're approaching, you know, 16, 7, 18, you are gonna be creating something. You have to pivot the mindset to say, okay, so now you are gonna be the one who decides now. And if you do nothing, that's a decision too.

Angela: 26:21

I've been wrapping every episode up with a statement that I'd like for both of you to finish. And that is the future of foster care is

Amanda: 26:31

I feel like I like to really dream big. And I feel like the future of foster care is a system of foster care system that doesn't exist. I mean, for me, ideally we get to a place of being able to really preserve families and we don't need this system or we, you know, there's so much effort right now across the country to reenvision or reimagine the way that child welfare works. And so for me, that's my hope because as long as the system operates, the way it does, all of us are gonna still be chasing for solutions, right? To fix this, put a bandaid on that. And I think we'll keep doing that right. And find solutions and ways to make it work. But I don't know that ultimately it ever is gonna work. As long as we're still separating families.

Angela: 27:13

Just a follow up question for skeptics. Are you then saying that you believe every family system and that's extended family kinship family, that there's somebody that can care for a child if it's not their biological mother or father?

Amanda: 27:30

Well, I believe everyone has like kin or connections in some way. I don't know that has to happen in formal foster care. Right? And so I live in a state where 67% of the children in care on my state or Alaskan native and some communities it's a hundred percent. And so we fall heavily under the Indian child welfare act. And so here tribes to find family, family doesn't have to be a blood relative and family doesn't have to be a legal relative, right. It could be your mom's best friend who you call auntie. And so for me, I do feel like all children have someone in their corner and there's circle that cares about them. And so, yeah, that's my hope as we get, we get to a place where we don't need a system

Angela: 28:11

Finish that sentence. The future of foster care is...

Steve: 28:14

Is going to be as compelling as our willingness to confront the challenges that face it. It's still to be determined. And I say that as a reflection of the times in which we're living, you know, a society that increasingly feels no responsibility to its fellow citizens is not a society that's going to be positioned to transform foster care and nearly all cultures. You know, the, the strength of that society is largely measured on how they handle, you know, those who from birth are denied opportunities. It tells you how strong that culture, how strong that society is. And, and America, at least I would say until fairly recently has been without peer. I don't think we can say that anymore. Now, you know, that might appear to be gloomy, but you know, joy does come in the morning because I do see at least the early signs of so many different parts of society saying this is not what we want the future to be for our children, all children. And lastly, I would say, you know, we could borrow the philosophy of the greeting of a tribe in, in Africa who, when they greet each other, do not say, hello, the way they greet each other is they ask how are the children and the response that they're hoping that you'll say back is not that my children are well, that the anticipated greets is all of the children are well,

Angela: 29:58

Wow, mic drop. That is where we end. Amazing. Oh, thank you. Thanks for listening to the first season of"Innovate". This podcast was hosted and researched by me, Angela Tucker. It was edited and produced by Nick Ramsey and executive produced by Judy Cockerton, the executive to rector of Treehouse. We hope you join us for Season Two.