FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
November 21, 2007

CONTACT:
Nathan Monell, Foster Care Alumni of America, Executive Director, 703-299-6767, ext 1

Former Foster Youth Celebrate Thanksgiving on Capitol Lawn

Foster Care Alumni of America Describe Thanksgivings Without a Permanent Family; Emphasize the Need for Foster Care Reform

Washington, DC — Young people and adults who spent their childhoods in foster care celebrated Thanksgiving today in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. They traveled from states including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Ohio, and gathered to draw attention to a holiday – and a time of year - often filled with disappointment for the 513,000 children currently in the nation’s foster care system. During the dinner, convened by Foster Care Alumni of America as part of its work with the national Kids Are Waiting campaign, the youth and adults present emphasized the need for national foster care financing reform, so that foster children can be moved swiftly to safe, permanent families and other youth may avoid the need to enter foster care in the first place.

Adults who experienced foster care as children came Home for Thanksgiving to the U.S. Capitol because, after they were removed from their families, the government served as their parents. “I’m 21 now and I can’t remember a time when I was in foster care that we really celebrated Thanksgiving,” said Foster Care Alumni of America member Eshawn Peterson of Tucson, Arizona, who spoke at today’s event. ”I have felt so incomplete during the holiday season, especially since the people I care about most, my six sisters, were separated from me for so long.”

Each one of the twenty-five alumni taking part in the Thanksgiving dinner stood in the place of many more brothers and sisters in the foster care system:

• Over 100,000 children are waiting to be adopted this Thanksgiving.
• More than half a million children will spend Thanksgiving in foster care. Many are separated from their brothers and sisters, friends and family.
• More than 12 million adults spent Thanksgivings in foster care as children, and many never found permanent homes.

Foster care alumni are coming Home for Thanksgiving, because they want the government to develop more flexibility in the way it funds foster care. They want families to be reunified whenever safely possible. They want children to be kept with their siblings. They want to support extended families who step up to provide valuable stability when the nuclear family cannot meet a child’s needs.

“Many youth who are currently in foster care and adults who were in the system find that the holidays are not a time of joy, celebration and togetherness, but rather a stark reminder of what it means not to have a family,” said Nathan Monell, Executive Director of Foster Care Alumni of America. “They do not experience the comfort of knowing they have a place where they are always welcome year after year. They don’t get to experience family traditions.”

Some foster care alumni were lucky enough to have found forever families through adoptive or foster families. Some have gone on to create their own families and traditions. Others treat Thanksgiving just like any other day. But for many former foster youth, holidays are a time of deep depression. For a frightening number of foster care alumni, Thanksgiving will be spent in a jail or homeless shelter. Amanda Dunlap, an FCAA member from Ohio, recalls “Thanksgiving is a time to spend with family and reflect on all the things you have to be grateful for. When you are in foster care, you don’t have that feeling of gratefulness. All you have is a sense of hopelessness.”

The national, nonpartisan Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care recognized that all children in foster care deserve a safe, nurturing, permanent family. The Pew Commission noted that current federal funding mechanisms for child welfare encourage an over-reliance on foster care at the expense of other services to keep families safely together and to move children swiftly and safely from foster care to permanent families, whether their birth families or a new adoptive family or legal guardian.

FCAA has more than 800 members representing alumni from all 50 states. The organization has partnered with Kids Are Waiting, a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts dedicated to ensuring that all children in foster care have the safe, permanent families they deserve through reform of the federal financing structure that governs our nation’s foster care system.

Foster Care Alumni of America is an independent national association of adults who experienced foster care while they were children. FCAA’s mission is to provide innovation in the federal and state child welfare systems and effective and meaningful partnerships with child welfare organizations. Casey Family Programs, whose mission is to provide, improve –and ultimately prevent the need for –foster care, is proud to be the Founding Sponsor of Foster Care Alumni of America. For more information on Foster Care Alumni of America, please visit www.fostercarealumni.org