I miss being able to
wake up and walk out of my room whenever I want,
showering when I want to.
Having a real toothbrush.
Wearing my own clothes.
I miss not having to ask for movement.
Wearing cool shoes.
Sitting in my favorite chair.
Being excited about the day.
I miss my family.
The big family gatherings.
My mom helping me with my hair
or chilling on a boring Tuesday night.
Watching a movie.
I miss driving around with my friends,
listening to music,
eating the food.
I love
attending my normal school,
playing a quick game with my friends after.
Most of all, I miss being there
to support my family and friends.
I hope when I get out,
I get a second chance to be the person I know I can be.
I know I can be. I know I can.
I know I can be. I know I can be.
Good evening everyone.
As the executive director of stand for Children Washington, an organization
that serves as a unique catalyst for educational success
and social progress, I am honored to welcome you to changing our future.
This important conversation is not just about policy,
but about people, systems, and the urgent need for change.
Before we dive in further, I'd like to take a moment
to thank our sponsors and partners who made this event possible, enabling us
to keep the program free of charge and open to all.
Thank you to our financial sponsors, John and Bobby Bridge, the Raikes
Foundation, SDC consulting, and the Seattle Public Library.
Thank you as well to our in-kind sponsor, the Seattle Times.
And thank you to our bookseller partner, the Elliot Daybook company.
A portion of book sales tonight will benefit stand as well as Town
Hall Seattle.
So I encourage you to pick up a copy of words of the state before you head out.
The author, Claudia Rowe, will be available to sign after the program.
I also want to thank our nonprofit co-sponsors.
This work does not happen alone, and we are grateful to work in collaboration
and partnership
with such an incredible group of organizations, providing everything
from direct service to systemic advocacy change and everything in between.
There's a yeah, let's give them a hand.
there is a table by the entrance where, many of them have left the material.
So please stop by and check out a little bit more about them.
Thank you.
As well to our lawmakers in attendance.
And if you're an elected official,
please stand up and be recognized for your public service.
Got a couple of you in here. Gas.
Thank you. Rep Goodman, for being here.
and finally, I'd like to thank all of our volunteers
tonight, and particularly our incredible staff team at Stanford.
Children Mackenzie, now Karolina Fuentes and Mila Tang.
Thank you so much for all of your work.
Thank you.
We opened
with a video produced by Share
Screenwriting program featuring the words of young people at echo Glen Juvenile
State Prison, spoken by their peers at Renton and Issaquah high schools.
As you listen to our speakers tonight, I invite you to remember that
we're talking about young people, children who should be worrying
about an algebra test or trying out for band or the soccer team,
but instead are behind bars.
Tonight will be an opportunity to break down the barrier
between those kids and our kids, and to understand
our collective responsibility to demand better for our kids and our communities.
Think about the
children and youth that you know what they want and need, and what you are
prepared to do to make sure that they get those needs met.
This requires confronting the ways that our education system,
our foster care system, and our justice system fall short often as the result
of the legacies of racism and colonialism upon which they are founded.
It is no secret that these systems are deeply intertwined.
Yet our policy solutions so often try to make change in a vacuum.
The results are predictable.
We see huge disparities in educational success for students
by race, income, foster care status, and homelessness status.
Not because these students are less capable, but
because they have been less supported.
Only 40% of foster and homeless students are passing
all their classes in ninth grade, a key indicator for high school graduation.
Black, Latino and Native American students have graduation rates
well below the state average.
Meanwhile, in state prison juvenile prisons, 1
in 3 young people are black and 1 in 5 are Latino.
Once you touch the justice system, their chances of graduating
grow vanishingly small.
Fewer than 1 in 5 graduate high school.
We are pushing young people out of educational pathways and into carceral pathways.
This is unacceptable.
It is also systemic, meaning it's happening despite the hard work
and dedication of many talented, caring people working in these systems.
Many of you here tonight are those talented, caring people.
Young people need us to not be overwhelmed, but to roll up our sleeves
and commit to a better future for them and for all of us.
Luckily, there are bright spots we can build on,
and our partners and panelists are at the forefront of transformative,
community rooted solutions.
Despite what you hear on the news, last year,
there were 2500 fewer youth arrests than in 2019.
That's part of a long downward trend in youth crime for the last two decades.
Every court in the state has embraced opportunities
to divert youth away from court and into community.
In the education space, the ninth Grade Success
Initiative has raised the rate of students on track to graduate
13 percentage points in four years across nearly 70 high schools.
Change is possible.
Tonight, you'll hear more about these possibilities
from our panelists and why our approach must be holistic, not siloed.
You'll hear from Claudia Rowe, whose recent book
Awards of the state, was just longlisted for the National Book Award.
Ward's is also the impetus for this conversation.
Claudia's research uncovered the not so hidden fact that foster youth
are overwhelmingly overrepresented in our jails and prisons.
You'll hear from Arthur Longworth, who is featured in Claudia's book
and went from experiencing
the foster care to prison pipeline to Coauthoring recommendations to end it.
And today he serves as a policy manager at Team Child.
You'll hear from Doctor Ben Danielson, a pediatrician who has become a leader
in reimagining youth incarceration from a health perspective.
And you'll hear from Karen Andrews and Henderson Carlisle, two longtime
educators who have taken their commitment to students and translated
that to approaches that build inclusion and belonging and success.
From the second, a student walks through school doors.
I'm delighted to announce a
surprise special guest, Sixto cancel is a national leader
working at the intersection of child welfare, technology and policy
and is featured in Claudia's book and he'll join her on stage shortly.
I hope as you walked in, you saw the beautiful artwork
from youth artist Jada Lynn.
When, And we're.
Yes.
If you haven't, check it out on your way out.
I hope you, seeing her art reminded you of the boundless potential
of each child in our community.
I hope you'll listen to the voices of young people shared in the videos
from tonight, and reflect on the messages they are sharing.
Tonight is intended to be complementary to powerful organizing and advocacy.
Examples of this abound the Mockingbird Society's Youth Leadership Summit
and their annual advocacy agenda,
testimony and Olympia from young people involved with justice
for girls, team Child, Choose 180 and so many other organizations.
Youth incarcerated at Green Hill have even put forward a bill
for three years in a row that has yet to be passed into law.
Youth continue to tell us what they want and need loudly and clearly.
So tonight it's time for the adults to commit to action again.
Welcome to changing our future.
We're so thrilled that you're here,
and I'm honored to pass the mic to Claudia Rowe.
We'll set the stage prior to the panel.
Thanks, Liz, and
thanks to all of you for coming out tonight.
I'm really honored and,
very moved by this.
It's an important discussion
that we're here, to, to hold and it's a discussion about young people
in Washington state and really across our country.
We're going to be talking tonight about some things I discovered
while researching my new book, words of the state.
The subtitle of it is The Long Shadow of American Foster Care.
And we're going to talk about what that means.
We're also going to talk about some questions
that were prompted by discoveries I made.
And I will, while researching the book, and I should say, as Liz noted,
none of these things are new.
They speak to wrongs that we have been accepting
for years, for decades, actually, for the better part of a century.
So really, it is time to get serious about some different answers.
The idea for this book came
to me while I was sitting in the King County Courthouse.
It was 2019
and I was watching a teenage girl being sentenced for murder.
She had spent about six years in foster care,
and her case reminded me of research.
I had heard about a decade before.
In the early 2000s,
it pointed out what sounded to me at the time
like wildly high incarceration rates for former foster kids.
Data from the Midwest said that
59% of kids who age out of the system
at 18 will have been incarcerated
by the time they're 26, 59%.
It just astounded me.
And then
I happened upon an economist at MIT.
His name is Joseph Doyle,
and he had determined that kids in foster care
are 3 or 3 times more likely
to experience incarceration than other children
growing up in similarly struggling families who are not removed.
Conservative estimates say
that 20 to 25% of people
in our state prisons are alumni.
Alumni of the Foster care system, 25%.
And that doesn't even include county jails, juvenile detention halls.
It's 25% in our state prisons from the foster care system as well.
About 30% of the young adult homeless are also former foster youth.
So me seeing all these numbers and it starts to occur to me,
it's pretty doubtful that, all these thousands of kids
were somehow destined for these ends from birth.
It's impossible.
So I began to wonder if there wasn't something about the child welfare system
that was encouraging, or possibly even creating these outcomes.
So doing research for this book,
as we said,
you will you will, meet tonight.
Some of the people I met while doing the research.
One of them is Sixto Cancel, who we mentioned.
He's a former foster child
from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who has grown into a national activist
on child welfare reform and has worked with three presidential administrations.
I don't think he's even 35 yet.
Maybe he's 35.
another is Art Longworth, who received a life sentence
for a crime he committed shortly after being ejected
from the Washington state foster care system in 1981.
As you know, art is here tonight.
You'll have to read the book to find out how that happened.
I am sketching these stories for you to explain what I mean by that subtitle.
The Long Shadow of American Foster Care.
It's the sense that our child welfare system,
well-intended though it may be,
hangs over the lives
of its clients long after they leave.
That it is, in fact, damaging young people and, by extension,
the larger social fabric that envelops all of us.
That instead of saving kids, which is the idea,
it is actually creating problems that hobble
not only the lives of those who have grown up in the system,
but all of us, all of us as citizens of this country.
And if there is a central point I want to make tonight, it's
the interconnectedness of these systems the child welfare,
juvenile justice and education systems.
To me, that suggests that effective solutions
to the problems we're talking about are also interconnected.
There are, I
should say, foster care abolitionists who insist that the system cannot
be reformed, that it is rotten at the core from its conception to the present day.
So I'm going to just quickly, quickly sketch a little bit of that history.
And the first thing to understand is that for a very long time,
we have seen kids in need as kids to fear
the first person ever executed
in the brand new state of Wyoming in 1892
was in fact a runaway from foster care named Charlie Miller.
Charlie, who was 17 when he was hanged,
had been born in New York City in 1874,
right around the time that a young Yale educated minister
came up with an idea for dealing with the hordes
of homeless children who were thronging city streets.
These were the sons and daughters of new immigrants from Europe.
They were indigent Jews and Italians and Irish mainly,
and they did not have enough money to feed their kids.
There are some estimates that say 30,000 children
were sleeping on the streets of New York City.
They were sleeping in vestibules and alleyways, banding together in gangs,
pickpocketing for survival.
They are idle and vicious, destined
to a life of misery, shame, crime and ultimately a felons doom.
That was the New York City chief of police
at the time.
You've maybe heard this term orphan trains.
It refers to the grand plan conceived by that minister,
that Yale educated minister.
His name is Charles Loring Brace,
and he's often credited as the father of foster care.
And his idea was that he would gather up all those kids on the street,
pack them onto trains, and send them out to the growing west here.
Right.
And they would work on farms and homesteads, earning their keep, so to speak.
in return
they would be clothed and housed and fed.
This arrangement was seen as like, brilliant.
It was a huge win for everyone.
Huge success.
It lasted 75 years
and by then 150,000 kids
had been scooped up from city streets on the East Coast
and transplanted into homes of strangers across the country.
Charlie Miller, that 17 year old, was one of these kids.
And many of them, by the way, were not actually orphans.
that term comes from a 1978
TV movie, like on ABC or something.
The movement, this orphan train movement
died out after World War One, when the government began
providing financial aid to widows who had children to care for.
But the feds let each state dictate its own criteria
for who would be eligible for these these widows stipends.
In the South,
many states passed laws excluding women who worked in certain professions,
for example, as housekeepers,
a job held almost entirely by black women.
Southern states also passed laws denying aid to women who had live in boyfriends.
And then in 1961, Arthur Fleming, who was the head of the U.S.
Department of Human Services, observed that it made no sense, in
fact, might be morally wrong to deem a home
substance, ordered him
not give the woman of the house a stipend
because you don't like the way she's living.
But then to leave the kids there.
So then this is what prompted the vast removal of children
from the homes of black moms in particular.
In one year, foster care exploded by 60%,
going from 163,000 to 272,000 kids in one year.
And that is the birth of the
modern day child welfare system, which disproportionately targets
children of color and almost exclusively children of the poor.
Those numbers really look quaint today.
There are now almost 400,000 kids in the U.S.
foster care system.
So is it broken?
There's no question that it is failing many, many children.
There is no question we can do better.
Maybe that means Reconceive foster care to be a system
geared not toward housing kids, but toward healing them.
That is entirely different from what we have today.
Maybe it means measuring outcomes in a different way,
like high school diploma, college degree.
Definitely.
It means understanding that foster care does not exist as a vacuum
unto itself, that it touches many other systems.
And that is what we are going to address tonight.
So I think it's time for some questions.
Sixto, where are you? Can you come up here?
There you are. Yay!
Okay.
So it's it's pretty great that Sixto is here.
he is actually in Seattle for other work, but,
the love is the same.
It's the same.
All right, so, six wards of the state traces
your, story from early childhood to the point
where you founded the nonprofit Think of Us, which is geared toward older
foster youth who are on the verge of aging out of the system and their needs.
It's also geared to surfacing ideas to reform foster care.
But Sixto, as I mentioned, has worked with three presidential administrations.
The Obama, Trump and Biden.
So that's pretty good.
so my question, my first question is
that's a pretty incredible trajectory.
So can you help people understand how your experience,
is relevant to the experience of foster kids
who are who are nowhere near where you are right now?
Yeah. Well, thank you so much.
And, you know, thank you for, to stand for children.
Thank you, Claudia, for really the amazing work
that you've done over the years and witnessing
you really bring this from an idea to this moment.
it's such an honor to even just witness the power of someone who,
has dug that deep into our issues.
I think one of the most similar things,
of my experience to every young person who's in care is that there's a moment
that you realize that a separation
makes you question, do you still belong?
And when I think about what's actually the child
welfare system is structured to do, it's been to investigate.
It's been to think about do you qualify to be removed or not.
Right.
And then it has this moment where you're either being caught, supervise
not getting the support, or you are in the foster care system.
And so the one common thread is that
everyone who's been in foster care can say they had that day,
whether they remember it or they don't.
And it's interesting that you say, that you were giving some history
because you talked about, Charles Loring Brace, but,
go back to King Henry the Eighth, and he had a problem.
He had relationship issues.
And he wanted to get a divorce,
and he wanted his way, and he couldn't get a divorce.
So then he decided he would get rid of the people
who didn't allow the divorce, which was the church.
And when that happened, he that dissolved the monasteries,
which were responsible for actually, serving the poor and being that
the individual allies support that existed.
So fast forward from 1530
all the way to 1601, you have chaos, right?
And now Queen Elizabeth the First finds herself saying
she actually has to respond to the government,
has to respond to create a system that's going to address this in children.
Right.
And I mentioned this moment because 1601 is the initial welfare system
that says there's oh deserving people and undeserving people
in the philosophy of
who deserves to get helped, went from England
all the way to the first colonies of the United States of America.
In our case, management is structured that way.
And ourselves, our our, our child welfare systems.
So when I think about what is that most common experience,
at one point there was an evaluation of whether this person
who had a child deserved a help or not.
Then it was instead of trying to solve the problem, right.
In many cases, it was an evaluation that, you know, brought you in or not.
But we're on the cusp of some reforms that starts to shift.
That type of thinking.
So talk to us about
some of the most promising reforms that you're seeing right now.
And if you can, where Washington state lands in that picture.
Yeah, I think it's one of the most interesting
moments to be alive for system reform around children.
When I think about the child welfare system,
there 7 million children who are involved in a child abuse report a year.
There are 74 million children in this country.
It's about 10% every single year, right?
33% of all children by their 18th birthday will experience a knock on that door.
And of a social worker
for black families is 53%.
Now, a lot of folks have organized for a long time to address that,
and I am so curious about what if that moment actually became a moment
where resources were deployed and not just the investigation?
Know.
And in 2018,
this law family first passed, and it's an attempt to do that.
It's an attempt to be able to say, if you having problems
with substance abuse, mental health, or you need some parenting support,
let's deploy it.
We got to figure out how to implement that.
Wow. Right.
But so the opportunity to get support on the front end with a program
that's starting to bubble up, then there's the opportunity to stay with family.
There was an epiphany that happened where people were like, well,
if we need people to take care of children,
what x auntie or grandma or their siblings.
Right.
and so now being able to do that and the easier way where it can be
where the federal government
can give some money to states to make that happen, that's 2023.
And the most interesting for me was during
President Obama's, time where there was this mama mou.
Long story short, you don't need to know broccoli,
but this thing went out from the feds to the states and said, guess what?
You have a new mandate.
You're also responsible for the healing and the development of a child,
not just the safety.
These are all the wrong ingredients to actually be able to say,
how is it that you can ensure that a child is in a system where your well-being,
your mental health, all of that is being addressed, this idea
that support families, to actually support families.
And what's interesting about what we call kinship, right, being placed with a child
is that I'm starting to realize, or starting to have this theory
that we can start to solve multiple problems, right?
Foster care.
Let's solve a child being able to heal, develop, and thrive
by engaging a family member and making sure that that family member
is equipped to raise that child.
It was interesting because I thought about elderly.
They get to choose a family member in the state,
in government resources, that family member to take care of them.
Never thought about that as kinship. Right.
And so there's other problems.
As we saw that. I'm curious about.
What does it look like
when a family members resource by government to show up at a school
and be your educational advocate, or to show up in court
and having the ability to take that time and be able to do that.
So I think there's something about that's bubbling up that's around.
How is it that we might actually solve hard problems through other family members
that is,
surprising, really, that it's kind of a leading edge.
You'd think this should have been going on
decades ago, but it is the leading edge and and it is showing some promise.
Thank you so much for your work on that.
Thank you.
I never want to be bad.
I only want to do my best.
I was taught otherwise.
So my best is low.
I wish people knew that I'm a good kid.
No matter the circumstances I'm in right now.
Family is everything to me.
I'm normal.
I wish people knew.
Pleasing my mom means a lot to me.
My family means the world to me.
Time is money.
I'm an artist.
I love my family.
I wish people knew.
Felons got feelings too.
Most of us just want to be heard, but never are.
Graffiti is art, not a crime.
I love the crime I committed in the past.
Doesn't shape who I am today.
They looked at what I did instead of who I am.
I'm just a kid that did wrong.
And now I'm being treated as an adult when I'm not even the legal age to drive.
Kids make mistakes.
I deserve respect and support.
I wish people knew I love art and games.
Felons are people too.
I'm a cold hearted lover.
My love may not look like yours, but it's real.
I like to joke and mess around
even when I'm not trying to.
I wish people knew that.
I don't take disrespect lightly.
I do what I gotta do to get my money under any circumstances.
I've always been too tired to do my own shit.
Play your cards the way you want them to be dealt.
Just because we are in rehab
doesn't mean we are not human.
I'm a hooper and a scholar.
I wish people knew I'm educated.
And I wish they understood that my environment more me to who I am
and influence a lot of my decisions.
My loved ones are everything to me.
I'm nicer than I look.
Honest.
Stakes are only mistakes
if you don't learn from.
My time is valuable.
Okay.
So first question is for our.
So all right,
you probably remember a couple weeks ago we went to echo Glen.
We talked to some young people there, and I told them about this panel
and they said, okay, guys,
if you know it's going to be
200 people listening to you, what do you want to ask the panel?
What do you want people here to hear and what do you want the panelists to answer?
And one young man, do you remember he said,
why are some people seen as being more valuable,
more important than others?
So I think you might have a really interesting answer to this question.
You've traveled many roads to get to this night.
Foster care, incarceration, an unusual array of educational experiences.
and so based on what you've seen,
I would love if you could speak to that question,
why do you think some people are seen as less valuable than others?
Now, I've been thinking a lot about that since we met with those young people.
and then,
thoughtfulness of the questions
in that one young man in particular who,
you know, was charged and and sentenced,
as an adult
for crimes committed when he was a juvenile.
and when he was asking this wire,
or the question he wanted to pose to the panel, I think of
why are some people, regarded more valuable than others?
He he pointed out a particular case he saw in the news.
So I think we just have to look at, the lens he was looking through,
which I think he sees as the preponderance of the evidence.
Right.
So the case he was referring to in the news was of a white Stanford student,
you know, who was facing 14 years for a very serious sexual assault.
And the judge gave him six months in jail instead,
because the judge was worried about the severe impact
this sentence would have on this 19 year old's future.
He brought up those
words particularly, you know, so I had to go and look at that case. Yes.
And he was dead on.
But he also brought up cases of people around him.
And the difference of the way juveniles who are facing crimes,
are treated
when impassioned parents
show up versus and when there's no one in the courtroom.
and he was struck by those words
about the severe impact prison would have on that young person.
What the judge felt. Right.
He was blown away by those words because he'd never heard them.
Right.
and so he was looking at that lens,
but also, after being convicted, we have to realize
we handed him over to an institution that's
populated
a vast majority of youth that are just like him, youth of color.
Right?
In a place like Green Hill, it's 70 to 75%.
That's a big statement on who's valuable and who's not.
And I think
finally, I think
what kept we were we were in the room for several hours
talking to these young people,
and there was incredible disparagement about the lack of education.
They they were absolutely hungry for it.
And I think we tell the young person a lot about what we think their worth is
by the school we put them in or the education we afford them.
Absolutely.
And that just wasn't there for them, especially for the young women.
And I really credit the young men for sticking up
because they see we got it out here.
We literally got nothing but these young ladies.
They really have it bad.
yeah.
There's also, a point you've made to me in the past
about the particular disadvantage that kids in foster care experience
when they brush up against the criminal
justice system, for instance, as our just, alluded to,
if your biological family shows up in court
and they are there to say, hey, you know, we'll take the kid home, we'll,
we'll oversee, we'll, we'll provide supervision.
A judge might be a lot more, amenable
to allowing, like an electronic bracelet
so that the kid can go to regular school and just come home and be home
because they have a sort of traditional family to go home to that
that is going to supervise them.
For a kid in foster care, know that they're at an automatic disadvantage
in the legal system because there is no parent who's going to supervise them.
Foster parents are not.
That's not their job, you know, to be monitoring a kid
on an electronic bracelet.
So I often think about that,
others anything
else about what makes a child,
sort of less valuable than another?
I think if you look back to the history of,
this land that we've always,
folks have always looked at certain people
as less, they're going all the way back before slavery.
and so those same perspectives and mindsets are still prevalent today.
they're still prevalent in the system with the folks who are manning the system.
And so I think it,
it's just par
for the course in a sense that some people feel that
they are not valued or respected ever, and that they know there's some kids
that know they're going to get the short end of the stick when they go in.
and that's that's sad in a sense.
But history shows that that's been the mindset, for some
100%.
I mean, it's not lost on me that even the language
of the 13th amendment as a whole sentence, I won't say it.
I don't know that word for word, but it says something
like abolishing slavery, except for the case of incarceration.
So, there's direct link that that is the continuation
of a chattel state is, really clear in our constitution.
And I would just also just say, can we just pause and reflect
the brilliance of young people and these spaces, just their analytic
skill and understanding with depth and accuracy what is going on?
The statement that they can make from that view just tells us
we need to listen more and more to those voices.
I want to, continue a little more with you.
doctor Ben, doctor Ben danielson,
your perspectives on young people
I know have been developed through your many years of work
in multiple systems, particularly health care and behavioral sciences.
But you're now focused on ending youth incarceration.
So are there specific policies or laws that you think could stem youth crime
before it occurs, or could markedly cut
recidivism?
I had an interesting day, and I want to answer this.
Right.
So, I'm going to be less of an and,
ratter and just read some of the things I was thinking.
You can rant.
You can rant. Go rant.
So the first thing I thought about with a question like this is sometimes,
it's interesting to ask why a question is asked in this circle.
I don't know that I need to say this in other circles.
It would be really important to say that that question could be predicated
on the idea that we don't have good solutions,
that we don't have good ideas out there, and that just ain't right.
That is not true.
First,
there's all of these alternative approaches to incarceration.
All of these examples of diversion programs
that have been proven to get better outcomes
almost every single time 50% better, 75% better, 85% better.
These improvements in reducing recidivism,
the chance of going back into prison
with evidence there is no lack of evidence of better approaches,
and that those approaches have better outcomes,
and that those outcomes are cheaper than what we do in our current state.
Programs like community based mentoring programs and skills development
programs, things that you all do every single day
to show up for young people to create culturally relevant, spaces
where people see people who look like them
and provide the kinds of programs that help them be seen, programs
that have proven themselves in New York City and Rhode Island,
in Alabama, in Texas, in California, and yes, in Washington state with,
all of the wonderful the mockingbird programs and the choose
one 80s, they're proven to be beneficial and to be effective.
They prove that they work better than our current system.
So we don't lack ideas.
We have visible proof of cost effective solutions.
And it leads you to the conclusion that you have to start contesting
and, sitting with and each of us has to sit with this.
If it's not about money, if it's not about evidence,
if it's not about proof of practice, then it can only be about a lack of will,
a lack of shared community and societal well,
and it's a will that comes from
all of this other stuff, these false narratives and these inaccurate tropes
about fear tactics that are thrown around us.
Another point you got me going.
So I'm just oh, go, go.
We've seen that these alternatives to incarceration work great.
And I would argue that they would also work great
before any trouble happens in a young person's life.
Why do we put good programs behind a firewall that says, you
must be convicted of a crime before you're eligible for them?
Now we're talking.
Now we're not.
We're talking not only about reducing recidivism,
but actually getting into this phase of prevention
and really getting out of these cycles of arrest, prosecutions and punishments
and the stickiness of this system that especially seeks out
black and brown and poor people.
Moreover,
there are more things that we can do that we know has the power
to reduce incarceration.
One example is this whole example of reducing out-of-home placements
in the foster care system.
And you started to say at Washington State went from what?
And 2018, over 9000 foster
placement, in 2023, less than around 4000.
Now we're in the forest. Yeah, yeah.
And, that is an enormous change from that point that you made, that
being in aging out of the foster care system has its own
magnetic predilection for incarcerate.
And on the other side of it, the lack of opportunity in the educational system.
It's just powerful, powerful, evidence that we have things
that we could do that could change the system.
I, I'm just going to interject.
I failed to mention that about half of foster
care kids in this country leave high school without a diploma.
They drop out.
so that's one of the reasons, you know, you're 18.
You don't even have a high school diploma. What? You know what?
What do we think is going to happen from that?
Another point,
we have this really catastrophic intertwining relationship
between youth who are unsafely housed and the carceral system.
And that happens back and forth, where youth move in
and out of being homeless and then being behind bars.
The work that we do to reduce youth homelessness,
has a direct impact on the chances of being incarcerated.
We have all of these things
that can really work, all of these things that we could be applying upstream.
And I mean, way upstream supports like basic universal health
care and basic universal income and direct cash transfer programs.
They've proven themselves that they work really well.
Pair that with
educational programs that meet the strengths of foster youth
and mental health services that are good fits,
and you'll start to really get that prevention cooking.
All these things are working and can be expanded.
One challenge for me is that they still tend to wait
until a lot of harm occurs in people's lives before we start offering them,
I'll share that at.
Okay.
one thing we're trying to do is lens and focus to way, way upstream.
We ask these questions like, what would it look like to be
in a community that would never even think about incarcerating a youth,
or allowing a used to be homeless, where that would ideal would just be rejected?
And the people, the intergenerational folks who are working in that space,
have taught me a whole lot of really interesting things.
Talking about this idea about about belonging.
They talk about solutions that are based on belonging, not just,
the feeling of belonging, which is absolutely important,
but I mean, like tangible manifesting,
like policy and programs
that actually show belonging, belonging in the build space,
the third spaces that young people exist in, belonging in the relationship space,
the intergenerational relationships of mentoring and support, belonging
in the skills building, learning and educational opportunities,
belonging in the ways in which people walk into spaces
and their identity is celebrated, not not denigrated, belonging built into work.
And then the second thing that this, group of people has been teaching me in
my community has been that it's not just about a monolithic approach to belonging.
Any one single program, will not work.
You can have the best idea, the best single idea, and you fall up
against that adage that complex problems do not bend to singular solutions.
And so what they talk about
is a constellation of belonging, programs working together.
When you integrate all of those programs, which is your point.
These are not issues of isolations.
So there's solutions are not solutions of isolation.
They are integrated belonging solutions.
I am starting to really ramble too far, but I will just say
we really need to.
We find all of these answers. They are there.
They're especially there in our young people, in our youth and young adults.
And the more we listen to them,
the more successful we are going to be in finding really good solutions.
And I just, I just think,
if we understand the ways in which we are
intentionally harming young people, the ways in which racism
has been built into these systems, if we really hold our own selves
up to the mirror of that and we start to think differently,
I can't imagine that we would continue the practices
that we are today and.
So about belonging.
so, Karen, Karen is also in the book, I should say.
she makes a brief appearance there.
Karen is long time educator, has been a principal in Seattle public schools,
left Seattle public schools, but really, really knows what happens in schools.
All kinds of schools.
so, Karen, you know, I think that I worry that when we talk about this stuff
and I say these huge numbers and it sounds impossible
and it's quite depressing if you kind of fixate on that stuff.
But Karen doesn't ever seem to get depressed into paralysis.
and, and I wonder if you can talk about the way belonging manifests in a school
and how just regular folks
just, you know, parents, teachers, people in a school,
a community around the school can work on this thing
that Ben was talking about, about belonging with kids.
I can lend a few thoughts.
I don't I definitely don't have the answer.
But I think that tying together
what everybody has already said,
I think the first thing that we have to do as a whole community is to
really deeply reflect on why it is that some kids,
we view some kids differently than other kids
than our kids, and
and if we can do that and realize
and deeply come to a place where we say,
this kid who is being tried for something, or this kid who is in
foster care or who's on the corner and struggling downtown,
they're this same value, the same as my child
and if we do that, that shifts the way that kids feel.
I mean, because they feel that that's what creates connection, right?
and I think for me,
I, call myself a recovering principal
because I was a principal for 20 years, and and 17 in Seattle.
And I think when I'm, when I went to Madrona K-8,
and was principal there, I was there for six years,
and it was at that time, you know, 90 plus percent African-American community.
And I was incredibly honored
to be given the the opportunity to be in that community.
And I learned
almost every important lesson that stays with me from from being there.
And I will say that,
first of all, I've been in other schools as principal and kids were not CPS
did not show up in those schools in the same way they did not.
The police did not show up.
They did not come in.
Expect to have access to the children, to the families, to
do whatever it is that they intended to do.
They didn't remove children from families as quickly or,
they just didn't.
And I found myself and I know
there are several people in this room who were in the school with me.
One is sitting two seats down.
and, and we would find ourselves often.
Nine 10:11 p.m.
waiting with the police for someone to come
and tell us what was going to happen with a child.
With a child with a five year old?
With a 14 year old, because it was, you know, five to age 15 and
and we would be there, like finding snacks, ordering food, doing,
trying to make it light.
And it wasn't light like six to said like the that moment.
That was the day for so many kids. Right.
And we witnessed it and it was horrible.
And then kids would be taken and then they wouldn't come back to school and school.
This was a community of people who loved each other, truly.
And they would be taken,
and then maybe they would come back a week or two weeks later, maybe.
But they were different.
Something had shifted, you know, and we would try really, really hard to,
bring them back in.
But now their parents didn't trust us, regardless of whether.
And I don't blame them,
regardless of whether we were the ones who made the call, they didn't know.
And and so we would be really working hard to try to do that.
So one thing that I decided I would try to do was to figure out,
because all these kids,
they there weren't enough parent, there weren't enough families that or
adults that had foster care licenses for short term care in Seattle.
So these kids would be taken.
The reason they didn't come,
even with all the laws that say they get transportation, kids in foster care,
they'd be out in federal way further Puyallup all the way out there,
and they couldn't get things set up.
So kids didn't come back.
So I thought, okay, one thing we can do is
I can get foster certified and I can take kids home, but to my house
for these short term stays and I can I can help in this way.
Right.
So I embarked on the journey of getting my foster license.
I was single and and it was amazing what I learned in that first
one. It's hard and easy at the same time.
and and one, it seemed like either people were doing it for money
or they were doing it because they wanted a baby.
They wanted to adopt a baby.
Meanwhile, like,
neither of those are the likely outcome
of what is happening here, right?
So, so I learned quickly, I got my license.
I started having kids in my own community come stay for short periods of time.
Brought me actually significantly closer to families because when they were going
through their lowest moment, I never wanted their kids.
You know, it wasn't like this.
Miss Andrews is going to keep our kids.
It was like, I'm I'm just stepping in for a moment, you know?
But then you learn all these struggles and you learn like,
everybody's having a hard time, like people just need.
Like, if instead of paying $1,000
a day, I think, or you told me that right to to how someone at echo Glen
or at Green Hill, what if, gosh,
what if we gave $1,000 a week, $1,000 a day?
I'll just go with the whole thing, $1,000 a day
to really take care of kids.
We're going to have entirely different, entirely different outcomes.
But but in this learning that I, that I had, it was like it
it became clear to me, like, like there's so much of a need to step in
and be in this space like, and to be close to
and be willing to put yourself in a really vulnerable position,
and also to not be afraid
to be vulnerable with someone else who's going through that.
So I learned a lot from that.
And so I decided and realized that we needed more like we needed more people
who lived in the Madrona Central area that were part of the community.
So I got about 30 people to come and get their foster licenses together,
and we set it up on.
That's something I'm proud of.
It's true.
It wasn't perfect, though, guys.
It was not perfect.
There are challenges because I think part of the reason that that it's hard is that
that you have to be unconditional love like your own kid.
How many people are parents in here right?
Like your own kid.
Their not their best self every day, are they?
And they're.
Yeah, yeah. And neither are appearance.
I mean, I, I think what's so hard is like we want to as a society
think of everyone as like you're either the hero or the villain.
And on most days I'm not a hero or a villain,
but on some days I am both, you know, and neither.
But mostly like we're somewhere in the middle.
We're just like normal people, right? Trying our best.
But when you when your kids get taken away from you and put in foster care,
you're the villain.
And and it's hard to come back from that.
And your worst day,
your worst thing that you've done becomes public knowledge to everyone.
And it's hard to come back from it.
So, that's all to say that I,
I think that by viewing children differently, by viewing
parents worst day and not
thinking of them as bad people, like I think of myself as a parent
of two, the two most amazing kids
that I know, and I know a lot of amazing kids.
but I, I think of myself
as very average as a parent because, like, I have, and that's
not because I don't have really good days, but I also have really bad days.
That's where the average comes in, you know, and, and,
and I think like, I don't not everybody sees my bad days.
Right.
Like those aren't public and they are public for a lot of people.
So I guess like having grace, giving people grace, stepping into the gap,
viewing kids differently, loving them unconditionally.
Like thinking of like, how can I do that?
And and sometimes, like you,
you don't have the time to lean in and be a foster parent.
It led to a beautiful thing for me.
I ended up adopting two kids out of foster care
and and they say that I want it like it's emotional for me because,
well, for obvious reasons, they were little when,
when and one just started college, one just started high school.
All of that.
But but like there are all these other kids who,
who who've been at my house and who have been at Christmas
with some of you guys to later my so I can't see Kate and Penny and over there.
But you guys have had, you know, holidays with me and my family and seeing that.
But I fell short for them.
I fell short for a lot of children and I did, and it broken my heart.
I was
I was really upset last week on a call with these guys in preparation for this,
because I have and I'm still in touch with a lot of these young people,
and I didn't give them that unconditional love that they needed.
And, and
we need I needed help.
I needed community support to do that.
Right.
And they deserve better. So,
it's the little things if you don't have the time,
maybe you have the money and you can help support,
you know, support programs that support kids in foster
care and families who are willing to step into that gap.
If you don't have the money and you have the time,
maybe you can do the other.
If you don't have either right now, then you can look at kids and
and love them and open your hearts to them.
I mean, that's I guess I'll stop there.
I think that,
I think I think what you really did was create a community of belonging
within your school with all these people who you who you got
to come together and get certified and create like this net like around
the kids who are in the school, who are being removed.
It's really, I haven't heard that story
from really anyone else.
really sticks in my mind.
and Henderson for you.
you know, just by virtue of, like, we have different systems,
we have the education system
with the child welfare system, we have the juvenile justice system.
And we tend, perhaps understandably, to go, oh, there's a problem
there, and let's drill in on this system and we're going to fix education.
Never, or we're going to fix, you know,
whatever.
but we, we focus very narrowly.
And I'm wondering, since I know that your work as both
an educator has brought you into juvenile detention,
so you're seeing the same kids from, like, different angles.
And I'm I'm wondering how you think about
this approach to problem solving.
What works best?
Well, I think, when I first think about that,
I think and Liz spoke to it, that these different systems are working in silos,
and they feel that
the problem in the justice system is the problem in the justice system.
The problem in education is the problem in education.
But if you really look deeper, that problem hits in the justice system,
it hits in the education system, it hits in the child welfare system.
A kid who comes to school struggling may very well
have housing insecurity and have an incarcerated parent.
So when when systems are only trying to solve their problem
and not looking at the interconnectedness between all the different systems,
they're not really digging down to the root.
I mean, when we really want to dig deeper to the root cause
it's got to be around generational poverty.
It's going to be around racism.
It's going to be around mass incarceration.
It's going to be around lack of access and lack of opportunity.
Those are the real, deeper root
causes that affect all the different systems.
So I would tell the difference systems can really work together.
then they're only going to try to solve this problem, this narrow
focus problem out of their own, their own system.
Like I said, I work for Stanford children.
I do want to talk about a little bit about belonging.
and I work with ninth grade success for the center for High School Success.
When a kid comes up, a ninth grader comes up for as a student of concern.
The number one question
we look at is, does that kid has that kid's sense of belonging
before we can get to any academic, any behavior piece, we need to make sure
that this kid feels connected to school, feels that they belong.
They're respected.
They're valued, they're heard.
So that belonging, that community is very important
because we have students who are hyper visible but walk around feeling invisible.
They stick out like a sore thumb.
But if you ask that kid, that kid feels that no one sees them.
They're sitting alone at lunch.
They got 2 or 3 friends they never called on in class
so that sense of belonging is, is very important.
also with
I see that so on the weekends because not that I'm busy enough,
I go down to 12th and Alder for the last 18 months, and I run groups
down there Friday, Saturday and Sunday and the same.
I see the same thing in terms of belonging and community.
The thing is, they found it
in a place that maybe didn't have all the pro-social behaviors that we want.
But every kid wants to feel a sense of belonging.
They want to feel family.
And because that's where social creatures
and kids are going to find their group.
So whether their group is in school, whether that group is in church
or whether their group is on the corner, they're going to find them.
some of the the lack of,
when I look at so the education system.
So when we check in with kids,
we are always asking them about their week in school.
And the stories that I hear from them down
there is really that they feel that they're not valued.
They feel that the teachers don't care.
They're just here for a check.
Some of those very sharp kids down there know
that they're not getting what they need to be successful.
Once they move away from that, the tension back into community
or even as they move up, to Green Hill or Echo Glen.
So again, a lack of the systems working together
to really solve the problems, to really build our students up,
build our young people up because they are coming back to the community
and they're coming back, whether we like it or not.
They're coming back either with skills to be to make better proactive,
pro-social decisions or they're going to come out better criminals.
so it's really indicative that all the systems need to work together.
I think we also need to, really value the community based organizations.
I think we're not leaning on them.
They're always being cut in terms of funding, but
they're another avenue of advocates
that can work really specifically in the community.
They know what the community needs.
They know how to access resources.
So that's another leverage point.
So that to get the systems talking to each other.
But until they talk to each other, until they look at the deep, deeper root
causes, it's always going to be this effort
that I think we don't get the value out of the effort.
So about.
This is for any of you or anyone else,
about these systems not talking to each other.
you know, my my day job. I'm a journalist.
I look at, you know, education, child welfare, juvenile justice
systems, sort of as an outside observer.
I am wondering if any of you have thoughts about why they don't.
They seem almost incentivized to not work together.
I, I don't understand, frankly, why
it is so hard to get
leaders of these major systems.
We'll just say in our state for now, to, like, really work together
and conceive answers together and pitch those answers,
those those, collaborative answers, say to the legislature, maybe it happens,
but I don't I don't understand why it isn't a normal thing.
Do you do any of you have thoughts,
you guys?
It's held out as being, because of privacy
and not being able to share information in protecting
the individuals involved.
But it's it does not protect their privacy and it does not solve problems.
The most success I ever I've ever seen is in the alternative high schools.
Sorry.
In the alternative high schools where where we actually were housed in a
youth care shelter, we were housed in, in places
that were run by community organizations because it
it forced us to all talk together and surround the kids.
But I know others have bigger ideas on it.
No, I think that's it. I,
I do think,
funding systems create those silos pretty powerfully.
And it's really hard
sometimes for us to imagine funding systems that can be different.
Related to that.
I think we get really caught up in the scarcity mindset in our approach
to how we think about resources, so that if I'm supposed to work with you
in the schools,
whatever resources you're getting somehow is coming away from my resources.
And we can't seem to understand the synergy
that comes from working together and those things.
And, apologies if.
Well, no, I'll just say,
the structure
tends to work harder to reinforce the structure
than to care about the lives, people passing through the structure.
So all the effort goes into kind of holding those up.
But I love when you start talking about, spaces
that are actually incentivized or even forced to exist together.
And then you talk about common values, well-being instead of
widgets, belonging
instead of, whatever anti negative thing you're trying to avoid,
I think then you start to see something more possible.
That's why they say the system is built
to get the results that it's getting.
Right.
So, that that is one point I want to make.
Sometimes people say, is foster care broken?
Well, is this to.
Exactly.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
its outcomes are terrible, but it
is working as designed. So
that's why I have a problem with
the word broken is is definitely wrongheaded.
but I don't know if it's. We can say it's broken.
one thing I failed to mention, sorry about that,
is that we have this QR code where anybody can sort of ask questions,
and maybe some of you were smart enough to figure that out on your own.
And yeah,
that's
not working, as we had hoped it would.
so if you did try to ask a question, I'm sorry,
because you weren't able to, but,
we're going to go old school and we will have a microphone,
and people can ask their questions that way.
So I'm glad that everyone had a chance to think about your questions
because of the mentee.
and we will switch over there in just a second.
So if you're ready for that, we can.
I think we're ready.
You guys ready for some questions from
our patient listeners?
All right.
Where is Hi, everybody.
Thank you for for coming.
recently, Jimmy Kimmel was,
suspended from a job, and then brought back
because the powers that be lost a lot of money.
I was wondering if we put that same kind of energy
and focus into the way that we put into Jimmy
Kimmel, into, like, other systems.
Could we really make a change instead of just mute talking points
about how we we would like a society to be?
So I think you're talking about, again, like a financial incentive
or disincentive or punish or just even moral incentive.
Yeah.
What a moral incentive to say more about that.
What do you mean? Well, well, I think
well, especially in terms of America.
Right. Well, we we, we
like,
we treat children as, like their property.
We sexualize them, romanticize them, do all these disgusting things.
Right.
You could take somebody like Brooke Shields, like, or Michael Jackson or,
you know, take your pick where kids, we're not seen as kids, you know?
And if we don't, we're not looking at kids as like human beings.
And we're treating them as like something
like as a legacy or a property or some other thing.
Then we're we're doing, you know,
an injustice to them before, before they even get out the gate.
Right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think, I mean, if we could just sort of address what you're talking about
by holding up organizations that sort of like
that don't do that. Right?
I mean, I think that that's
what you're talking about, like making, an example for.
Right, like making a broad example.
Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah.
I think, does anyone else want to respond to that?
We've got a whole bunch more questions, so maybe we'll get a couple more.
Just that, our amazing, folks in
frontline community sectors are getting canceled left and right.
And I think there's also a need for us.
And I'm sorry if that sounds like talking points, but, like,
we really need to strategize how we build up and support
our community leaders, our folks who are doing that work every day.
And it seems like we have structures that actually sometimes undermine their,
their longevity, their sustainability, their wellness, their,
their thinking about their own health and everything else like that.
Right.
I think we're got a question in the back there.
Well, for, answering all the
questions, I feel like throughout the conversation,
we have all the wrong measures to support,
children or young adults
in foster care or have been,
incarcerated in the past.
I feel like a lot of people have been looked down upon
just because they don't have a high school diploma or a college degree,
but I just my personal thought that is not the only,
road to success.
and I really benefit from a program.
I earned my college degree.
and I got, like, the eat, TV fun
to get to school and purchase applied.
But that's the path that worked for me.
for a lot of younger people, I think they can really benefit
from, like, trading school or doing something that not necessarily
the traditional route finishing,
high school or getting to college.
So, my question is, how could that be
a count to any of reformation to the
current way that we
approach this problem, to really help people
that want to go outside of that, to ditch
traditional project tree.
Well, I think some of that is with exposure
and being exposed to the different careers that are not so much considered,
those high track careers, and I work down to a juvenile.
We actually bring in RV and do career exploration with students,
and we have modules around all the different, trades carpentry,
plumbing, construction, automotive, for one.
We realize that some of these students are going to be felons.
And so trying to be realistic in
what their options are going to be when they're leaving the system.
And we know that trades are felon friendly fields when you really look at
how important trades are going to be in ten years,
they're going to be the fastest growing jobs that careers that we need
in this country.
In terms of all the different building,
the manufacturing and all that, that they're trying to bring back.
So really, we we talk to students, talk to young people about their options.
We're really working on their self-worth because it's that blame and say
they get blamed for something they did or something they didn't do.
They were just happened to be born to, not the best family.
I'm not going to say the wrong family, but not the best family.
And they have to carry that shame.
So we're about really trying to build self-esteem,
trying to build this, the value that they see in themselves.
One thing we talk about is we tell a kid, you're worthy of future.
We tell every young person that and drill it into their head
to get them to be able to, to know that they have options
and they can do things and they can recover from their situation.
They can rise above their raising is one thing I say, you know,
they're not stuck.
It's not just it can be generational, but it doesn't have to be.
But high schools have to
change for sure because they're almost we're holding
kids up to the same high school graduation requirements from the 1800s.
And when it was set up just for a very small
percentage of our populace and if it's going to carry forward
democracy, which obviously we're a little bit not sure at this point,
you know, that we have to we have to change and we have to make it meaningful.
We have to show kids, why would you come every day to take these
courses that don't seem relevant?
So what I see, and I have hope because I have the benefit of being
in high schools all across the country all the time.
And I see so much just
really creative thinking.
All of the schools are doing, you know, dual credit in high school
so they can earn.
Kids can see this actually is meaning something.
It's career pathways, career technical education.
It's happening earlier in earlier.
But if kids come to high school and they don't have a connection,
they don't feel that belonging they will not pass does not matter.
The skills at that point, they will not stick with it.
So by setting up systems in high schools where kids are known,
then they can access those other programs.
Then they can go into the trades.
They can they can go into all different sort of alternative forms
of post-secondary that lead to, you know,
like actual, careers.
And what about education in our carceral facilities
such as echo Glen, Greenhill or state prison?
I don't know. Art.
Can you speak to that at all?
I mean, this is where you were educated.
kind of,
enjoy.
You know, I want to, also go
back to the young lady's, question about trades.
You know, one of the most important or one of the most sought after,
education programs in, in mill
carceral settings is like automotives.
it's just,
and we're going back to the the systems. No.
Right.
I've seen no bigger clash of state agencies coming together
than, child welfare and juvenile lockup.
You know, a former
DCF director or the initial person worked wonders
to try to bring us together, but historically, they've been separate.
They've been separate.
And foster youth going into those systems have been invisible
because once they get busted, go to court and get to get a sentence.
They're no longer foster youth. They're delinquents.
those barriers are still there after it's only been ten years of trying.
Those barriers are still there.
the way we heard the young people talking in echo Glen
is the clashes, the education in even K-through-12.
They go to school.
Not enough staff comp,
not enough security staff come there in their cell for three days.
Screw school. Right? the
staff think they're acting up in school.
They're put in their cell for three days and not allowed to go to school.
That's not registered as a suspension as it would be in any other school.
Things are happening in their.
And I'm conscious that times here and I don't mean bad by that.
But we just got to recognize the clash of the agencies is happening
there at the cost of the young people's education.
And now, you know, personally, one thing I'm worried about that I think
really good hearted people in the system are trying to educate people.
This new facility that's opened up at Harbor Heights inside an adult prison.
they're attempting to,
train auto mechanics to young people
virtually, like, without ever putting a wrench in their hand.
Now, I do that work at home. Like I love it myself.
I can't imagine how that's done.
There's, like, virtually.
maybe I'll have to try it.
But I worry about that. I worry about that.
How can we keep these young people engaged without ever putting
a wrench in their hand, without letting them touch the automobile?
Right. Like,
recognizing that the agencies have have challenges.
But I think we need to get over it, and we've talked all around it,
but I think that's where the clash, the biggest clash of the agencies,
at the cost of the young people.
and it was said earlier, these young,
these young people are coming home right.
and we were talking about
measurements to just have patience from me for a minute.
Like, I'm not a talker, but I just want to.
We have this measurement of passivity ism,
this measurement of recidivism.
That's usually what the jailer or incarcerated population is measured by.
But we don't measure what we should be.
It's a it should be a equation.
How many young people are we putting out with diplomas, college
degrees, career certification?
I guarantee that will change the recidivism rate.
I know for a fact I've seen it in action,
but that's that's never put together as an equation when we measure the system.
It's what's the recidivism rate.
And then it's never back to system accountability.
It's what does that some people are just born to be bad.
And they weren't take it from me.
my name is Anthony here.
I'm with the campus of Hope Foundation, and,
I was one of those kids that, you know, was 12 years old and
given up to the state, taken from my mom
and been in and out of incarceration for 38 years.
And, I put an end to that. So.
But, so I know how the system works, and I know what's broken about it,
and I know how to fix it, because I was in that system my whole life.
And so my question to you, principal,
is, I admire your story,
and I want to thank you for all the love that you gave the community
and how you brought people together, because I think it's community.
And if you don't have community, it doesn't work.
So if you have more people that you can bring together
to make this work, then that's how you fix a community.
Like you can't raise a a child.
It takes a village of people.
It takes a community to raise one child, not just,
a whole city of children, but everybody has to come together
in order to make that work.
And I want to know how you got everybody to come together to get those licenses,
because they had to be brave to put up with these kids,
especially from from that school, because I went to that school
for a couple of weeks.
Yeah.
Persistence, I think.
No, you're you're so right.
And thank you for sharing your a tiny bit of your story.
I would love to hear more of it.
I, I think that it's not easy because I think by
putting people together, by sharing,
I think by being honest, because we never tell these stories of
like what happens after dark in the school,
when will why why is the principal still at this school
at at 10 p.m., you know, and if I when I started realizing like
how extreme it was and I was in a pretty unique position
being white in the role, and I was probably more surprised than others,
I felt like I needed to just
tell people what was going on and say, what can we do together?
What can we do together?
And I think it was kind of naive at the start, but then it picked up.
I mean, I know it was, but it it picked up momentum.
And then people said, nobody's going to do that from DHS.
There's no way they're going to do.
And then they were like, yeah, let's do it, you know?
Yeah, let's do it.
and I think it was a moment of vulnerability.
Like, I have all these people who say they want to do it.
They're thinking DSA, just thinking they won't really do it.
And sure enough, they did.
And we did it at the school.
And I think just by creating, like you said, it would never work
if it were like 3 or 4 people, but it was, you know, a lot more than that.
And that's what gave it strength, I think.
But I think Khan, because I was there with you,
that you did such a great job of building community and building trust
within the community and in turn,
empowered families, empowered parents
that, hey, you can make a difference to think more than just about your kid.
Think about that next kid that doesn't have anybody.
So I think your testimony and also telling the story,
but your persistence, your modeling that you're showing that extreme care,
I think, really galvanized people in that community
to make to want to make, a choice to help others.
And so, you know, you you're always modest,
but you, you really you you worked hard at it again,
building community, building trust and empowering the community.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right I think we're going to have one more quick question.
Softball question I promise. Great.
well thank you all for the conversation tonight.
And I think you all have shared just the challenges that are ahead of us
and for all the challenges that, we experience,
there are also bright spots that we see that never make it to the light of day.
and so I think, you know, the way that I see it, the media plays
a big part in elevating the bad stories, but hardly ever the good stories.
And so, Claudia, questions for you.
Help us elevate the good stories.
How do we get the good stories out there so that people aren't driven by the bad
stories that then lead to the harsher penalties that lead to more incarceration?
and then, you know, the prolongation of this entire system.
Okay.
All right.
there is a way to do this.
And for a little while at the Seattle Times where I work,
we were doing it, with education, this is going back now, ten years.
We had this thing called Education Lab, and it was focused on
what we called solutions journalism.
It's not magic solutions, but it's just called that.
But what it was, how meet how this does work is
you have to first of all, get editors to, to buy into it.
Right. Editors hold line. They hold the strings.
But what we found out was,
if you if you write about a problem, but then you show not solutions
but responses to that problem, the story of the response, not just,
hey, this is a cool program that makes readers bored.
I'm sorry, it's just truth.
You have to show the problem it's answering and how precisely
this response gets at that problem.
You have to get very granular.
I think that editors are sort of, constitutionally like,
aligned against that.
They think it will be boring.
But what we found was that it's the opposite, that actually
when you get really micro about this person had this idea,
but then they were confronted by this challenge.
And you get really specific. That's a narrative.
That's a story. People like stories.
They don't like being told what to think, but they do like stories.
And and that is what we found, sort of a warts and all.
Like, here are the bumps. Here were the parts that were great.
You were the parts not so great.
Here's the next hoped for version of it somewhere else.
If you get that specific, actually, readers will follow you.
So we were doing it for a while with education coverage.
I, am increasingly thinking
about that kind of approach to child welfare coverage.
Awesome.
Thank you all so very much.
I we are we are at time.
I'm actually wondering if I can impose on the audience for a few more minutes
and invite our panelists just to give like one sentence
kind of on that theme of bright spots, like is what is
what is the hope that you're sort of carrying forward with you, even amidst
everything that we've talked about tonight.
So you can think for a minute and I'll talk, and then you can
get at it, as that would give you a time frame to think about it,
because I didn't tell you I was going to ask that question.
so I just I hope that everyone here tonight had an opportunity to learn
something, to feel challenged to, maybe you agreed with what the panel said.
Maybe you disagreed.
Maybe your, your sort of vantage point, has a different perspective.
So I think what I heard out of each person here
is that we really do have to sort of come together across these systems
and really wrestle together with how do we move forward from here.
And if we refuse to sort of accept some of the realities
that have been shared here tonight, that,
you know, more than half of kids in foster care are going to
touch the carceral system, or that only 1 in 5 kids
in our justice system are graduating.
If we refuse to accept that reality, sort of.
What does that refusal then compel us to do?
And what action does it compel us to take?
So that's what I hope that folks are able to take away from tonight.
And with that, I just be curious if in one sentence
you can share a bright spot, maybe that or, hope that's kind of
carrying you forward, that you would leave the audience with, I can.
Okay. All right.
It's the kids.
so I did this book, right?
And I talked to just just dozens of,
foster kids and former foster kids.
and kids who are locked up, kids who used to be locked up.
And every with every one of them, it's, doctor Ben said it.
It's the brilliance, right?
We don't sort of necessarily
think that, but the thoughtfulness of the young man at echo Glen who said,
why are some people more value than more valuable than others?
That kind of, I would say, a pretty sophisticated
understanding of the world he's operating in.
This is a teenager,
that is
there and there is brilliance in young people.
And it is really easy to say, oh, they're traumatized
or or they're damaged or they don't know where they're so young.
But actually, there really is a sort of incisive
understanding if you think about your own self when you were a teenager,
you probably kind of realized a kernel of truth
that that later as an adult, you said, oh, yeah, I did know that.
So that is what that's the hope.
There's real brilliance.
And there's also real toughness, real resilience
in these kids that are in the book and that are in echo Glen and Green Hill.
I talk to them all the time.
They are they have something for us.
They have not just value sort of inherently.
They actually have like ideas and information.
They have something real there.
And we should use it. Yes.
my hope
is that every young person gets the care,
the support, the nurturing and the love they deserve
just for being a human. Yes.
every conversation like this,
has its elements of weight and, difficulty.
But there's always so many pieces of hope and light and beauty and possibility.
And I so agree with you that, I don't know if I ever got paid
to be a pediatrician, but to be able to spend time, with young people
and really know that kind of brilliance is amazing.
And, and just the idea is that sometimes we forget,
some values that are still so much alive in, in many young people's minds.
And I just want to leave one with you, which is, forgiveness and reconciliation.
I hear young people talk about that in a way that I would challenge
all of us to be thinking about how we would apply that into the way
we construct the world around us.
You know.
And of of double
on that forgiveness, reconciliation and being truly being a community.
I think, like, I have a bigger voice because I played basketball.
I don't know how that works, but who coached?
so yeah, just just leaning into our community
as a whole together will make it better.
I see Hope a major bright spot for me
as we we talked about the, the siloing of agencies.
I hope they can learn by examples.
I think an example is here tonight.
The way the organizations that advocate for youth stand together.
stand right.
Organize this.
Treehouse.
Treehouse is.
I encourage you to look on your programs.
the organizations and the ones that aren't on the programs that are here.
Like, I see friends of youth at the back of the house.
And let it be known Columbia Legal Services showed up in force through,
And legal women voters, are here. So.
So, that is a major bright spot.
And hopefully your agencies can learn
by the example of the organizations that advocate for youth.
Some.
Thank you all again for coming.
you will see a QR code that I think actually works this time on the screen.
I hope that before you leave tonight, you will join us,
and be part of the community that is taking action for young people.
There are a lot of ways to be involved.
you can be an advocate by going down to Olympia
or calling your lawmaker or emailing your lawmaker and encouraging them
to support legislation that aligns with science
and research about what works and what young people are asking for.
you can be a voter, use your power as a voter, as a constituent
to ask your candidates on the campaign trail,
questions and support candidates that align with your values.
And I think coming back to something that that Corrine shared, being a caring
and supportive adults in the community, whether that's formally volunteering
or just being the person
who has snacks and a listening ear in, for the young people that, you know,
there's a role for all of us in showing people that their loved and cared for.
So thank you again for being here tonight.
Please join us in taking action and thank our panelists again.