Audacious Solutions

0:00This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. In 2004, I was newly a single mom trying to raise four children.

0:45This is Sheena Mead. Sheena was living in Florida and life was hectic. We had just moved into a new home. I was on Section 8 and just trying to get myself together. My children at that time were all under the age of seven. I was on government assistance, and I was just trying to make ends meet. Sheena remembers an afternoon that started off like any other. Her kids were playing, running around. There were cartoons blaring in the background. And there was two knocks at the door, and it was a police officer with another police officer. And so the kids were like, Mom, and the police had to do it.

1:27I'm like, OK. So I'm looking at them confused, and I'm like, they're like, are you Sheena? And I'm like, yes. because I didn't have anything to be worried about. I didn't think. I kind of was hesitant, but I was just like, they're probably at the wrong door. So what did they tell you? They're like, we're serving you in a warrant for a worthless check. You know, basically, they're like, you pass a check that got returned with no funds, and the company decided to prosecute. And so that check was for$87.26, a check that I had at that time written for groceries for my children. You know, at this time, this is when people were writing checks.

2:06My paycheck comes in on Friday. I'm going to write the check on a Wednesday. It takes a day to get the check from the grocery store until the check gets there. You know, I was trying to calculate and thinking that it would be okay, and it wasn't. I mean, honestly, I don't think I realized that you could be arrested for bouncing a check. I guess I knew it was illegal, but that the police would show up and put you in handcuffs. They put you in handcuffs, right? Yes. And this is how green I am, you know. I'm like, so let me go find somebody to get the children. They're like, we don't have time for that.

2:39I'm like, well, can you meet me around the corner so you can't arrest me in front of the children? I got arrested. I went to jail that day in front of my children. Here's Sheena Mead on the TED stage. Luckily, I was able to come home pretty quickly because it was my first defense. And I promised the first thing I did when I got home, I borrowed some money so I could pay that check back. And then I had to borrow some more money to pay back the fees for getting arrested and going to jail. Because, of course, I was loading the cash because I was this young mom with four kids bouncing$87 checks. And I just knew that chapter of my life was closed.

3:18Except it wasn't. Because, see, that arrest and that conviction, it remained on my record. And at that moment, I realized that my true sentence had just begun. Because you know what? I was no longer allowed to volunteer at my children's school. I could no longer rent where I wanted to rent because it is legal for landlords to discriminate against a person with a record. I even faced barriers trying to go to college. And still to this day, I am excluded from certain certifications and occupational license. All I could keep asking myself was, damn, when will my sentence end? So even if you've paid the money, you've paid the bill, you've done your time, it still sticks with you?

4:05Yes, they try to define you by your record and not who you are, yes. Let me tell you, so we were taking a field trip to SeaWorld, and in order for me to go on the field trip, I had to go online to fill out a chaperone application. And in part of that application, it asked me, have you ever been arrested? And when I went to go to apply for school, I had to check the box just to get my higher education. Seeking employment, people maybe not want to employ you because of an arrest. And then there's being able to rent a home in other communities. You know, I have to mark off that I've been arrested.

4:43So faced with all those limitations, Sheena found workarounds. I worked in places where the box was banned. I worked for the labor movement. I worked in more progressive organizations. I did a lot of community organizing. I lived in places where I was very upfront with the landlord. I didn't live in apartments because I knew that's where it gets flagged. But then it was just a few years ago where I went to go try to get a rental place. And we got denied. It was like, when would I ever be free is the question. Sheena Mead made a mistake, one that's cast a shadow over her entire life. And every day we hear about struggles people need to overcome, problems that we all need to live with or work around.

5:30But what if there actually is a fix? Today on the show, simple yet audacious solutions. Three TED speakers combining their frontline experience with lots of data and a little common sense to make laws more effective, care better for foster children, and hold environmental offenders accountable. And so back to Sheena Mead. For a long time, money was tight. She had trouble clearing other checks. But she managed to turn things around. She raised her kids, got a degree, and worked her way up the ladder at nonprofits. And then she learned about something called a clean slate law. I truly believe that America is a nation of second chances.

6:18And I say that because just about every state has laws on the books that allow a person to get their record cleared once they're eligible. And right now, there are more than 30 million people who are eligible to get their record cleared. But this is where it gets a little crazy. Less than 10 % of those people actually get it done. They don't know about it. Or if they do, the process is so bureaucratic, costly, and full of red tape. For instance, in some states, people have to wait just about five to 10 years just to even qualify to get their record cleared. Then you have to appear in person to petition.

6:58That means you need to take time off work. And let's keep it real. It was hard enough to find a job in the first place. You have to file a mountain of paperwork. and then sometimes you have to pay processing fees up to$500 per charge. So that means if your crime was being poor like mine, record clearance is not even accessible. So almost every state has a law on the books that would allow people to get their record cleared once they're eligible. Can you explain, like, who is eligible and what is that process? Yes. So it's not just a cookie cutter policy that every state has the same policy. Some are very much more restrictive.

7:40Some are much more like quick to the point. Once you've been crying free for a certain amount of time for certain offenses, you're already eligible. But the burden's on the person. They have to go initiate it. You have to know when that clock hits. Then you have to go file a petition. Then you may have to pay the fees that's associated with filing a petition. Then you have to wait for sign off. It could be backlogs. And then you may be able to get it sealed or expunged or cleared. And now you are actually the CEO of a group called the Clean Slate Initiative that is trying to help people who are eligible to do all that.

8:13In part, though, by changing the law state by state. Tell me more about exactly what you're doing. Yeah. So with the Clean Slate Initiative, what we're trying to do is just cut through all that red tape that the burden is no longer on the person. the burden is on the government to say, look, you said that we're eligible to get our record cleared for certain types of offenses once we're crime-free for a certain amount of time. When that time comes up, we're asking you to just automatically clear that record. You have 30 million people that's eligible right now to get the record cleared. But again, how do you scale that?

8:46Passing clean slate automation. If we're truly a nation of second chances, we don't need to like put barriers in to like get people reinterrating into society. How many people have had their records cleared by a law in their own state? You know, in April, Michigan went into implementation where they started to clear records since they're passing a clean slate. Over a million people got their records cleared. Wow. And we have assisted in three million people having their records cleared so far. So your organization has helped pass clean slate laws in six states. I mean, how hard was it to do? Or is this something that people on both sides of the aisle understand is good because it means more people can go on with their lives.

9:33They can get jobs. They won't be homeless. Yes, so we have helped six states pass clean slate laws, and there are 10 states that have enacted clean slate policies across the country. In many states, they're not even moving this legislation as a criminal justice issue, more so like a workforce issue, because people cannot get back to work if a record is holding them back. And we have a lot of employers and a lot of businesses that are coming into the fold saying, how do we create a pathway for people to come back into the workforce? us. When we think about one in three people who have been arrested or convicted of an offense, that means a lot of us know someone who's been impacted.

10:12I do want to ask you, are there people who think, you know, tough luck, you made a mistake, you got to live with it? Or do you find that people are pretty sympathetic or on board with the Clean Slate initiative? Yeah, you know, I tell them like, yes, I made a decision. And I did the time that the law says I needed to do, that should not define me for the rest of my life. If the law is saying that this should no longer be a barrier, then we need to make sure that it's not. Our plan is to be able to go into states to get them all on the pathway to clean slate automation. All of them? All of them.

10:51Over the next six years. We're looking to be able to get over 14 million people having their records automatically cleared and get all 50 states on a pathway to automation. I mean, it's pretty historic what you and the Clean Slate Initiative want. I mean, it's about changing the way we here in the United States think of punishment and crime. Is it radical to you too? Do I think that this is radical? I think it's just common sense. I think that when you talk to people, it's just common sense. And like when we talk about redemption, second chances, forgiveness, I think most folks, when you have a conversation with folks and you bring the human element to it, folks are in agreement.

11:33We all have been given a second chance. And I think for most of us, we all have asked for a second chance, whether it was from our parents, our teachers, our spouses, our loved ones, even our kids, our communities. And so we talk about second chances. We talk about reentry, but yet we set up all this red tape and we got to cut the red tape. If you could talk to her again, what would you tell your 20-something self after she got arrested? You know, there's a lot of things I could say to the 20-something-year-old Sheena. I'm telling you, a lot of things. A lot of things she should have done, you know?

12:09But that public pain that I had that day getting arrested in front of my neighbors, in front of my children, that made public record. It's going to be turned into a passion that's going to fuel my purpose to help millions of people across the country to realize that they are going to be able to have a second chance and that this thing's going to turn around. She probably won't believe me. She'd be like, yeah, okay. But I would just tell her to just keep persevering, keep pushing. That's Sheena Mead, CEO of the Clean Slate Initiative. You can see her full talk at TED.com. And by the way, the latest state to pass a clean slate law is New York.

12:53On the show today, audacious solutions. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

13:16Friends, before we get back to the show, I want to let you know about TED Radio Hour Plus. When you become a Plus listener, you get bonus episodes made just for you, with more ideas from TED speakers, and you'll go behind the scenes with our producers. What you won't get, though, are those sponsor messages interrupting the show. And that's because you are directly supporting our work at NPR. So if you'd like to show your support, learn more and subscribe at plus.npr.org slash TED or write in the Apple Podcasts app. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, audacious solutions, bold ideas to solve some of today's most complex problems.

14:08And our next speaker knows his issue intimately. It's the foster care system in the U.S. A note before we begin. We briefly discuss child abuse and trauma. You know, all my life I was always told that, you know, there's no placement for me. There's no family members you can live with. Sixto Cancel doesn't remember a time when his family all lived together. Foster care for me started as an 11-month-old baby. My mother struggled with substance abuse and poverty-related issues. And, you know, I was placed in the system. My mother had eight children, including me. My other brother and sisters, they all ended up in different families.

14:50Sixto was in and out of different homes. When he was nine, he was placed with a foster mother who ended up adopting him. I remember being nine years old and being at the courthouse and the judge asking me if I wanted to be adopted. And in that moment, I knew that the answer that I was supposed to say out loud was yes. But in my head, I had always been a foster kid. From being a baby and growing up in the system, I didn't even have an idea of what it truly meant to say, well, here's now your new forever family. But I said yes. And at that point is when I started to experience more and more of the abuse.

15:28Until I was 13, I then ended up couchsurfing because the abuse was so severe. So did you leave your family? Did you run away? There were times where I would just be locked out of the house for weeks at a time. And so that's how the couch surfing started. So I would have to find a place to go while I was being locked out. And that was like her beginning forms of punishment. And so I just kept calling the child welfare system, asking them to take me back. But unfortunately, they kept saying that what I was saying wasn't substantiated, which means that we didn't have enough evidence for them to realize that I was telling the truth about what was happening.

16:05Wait, so you're a preteen and you're calling and saying, I'm in a terrible situation. And that wasn't good enough? The fact that you were calling yourself to advocate for yourself? Not only was I calling, but my school system was calling. My dance teacher and afterschool programs were calling. I mean, there were several open and closed investigations. She would tell the police or she would tell the investigator that I was just acting up. that it literally took me having to, like, tape a recorder to my chest with clear tape and start documenting what I was going through. And that's when I had enough evidence to start saying, hey, here's what's actually happening to me.

16:44Sixto's teenage years were even more chaotic. At one point, he was in touch with his siblings, and they came up with a plan to live together. My older brother, you know, we had met when I was 14, and he was saving money so that he can get an apartment to get me and my other brother out of foster care. I see. And unfortunately one day, he was killed due to gun violence. Oh, gosh. And so like that was the day where like all hope of family kind of died for me. Here's Sixto Cancel on the TED stage. Even without abuse, foster care is a tough experience. You don't know what's actually going to happen to you.

17:26You're placed with a stranger and you're expected to become family. But if you don't fit in, if you act up a little bit too much, you will find yourself in a new home with new school, new rules, new everything. When I was placed back in foster care at 15, I thought that that was the end of my storm. But it was just the beginning of the next storm. Went to a few different homes. But unlike many, I was placed in a nonprofit program where I got ready to live on my own. The foster care system is not doing a good job of raising children. Unsupported foster youth are two to three times more likely to have negative outcomes related to homelessness, incarceration, being sexually trafficked.

18:12The mental toll is severe. Foster youth are two times more likely than war veterans to experience and suffer from PTSD. Okay, so obviously these are really, really tough situations, stressful situations that these kids are put into. How many kids are we talking about here? Yeah, sometimes people think it's a very small issue in the United States because the number of kids that are removed from their homes for either neglect or abuse is about 400 ,000 people every single year. But what most people don't realize is that foster care begins with a knock on your door by a social worker who comes in and asks you a series of questions.

18:57And they check your cabinets. They check the refrigerator. And if you answer those questions incorrectly or there's not enough food in those cabinets or refrigerator, then your child can be removed. There are 7 million children a year that are involved in a child abuse report. And so that means about 10 % of all children in the United States are actually being touched by a child welfare system. I think it's very hard when you see a child who, you know, maybe mom is sleeping in the car, right? And you're trying to get that third grader to school. And what do you do in that situation when our current other systems have failed, right?

19:32When you look at the housing programs across the country, sometimes there's too much of a waiting list. Shelters sometimes are packed out. And so what has happened is that when we don't have interventions for certain situations, then we default to the child welfare system to intervene. And so that's why child welfare has become one of the big responders to what I see as a lot of poverty issues.

19:58I do want to get back to you and the wonderful part of your story. Let's go to you in college when you came up with the idea for your organization, Think of Us. What were you thinking? Were you like, okay, you know what? I am exactly the right person to switch things up here. So when I was in college, I didn't think that I was like the perfect person to like start an organization and then run with it. I kept bringing this idea of how young people can have voice and choice and what's happening to them in foster care. How can they do some goal settings to kind of make sure that they transition into adulthood with the supports that they need?

20:39And what I realized is that, oh, the system is much more flawed by design. This is why I started Think of Us. Because this is the current result of the foster care system. It's designed wrong. I want to give you an example. We overwhelmingly heard from teenage foster youth that they were being misplaced in group homes. The system was acting like they have nowhere to place these children. Turned around. We sent our researchers out. And what they were able to reveal was that the majority of those children actually had extended family members that they could have lived with. So you've explained why kids are usually separated from their families.

21:24But what is it that you are reimagining? Yeah, so imagine this. Imagine that. Unfortunately, you have to come into foster care. But instead of immediately being placed with a foster parent, imagine that your worker is pulling up social media and looking through the adults who are in your life and saying, which one of these adults do you want us to explore you living with? Which one of these are your uncle, cousin, grandparents? And being able to call those folks and say, you know what, on day one, I'm going to place you with family members that you already know. Sixto calls this approach kinship care.

22:00Kinship care is when a child goes ahead and is able to live with an extended family member or an adult that they have already known, an adult who loves them. That adult can be a church member, a close family friend. And what we now know is that research is showing that when children are placed with kin, they fare way better from mental health to stability to graduating high school on time. And yet, only 35 % of young people in the foster care system are actually placed with kin. But it doesn't have to be this way. In one state, in partnership, right, we went in and we implemented some simple solutions, like, let's ask young people which adults in their family they should live with.

22:50I wish I told you something better. That is one solution. We went ahead and required social workers to get extra approvals if they're going to place you outside of kin. The result? The initial placement with young people in the foster care system in a situation where they were living with kin rose from 3 % to over 40 % in just two years.

23:22In another state, we looked at a county. They were able to figure out how to place over 80 % of those children with kin. So the idea that young people don't have adults in their life who can step up is not true. Every single year, hundreds of thousands of children are entering the foster care system, and they're not being placed with family. The system spends over$30 billion on less than 1 million families a year. That is more than enough to make sure we find family, we support them, and that every child is living in a loving family situation. Right now, there's a big systems change opportunity, a federal decision that would make it super easy to have people who are related to a child step up and say, I'm willing to do this and get that support.

24:17If approved, we would see$3 billion shift from traditional foster care to kinship care. So when we work on these crazy ideas like let's make kinship care the norm, it is actually possible. In your talk, you say that you're working on policy to make it easier for relatives to step up, to be foster parents. But what do you mean by that? What makes it easier? Like we're going to do simple things like help the state just ask the young person, who are the adults that you know? Then have a streamlined process that quickly gets that child placed there. Do the background check quickly. Turn around and do the home study quickly.

25:01But maybe we don't have to, on day one, start the 10 hours of traditional foster parenting classes. Maybe the child can be placed there and you do the classes while the child's already living with you. So we're going to streamline that process and then make sure that all the barriers that are coming up, we're going to continue to tell Congress, the White House and the federal agencies about what are those challenges. For now, those challenges mostly remain in place. Marquand Teets is a good example of just how hard it is to place kids with family, even when there are loved ones who want to step in.

25:37We go to the front office and we see our great grandmother. Marquan and his brother were in a foster group home when they were tracked down by their great-grandmother. The moment she sees us, she just bursts into tears, like bursts crying. She said, I have been looking for you. I've been looking for you. But his great-grandmother wasn't a government-approved foster parent, so she couldn't get government assistance to raise them. They ended up back in that group home. Until a couple years later, when they finally went to live with a great-aunt who qualified. We didn't even know we had great aunties.

26:12We just found out, and next thing you know, we moved in with her. And then she starts showing us pictures of our mom, showing us pictures of all of the family that we've never met. And we started having the family environment again, though. The fact that I did get to live with my auntie for all those years, it helped me prepare, though, because while I was there, I got to build a savings account. So I built my savings account. While I was there, I got to buy my first vehicle. I bought a truck. While I was there, I worked. So I was able just to get more on my feet. And because it was my auntie who actually genuinely cared for me and wasn't trying to take nothing from me, I got to build a lot better than what I would have built if I would have been going from house to house to house or living with complete strangers.