This recital presents an overview of the US Foster Care System. Please join, and contribute to the conversation:

The United States foster care system is extremely complex with a spectrum of triumphs, failures, and overall difficulties. To unravel and solve these problems, we first have to acknowledge that they exist on multiple levels within the system. On a broad level, there are structural issues of racism and class dynamics. Zooming in reveals problems due to the state funding structure of the system. Finally, on a case-by-case level, it seems there are an infinite number of circumstances, making it extremely difficult to ensure individual safety and success for every foster youth. For example, reunification, a federal mandate that courts make every attempt to reunify foster youth with biological family members before allowing adoption, is not successful for many foster youth. And legislating a sweeping change based on the average would still negatively affect so many people. Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) are designed to help alleviate these problems. But even with the tireless effort of these volunteers, the system is still too large for CASA to perfectly address these difficulties.
Poet and former foster youth, Lemn Sissay, states, “…you can define how strong a democracy is by how it treats its child, the child of the state.” By this, I think Sissay is pointing out that foster care runs latent within the structure of a democracy, and issues converge on and proliferate from this root. These issues include conversations we have or don’t have regarding abortion, education, welfare, housing, and so much more. Current political discourse does not give room for the right amount of nuance in solving these foundational issues. My goal is to have this music provide perspective and inspire activism toward addressing these problems. Changes in foster care need to happen at a legislative level, and we the people collectively have the power to enact these changes in our society in order to reflect a healthy and functional democracy.