#314 Jen Lilley - The Dark Truth About the American Foster Care System

29:55But basically, because my dad was a judge, my mom worked at a crisis pregnancy center, they were kind of concerned that things could be said where maybe they had bias. Maybe they used their influence in order to sway a certain case. And because my parents were, like, very by the books, there's— What do you mean, sway a case? What does that mean? Well, my dad's a judge. Sway the kid to stay? No. So there's a case that's opened once a child enters foster care. now there's a court case that will determine that child's permanency plan are they going back home are they staying with the foster parent are they going to be eligible for adoption there's a case that's opened a court case that's opened against the parent okay and so if my dad's a judge in particular and the child who's in our house was adopted technically somebody could accuse my dad of pulling strings...

30:49Gotcha. ...you know, swaying the case toward adoption. So my parents never became licensed foster parents, but there were often people living in our house who weren't related to us. And so... I was... had many times, not... It wasn't ongoing, but I had many times throughout my childhood where someone who was not biologically related to me was staying at our house. And so that, for me, planted a lot of seeds of empathy. They made me interested in foster care from a young age. But my husband didn't want to do it, so... But how would they integrate in? How would the child integrate in? Sometimes the parent was also staying with them, so it'd be like a family that just needed transition in life, so the parent would stay, right?

31:35And they're, you know, staying with us. But there was one, I mean, I called her my foster sister. That's kind of what... My parents just set the expectation of... you know, this person's going to be living with us and we're going to treat them like our family. And, you know, it was a teenager. One time we had a teenager living with us and I thought she was so cool. So it was like, I finally have an older sister, you know? So it was like, I was just raised to, you know, I'd be like, that's my sister. Like I told everybody, you know? So I think it depends on like how your parents raise you. My kids know that my kids like desperately want to foster again, but I have four under 10 and I'm like, listen, the youngest just turned four last month, like, Jackie's got to get into kindergarten before I tackle this again.

32:17Like, I'm exhausted. I feel like I'm failing you guys at all times. Like, I don't know why you think I can handle more kids. My kids are set on having six. And I'm like, all right, listen. I told them the other day, I said, once Jackie's in kindergarten, we'll talk about, like, fostering somebody who's in an elementary school. But by the way, I'd love to put the fear of God in my kids. I'm like, yes, I'm nice, but I'm also militant. I was like, if that child happens to go to your elementary school, you will never tease them. You will stick up for them. If I ever hear that you tell the other kids that they're a foster kid, I will take every toy you have ever owned.

32:58I will treat you like a criminal. I think it depends on the person that raises them. My parents are just normal. I was like, we're going to help them because that's part of my faith. I mean, what is it like for them coming in? For the child? Yeah, for your growing up with that. I mean, I've read that it was kind of a revolving door at your house as a child. Sure. What was it like for the child who was basically in transition and living with us temporarily? Or me? The child? Yeah, I mean, I'm genuinely curious. They show up, then what? Is it awkward? I mean, it's got to be a little awkward. You know, I don't know because I was so...

33:40Especially if they're coming from a lot of abuse. I think it's... Especially if they're coming from house to house to house to house. Yeah. I mean, my wife was talking to a mutual friend of ours. Yeah. And he's really good friends with somebody that's made it out and is doing really well. Right. Peers to be doing really well. Yeah. And she had mentioned something that she went to a house and they were trying to rape her. Yeah. Over and over. Mm-hmm. And I guess in the foster care system, you have like a, what would I call this? Like a big sister, like a mentor. If you're lucky. If you're lucky.

34:20Yeah. And so she reached out and said, hey, this is happening. How do I deal with it? And the answer was just, yeah, it's just something you're going to have to go through. It's like I lean forward and act like I'm surprised, but I'm not really surprised. I mean, that's so jacked up. It's not a unique story. We hear that all the time at Tulsa Girls Home. I mean, yeah, I could tell you stories that make your toes curl. What was it like for that child? You know, I can't say what it was like. I mean, but I can say from friends that I have who have fostered while they've had their own children,

35:04or who have fostered older children who might be cognizant of that whole process, I think it's hard for them. I think they don't have expectations. I mean, right before the pandemic, we didn't officially foster because she was aging out of the system. But there was a girl that was aging out of the system, and she had a terrible foster mom. terrible I would say she's in the second set of 30%. She's not like raping her, but she's a crappy foster parent. She's making her pay rent. She's like, the day your check dries up, you know, you're out of my house kind of situation. And my husband and I were at this luncheon.

35:46There's this amazing organization called Olive Crest. And I don't know whether Olive Crest is national, but I know there's a lot in California. And they're a Christian organization. and in Los Angeles every single year, they have a foster care luncheon. It's like a summit where they call the 300 churches in LA, 300 Christian churches in LA. And they're like, we want to talk to you about the state of foster care. It's awesome. Like call the church to the mat. Because by the way, foster care is a thing because the church closed her doors and assumed that the government would make a good parent. The government makes a terrible parent.

36:20Anyway, this girl, she's on this panel and the panel, it's really awesome that they do this. There's this panel. It has a current foster parent. It had a parent who lost their child, who ended up reunifying with their child. So they talked about their experience. The foster parent talks about their experience, maybe a social worker. I don't remember who the third person was. And then this girl who was about to turn 18 and age out of foster care. And the question was asked, how has the church played a role in your life and they passed this teenage girl the microphone first

37:03and i think anyone could probably deduce what she was thinking about in her mind but because i'm an actor i was just like it was almost like i could just read like thoughts going through her head. And she's just like, um, uh, and you can tell that she's like, be a good girl. Don't say the wrong thing. Don't insult these people. I'm at like a church summit, you know? And it was so awesome because I will tell you one thing. You want to meet a real Christian, go to Los Angeles. California Christians do not mess around. They are my favorite people in the whole wide world because it's like, oh, you actually like, you put your money where your mouth is or put your mouth where your money is or whatever, you know, however that saying works.

37:51Like they walk the walk. Why? Because it's not cool to be there. I grew up in the Bible Belt. I can say this. There's a lot of amazing Christians who live in the Bible Belt. There's a lot of also what I would call spiritually gluttonous people that say they believe this and they do not do anything about it. They're just taken it in. They're the bless me, bless me, bless me, because they don't want to be inconvenienced. They don't want to be out of control. And they don't want to do anything that's not comfortable. And to those people, I would say, look at yourself very closely because, and I'm just speaking to Christians.

38:27And by the way, people can foster. There are wonderful people who are not Christians. But if I'm addressing the church who needs to tackle foster care and needs to get involved and stop being so complacent, here's the thing. What did Jesus say? If you want to be my disciple, deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me. That's the only way you'll be my disciple. So we don't deny ourself. We self-love, we comfort, we soothe, we want to look away, we want to have uncomfortable conversations, we don't want to look toward brokenness. But if you look at Jesus, he always ran towards brokenness.

39:02He didn't disqualify Mary Magdalene from being like his number one girl because what because she got prior she was a prostitute no he set her free he loved her like jesus ran toward brokenness so this girl's like stumbling on the stage and so it was so awesome because la different breed all of a sudden these like pastors and representatives my husband and i representing our church we're not pastors but they were like yeah go ahead you guys are really really passionate about this they start standing up and they're yelling at the stage they're like, come on, call us to the mat. Tell us what we could do better.

39:33Like, don't sugarcoat it for us. And I'm like, these are my people. You know what I mean? Like, yes. Give it to me hard. Like, don't sugarcoat this for me. You tell me, how has the church played a role in your story? And so finally, she bucks up the courage and she goes, I don't actually think I've had a positive interaction with a Christian my entire life. and I am if you can't already tell in my relationship with my husband I am like the gas pedal but I am like mashing the accelerator I'm like let's go all the time my husband is not just a brake he's like the e-brake he doesn't want to do anything he's like a homebody like we're totally different we balance each other because I'm super crazy I know and I'm thinking oh god I want to help her so bad but my husband's never going to go for it and he he just looks at me and he's got like tears in his eyes and he goes we have to help her and I was like great so we talked to her social worker we asked them questions I went up to them and I was like do not tell her that we are even considering this because I do not want to crush her but I got to meet with you privately and I got to ask some questions so I had to ask like has she ever molested another child because these are things that like again it's not that the kid is bad.

40:50Like sometimes they're not taught this is an inappropriate behavior. It's so jacked up. And they're like, no, she doesn't. Cause I'm like, my husband worked night shift. I have three kids under three. Like I can't do this if that's the case. And so she came to live with us and the pandemic happened. But I asked her when she moved in, I was like, look, she was 18. I was however old I was five 35. She's taller than me. You know, like I'm like this short little white girl and she's this tall beautiful black girl and I was like how do you want this to work like and like like do you want like me to be like your foster mom or like your friend or like your mentor like what's our relationship here she was like I just need to know what rules you have and I was like okay the only rules I have in my house for you because like I know she's had sex you know and and I don't know like all of her background but I was just like no sex in my house you're to have sex, you go to your boyfriend's house.

41:47And you have to let me know you don't have a curfew. Like you were 18 years old and I know you've lived a lot of life. I do need to know where you are because I will be worry myself sick. So like you don't have a curfew, but I need to know where you are. And I also need to make sure so that the door is locked and things for my other kids. And my only other rule is like, just be a good human. If the trash is full and you're leaving for work and like you have a second, take the trash out. Like when you're done with your dish, If you have a second and you're not, like, in a rush, if you're in a rush, put it in the sink.

42:16If you're not in a rush, like, just load it into the dishwasher. Other than that, like, I don't really have any rules. You have any questions for me? So I think it depends on, like, they want to know the boundaries. Every child wants to know boundaries. But I really think it comes down to, like, who's fostering them and what's the expectation that they come up with. And a lot of kids who enter into foster homes, a phenomenon that happens that I don't blame these kids for is like they call it like the honeymoon period. So they get in there and they are on their best behavior because they're trying to measure you.

42:51They're trying to figure out, like, are you going to hurt me as well? You know, what's this placement going to be like? They're on their best behavior while they're trying to take your temperature. And then many of them, if you're a stable home, they will act out really hard. and they teach you this if they're good if you have a good training before foster parenting you're supposed to in order to get licensed you have to take like it varies state to state it varies county to county it's one of the things that's hardest about foster care is that you have federal law you have state law all 50 states have different laws you have agency policies you have county law and then you have judicial decisions that like weigh into how the law is interpreted and what they want for this particular child so it's really complicated no matter where you get but um so a child and back to the point the child will start acting out like crazy if you are a good foster home many times because they call it being evict they want to be evicted on their own terms.

43:56They're kind of like, let me just reject you before you reject me because I cannot handle the pain of you rejecting me one more time. Damn. It's so bad. And so the good... I don't want to say the good foster parents, but the foster parents who have empathy and the endurance in that moment will ride out that behavior because inevitably the kid will restabilize if you ride it out with love. But that is something that they train you in when you do your foster care training. If you're with a good agency, they'll prep you for that. But again, I mean, if we're doing a home for every child and we're lowering the standards, who knows if you'll learn that?

44:41Because if you don't learn that when you're getting licensed, then all of a sudden the child starts acting like Satan, you're going to be like, whoa! You're not going to be prepared for that. And maybe you'll rehouse the child. But every time a child gets rehoused, it's more trauma. And it's a personal rejection that they did something wrong.

45:04If you have a dog that gets picky about food, you know how frustrating that can be. You put the bowl down, they sniff it, walk away, and now you're trying to figure out if they're bored. If they don't like it, or if they're just holding out for something better. Sunday's just launched a brand new fish recipe designed for dogs with sensitivities, picky eating habits, or parents looking to add more variety to the bowl. It's made with 80 % whole and minced fish, including eco-friendly invasive carp sourced from American rivers. And it's packed with omega-3 fatty acids to help support healthy skin, shiny coats, joints, and brain function.

45:46Like every sundaes recipe, it's human-grade, vet-developed, and gently air-dried instead of heavily processed. No synthetic additives, no meat meals, no artificial flavors, and no fillers. Stanley's been loving it too. What do you think, Stanley? You like sundaes? For dog owners, it's simple too. No fridge, no thawing, no prep. Just scoop and serve. Make the switch to sundaes. Go right now to Sundays for dogs dot com slash SRS 50 and get 50 % off your first order. Or you can use code SRS 50 at checkout. That's 50 % off your first order at Sundays for dogs dot com slash SRS 50. Sundays for dogs dot com slash SRS 50 or use code SRS 50 at checkout.

46:37Is there like a typical journey to a foster kid? from birth to 18 years old to adulthood? Sure. It depends where... It depends on the home that they land in, right? But I would say for a typical child who's entering foster care,

47:00they'll probably enter as a child, meaning 10 or under. And they'll be taken from their mom or dad, right? Handed a trash bag if they're lucky, which to me is like an external representation of how they must be feeling internally like you're trash if they're lucky i suppose they end up at a foster home um and then if that foster home just wants to foster and never wants to adopt which i should clarify that statement by saying my husband and i set out just to foster we had no intention of adopting because that wasn't the point of foster care that we were incredibly grateful that we got to adopt but that wasn't like our goal we didn't get into foster care to adopt but there are foster parents and I don't blame them because they're still really good people where their whole mission is just fostering and I suppose that they I can't I can't tell you what goes through their mental process I can only speculate that part of it is like if they adopt, then they won't have room to keep fostering.

48:10But a lot of kids will be fostered for a set of time. And again, every state, every county is going to have different rules on how this works. So it's almost like, can I tell you a typical journey? No, but I can tell you a journey. Like in California, in Los Angeles, because that's the system I know. a child is given a timeline of 18 months so the parent has 18 months to get their act together in order to get their child back um after that 18 months has expired the child it's it's a jacked up term it's so jacked up it's it's called emancipation which makes me think of slavery so the child is legally emancipated now they're eligible for adoption if that foster family wants to adopt them that's like what happened with our boys of course we wanted to adopt them we adopt them but a lot of kids will just ride through foster care until they're 18 and if they're lucky they'll stay with the same foster home but usually they're going to be bounce to bounce to bounce you know home to home to home to home i know that the average kid in foster care um goes by the time they've reached fifth grade just elementary school They've already had five, they've gone to five different schools.

49:29Which is part of the reason why in foster care, the educational outcomes are so unstable if the child is not adopted. And I always like to say this because it's really interesting. So I had like, my parents are awesome. I don't want to like act like my parents weren't awesome. I'm really grateful for my parents. No parent is perfect. God help me, my kids will probably need therapy from me. So I have a lot of grace, you know, for my parents. Like, I think they did a fantastic job. But my parents, you know, like, I am an A-type perfectionist because of the structure and expectations my parents put on me.

50:09It was literally like, you're going to go to the University of Virginia, like, come hell or high water and graduate top of your class. You know what I mean? Like, and I did. Don't worry. Not top, top of my class. Top 3%. I did okay. You know? When I told them I wanted to be an actor, they were like, what is wrong with you? They're very supportive now, but they were like, get a degree. So I say this jokingly, but truthfully, because I had two parents that watched my GPA like a flippin' hawk. It was like, oh, you studied. Oh, you made note cards. You will spell like nobody has ever spelled before.

50:44You know what I mean? Do it again, soldier. Like, my parents were militant on, like, how, in my opinion, maybe my parents would be like, that's unfair. And I'm like, listen, from my perspective, it was very intense. However, I changed elementary schools one time. I went from a private school in third grade to a very good public school in fourth grade. And because of that, I never learned, to my mother's ongoing horror, I never learned my 50 state capitals. OK, because this school, private school teaches it in fourth grade. Public school taught it in third grade. So I fell into that gap. I said this in a speech like a couple of years ago.

51:29My mom found out I said it in a speech and she literally printed the 50 state capitals for me and was like, study this. And I was like, Mom, I've made it 40 years without knowing my state capitals. Like I'm doing fine. But I always kind of say that because it's like, imagine changing elementary schools five times. All the education these kids missed. So you have a lot of kids that are illiterate. That's why the outcomes are so bad. I mean, kids who age out of foster care, only 3 % go on to get a college degree. Only 50%. Only 3%. This is of kids who aged out. Kids who are adopted have much better outcomes.

52:08But kids who aged out of foster care, 3 % go on to get a full degree by the age of 26. And only about 50 % graduate high school or get a GED. Man. But they fall in the gap. And then they don't have a consistent parent who is making sure that, you know, they're getting these test scores. Let's get a little dark for a second.

52:39so here's how bad it can get in foster care just from an educational perspective when i was adopting my boys i was invited to speak at um the national foster parents association it's this great it's great organization i love it it's basically like let's get a bunch of foster parents together give them support give them ongoing classes and like be each other's support system because, you know, I have military in my family. I'm not a military wife, but I always say like, if you're a military spouse, I would hope you have other friends who are military spouses because only they can relate to you.

53:18Foster care is the same way. These kids have a lot of problems. They are not bad kids. They have experienced severe trauma. So other people who are normal who have biological children who know their entire medical history and didn't do drugs while they were pregnant or drink alcohol while they were pregnant, like, their parenting advice for you as a foster parent is like, that is so nice that you think that will work for this kid? It will not. So you have to know other foster parents if you're gonna, like, survive this game, because it is so jacked. so I'm at the National Foster Parents Association I'm like speaking you know they were like could you come speak and I was like sure I guess and then they're like hey you have however many hours before we need you to come speak again so here's our itinerary you can basically like here's your little badge you can go into any class that you want to learn anything else you want to like you're curious a subject like one time I went there was like an FBI profiler and it was really cool and They talk about, like, all these kind of things about how they do interviews.

54:30And as an actress, I'm like, I want to learn everything about that. Like, tell me about how you know if this person's a psychopath. That's so fascinating to me. So they have really cool, like, courses that you can take. Well, I'm getting ready to adopt my son, Caden. And I was like, oh, my gosh, they have a class on adoption and the adoption assistance program. I had no idea that when you adopted out of foster care, you still get health insurance for that child. You still get therapy for that child. And you get your monthly stipend for that child. Okay? I was like, oh, I always figured that people didn't adopt the child out of foster care because they couldn't afford to.

55:14That was kind of always my myth and misconception I didn't know. So when I learned about there's an adoption assistance program, I was like, oh, cool. Well, teach me how to navigate that red tape because foster care is like, I don't know. I'm biased, but I would wager it might be the most bureaucratic red tape system in the entire United States. So I'm like, cool, I want to go to that class.

55:40People sometimes assume that you would foster for the money. Once I became a foster parent, I was like, what? money. Like, what are you talking about? This monthly stipend like doesn't cover the formula and diapers. Like, what are you talking about? There's no money in foster care. Like, you have two kids. Kids are expensive. I don't care if you don't even spoil them. Like, you feed them, you buy them clothes, you do anything kind of nice for them. It's a lot of money. Like, kids are expensive. So I was always like, what money are people talking about? So I go to this as option assistant program.

56:15Like, wow, I had no idea that like, you got all these services. Like, how do I sign up? I had no idea they still come with insurance. Like, this is fantastic. So I finished the class and I'm like, I want to meet every parent in this class. This is so cool. Like, I'm going to meet my new tribe of people that are adopting kids out of foster care. These people are awesome. And we get a couple of new people. And then I meet this one woman and she's like, oh yeah, what you want to do is you want to get a D rate kid. And I was like, that's yeah, that's what I said. I was like, what's it? What's a D rate kid?

56:45What does that mean? And she goes, oh, honey, I make$28 ,000 a month off foster care. And I was like, what? And she was like, yeah, because I have this many kids. And she goes, here's the thing. You want to get a D rate kid. I was like, what is a D rate kid? She goes, okay, here's how it works. You want to make sure they fail in school. If they fail in school and you can get them on medication, your rate goes up. Every time they don't pass a grade, your rate goes up because they're a more difficult kid. Every time they need a medication, your rate goes up. Holy shit, dude. And I was shocked. Like, I was like, oh my God, that's how people, that's how bad people are making money out of foster care.

57:30And that's one of the reasons the statistics are so bad. Because again, I think the intentions were good. One of my kids, I love him so much, and he's a really sweet kid. But I'm finally to the point where I'm like, we got to get you medication. I've tried every therapy under the sun, and I love you, and I know that you know I love you, but like, I desperately need medication for you because I need your brain to slow down. Because when you make decisions that are not rash because he's very reactive. If he slows down, he's not aggressive. Sweetest kid you've ever met. Everybody's favorite student.

58:16At home, it's a totally different situation because he's comfortable with us. Our rate will go up because now he needs medication. And he's really a good kid, but it's a lot to parent him. It's a lot harder than my other kids. And one of my other kids is adopted. I just say this to say that I think the intentions of increasing the rate was to incentivize good people to stick with it. But again, what it did is incentivize all the wrong people. People who are in it for the money instead of for the love of a child.

58:59That's just making money off the government. Yeah. That's not even the real dark shit. We haven't even gotten dark yet. I'm just saying. I mean, I'm just, it's fucking horrific. Yeah. Like, people are fostering kids just for the money from the government. So they're going to encourage them, encourage the doctors to put them on medications. They're going to create scenarios to trick doctors to put them on medications. They're going to encourage the kid to act out at school, to not study, not... It's like incentivize the other way. Yeah, exactly. What if they get on honor roll, give them a bonus?

59:39It's like a demonic... It's... Listen, this is a nail on the head. This is a demonic situation that exists because the church closed her doors. And to be fair with that, I know I could sit here for the rest of the interview and tell you organization after organization after organization that is Christian that is doing the work. There are so many wonderful churches. There are so many wonderful Christian programs. There are so many wonderful Christians who are in this for the right reason, but there are still far too few. I read a stat. I think it was in this outline. I think you said it. If every church in the country fostered one child, there would be none left to foster.

1:00:27Is that correct? Yeah, and the statistic's even better than that. That's an accurate statistic. One child per church. Okay, that's an accurate statistic. Okay, so currently in foster care, there are 344 ,000 children in foster care. That's according to Health and Human Services Survey that came out in May of 2026, this year. If you look at something called the AFGARS report, which is what everybody talks about in foster care, AFGARS is awesome. I have nothing against it. It's just a term you'll say. AFGARS stands for, and I might mess this up, Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System, AFGARS.

1:01:04Everybody just calls it AFGARS, so I'm just going to call it AFGARS. AFGARS runs the survey of how many kids in, how many kids out, how many kids got into foster care because of substance abuse, how many kids got into foster care because of abuse abuse, how many foster care kids got into foster care because of poverty-related issues, which is a big thing. They want to measure all the metrics, and thank God for AFGARS. AFGARS right now will say 330 ,000 children are in foster care, but Health and Human Services says that 344 ,000 are in foster care. Okay, so I'm going to go with Health and Human Services because it's a little bit more accurate.

1:01:38you have 344 ,000 children in foster care right now. You have on average 350 ,000 churches in the United States. To my knowledge, that's just Protestant churches. So we're just talking Christian churches. We're not talking about Jewish churches. I don't think that includes Catholic churches. This is Christian churches alone. On average, on any given day, you have 350 ,000 active, open Christian churches. So yeah, if one family out of every church fostered, you'd have the whole problem solved. But the statistics are even more encouraging than that. We have homes for about 75 % of the kids in foster care.

1:02:24So honestly, if one family out of every four churches in the United States were to foster, we would also not only eradicate the problem of children going to hotels, hospitals, social worker offices, or God forbid, detention centers in 13 states, you would not only house every single child that's waiting for a home, you would have more than enough homes ready, willing, open, and licensed for when the next kid popped up into the system. But the reason I think that people don't do it outside of it being uncomfortable You have no control. That's the hardest thing about foster care. As a foster parent, you have no control over these kids' cases.

1:03:04You don't get an opinion. However.

1:03:11Does the kid get an opinion? Not always. If their guardian ad litem, which is their lawyer, interviews them and asks them for their opinion. But many times the kid does not get an opinion. It depends on who the social worker is, if the social worker cares. And I don't mean that to say social workers don't care. Social workers are seriously overworked. For example, I had a girl, she was a whole reason my husband and I got into foster care, and her social worker was so overworked that I asked her, I said, how many kids do you have on your docket, like on your caseload? She said 86. How do you have 86?

1:03:57How do you have 86? And this is back in 2016. Sean, the stats have gotten so, so bad. I thought foster care was a bad and in crisis mode when I was doing it in 2016. The current numbers are horrifying. I will continue with that in a second. I will say, okay, so as a foster parent, you do not have control. However, if you're a good foster parent, like I was a good foster parent, I took copious notes. I took notes of every, it's like, oh my gosh. It's like when we're having this interview, I'm like, there's so much I want to unpack here. I was like, I got to get all the worms out and almost like try to tell you this in order.

1:04:46Don't let me forget to get back to these numbers. I will finish the thought of, I think the reason the church doesn't get involved is because of the bystander effect. I'm sure you've heard of the bystander effect, but for anybody else that's like, what is that again? The bystander effect is this really interesting psychological premise that if someone's screaming for help in a grocery store, for example, most people will not get involved and help that person because they think that somebody else will do it. you are much more likely apparently statistically to get help if you're like out in the middle of nowhere and somebody hears you they're usually going to run and help you but the bystander effect is just kind of assuming that like somebody else will do it and i think that's what's going on with the church of foster care is not only is it uncomfortable and it's something we don't want to deal with because we're worried about our heart getting broken which makes me want to go i said I won't.

1:05:42You know, I think it's also the assumption that like, oh, that's nice. Somebody else will do it. Or that's nice. I could never do it. I'd get too attached. Oh, you have to be a special person to foster. It's like, I'm not the likely candidate to foster. I'm an actress. I'm out of town all the time. I'm traveling all the time. Like I have a thousand children. You know, I'm not the candidate. But if I can do it, they can do it. Okay. Okay, so when it comes to control and you don't have control as a foster parent, usually, and again, this is a kind of typical overview of foster care. But anybody that's listening that's a foster parent can be like, that's not true.

1:06:24Well, maybe they had a different experience because they have different laws or county agency rules. You know, like everything in foster care, like there's almost like no holistic through line. But in general, here's how foster care works. Child's removed from their home, they're put into a foster home, and the 18, at least in California, 18 months is on the clock for that parent to get their act together in order to get their kid back. During that 18-month period, the child will have visitation with their parents. In California, and this is not what happens in all 50 states, and I actually went to Congress to rally and get this done, and everybody was into it.

1:07:01It worked. I didn't end up I didn't end up going forward into the law of creating this so we'll like pause that and get into that but this is how California does it and as much as you want to say about California and like listen guys I am so apolitical it's not even funny I like I got no preferences man I think both sides are so jacked up I'm like I'm just here existing trying to love people. California does foster care pretty well, in my opinion, especially L.A. County. And that's because almost 10 percent of the kids in foster care are in L.A. County. Are you serious? Yes. Why? Because L.A. is where no one, everybody goes to chase their dreams, right?

1:07:48I don't want to be a parent. I'm chasing the ladder. I'm climbing the ladder. I'm climbing my status. Like, get out of my way. I'm the next big thing. So L.A. is like ground zero for foster care. And so with that said, I think L.A. does a really stand-up job. That's not to say there's not bad players. Like, you know that. I don't believe everybody in government is bad. I think there's a lot of bad people in government. Me too. Yeah, I know. I know. We have that in common. But I think there's bad players everywhere. I think you can't just say, like, broad strokes every single person who worked for the government is bad.

1:08:24You can't. There are people that are, like, in there just dying, trying to fight a system that they're never going to win. Foster care is the same way. You have a lot of bad people in foster care. You have a lot of bad players in foster care. You also have good people in foster care. So California, here's how it works. 18-month timeline. Kid is going to have monitored visits with their parent. They're gonna have visitation with their parents where they're monitored, which means they're supervised visits. Somebody's basically at the visit. This is something that I had to do. Not all foster parents have to supervise the visit.

1:08:57The agency that I went through, Child Help, highly recommended that the parent, the foster parent, be the one that's supervising the visit. And we have to take notes if we're good foster parents. Hold on. The biological parent monitors. Did I get that right? The biological parent has a visit with their kid so that they don't lose connection. And so that they see their kid, because the goal is to put them back together. It starts out because that child was removed from their home. Sorry, I swallowed my water wrong. They can't just trust the parent with that child alone. So the parent is monitored.

1:09:40The parent is supervised. That visit is supervised. So you have a third party. And in my personal case, it was me. who would monitor the visit. And that monitor is supposed to, if they're doing their job right, they're not supposed to basically intervene in the visit unless the child is in danger. So, for example, there was one time with my son, Caden. I love their biological mom. I love her. She was not a willful child abuser. Most children who end up in foster care end up in foster care because of neglect. Not because of child abuse. Not that the neglect is not abusive. But foster care is a cycle.

1:10:25It's a very broken cycle. So usually a child who ends up in foster care, chances are extremely likely that their parent also grew up in foster care. I knew you were going to say that. It's a generational curse. It's a generational curse. The grandparent probably was in foster care. And that's why, again, if good people get involved in foster care and stop the cycle, break the cycle, God knows how many generations of kids after them that they're saving. My kids will never have kids that end up in foster care. So I had a lot of love. I have a lot of love still in my heart for my boy's biological mom because she wasn't a willful child abuser.

1:11:12And I would tell her that. I would talk to her very frankly. I'm like, listen, sweetheart, if you were a willful child abuser, my relationship with you would probably look a lot different. I don't know how I would navigate that.

1:11:28But I don't, I had to write reports about the meeting after they happened. And these reports were read in court. and I told her, I was like, I don't go home and write these gleefully. Like, it brings me no joy to write these reports. But my primary job is to protect the child in my care. Sometimes I have to protect him from your bad decisions. I'm so sorry. And I know it's because nobody taught you what real love looks like. And I would tell her over and over and over again, And I think she knows it, but I don't know that she knows it. You know, like in her gut, I'm like, I don't know that anyone in your entire life has loved you like I've loved you.

1:12:16I don't know that anyone's ever shown you real love. Because one of the biggest things that happens in foster care, especially with the moms, is like, I've heard, listen, I didn't read up on the statistics before I came here, but this is what I've heard repeated over and over. So somebody could fact check me on this and I will admit maybe I'm wrong. But I have heard that domestic violence and foster care run parallel. There is a parallel relationship between domestic violence and foster care. She had a domestic violence situation but there was one, there were many visits. We met three times a week for hours on end.

1:13:00It was exhausting. And that's not required of all foster parents. I don't want that to deter people, but I write about it all in my book. But there was one time where it was like, literally, Caden had scissors, which he shouldn't have had anyway. And I was like, okay, like his scissors. And he went to, like the scissors were by an outlet and he took the scissors and was about to put them in the outlet. And I just had to like sprint across the room and just grab him. And I had to write about it in my report. like this parent is not ready to have their kid back because they don't understand like the science of don't stick sharp objects in a socket also kids shouldn't have scissors you know what i'm saying she's not a willful child abuser she just doesn't know how to be a mom because nobody ever taught her how so in california you have monitored visits these go on until the parent shows some sort of progress that like they're doing well enough they're doing well enough in this visit that they can go to unmonitored visits where basically, hey, we're going to trust you to babysit your own kid for two hours, right?

1:14:04After that goes on for a period of months, whatever the court decides the timeline is, that parent in the state of California will go to overnight visits. So you're going to get your kid back for maybe one night. You're going to get your kid back for a weekend. And then after that goes well for a period of time, they're going to face like final reunification where that child's case is closed and now the child goes back with that parent. That's an amazing way to do reunification. I was shocked beyond belief when I found out that that was not the system in all other, in the 49 other states. I was like, why not?

1:14:39Because you're a parent, I'm a parent, parenting is freaking hard. Parenting is so stressful. I thought I was like a kind, sweet girl with the fruit of the Holy Spirit until I had kids. I was like, woo, I did not know. I did not I have patience, like, till you ask me for the 10th time a question I have answered 10 times. Like, I'm going to make you a peanut butter and jelly. Would you shut up? Like, you know what I mean? Like, parenting is so stressful. Now imagine being an addict. You're an addict. I had an eating disorder for 15 years. I wasn't a drug addict. But in my head, that's a dopamine addiction.

1:15:14Addiction is something that people fall into because they're stressed and it's a coping mechanism. so you want to tell me you have an addiction problem to like hard drugs you've gotten yourself clean and then I'm just going to throw a child back at you full time without like first having gone through like dipping your toe back into parenting when I don't have my finances in order I've just gotten sober I'm not required to necessarily take parenting classes depends on which system I landed in as a parent now you're going to throw my obnoxious kid like back at me who's been severely traumatized because they've been through my trauma, they've been removed from my home, they've bounced home to home to home, told that they're worthless, nobody cares about them.

1:15:55Now I've got them back. So they're like super more traumatized than they were when I got them. You're going to expect me to stay like sober and clean and not mess up. Premature reunification is a terrible idea to the point where 36 % of infants reenter foster care. I think it's within 12 months, definitely within 18 months. Within 12 months. Yeah. And then all other age groups. So infants is 36 % reentry rate. All other age groups, it's between 25 and 29 % reentry rate. And so I went to Congress in 2020 with Dr. John DeGarmo, my co-author, who is like the leading expert in this nation about foster care.

1:16:35I can't believe he wanted to write a book with me. I was like, bro, you don't want to write a book with me. I'm a hot mess. You don't want to write a book with me. we go to congress because he's in georgia i'm in california and i'm like i had no idea that this was not like the way that all reunification works let's talk to congress about this bipartisan support every single person we met with was like this is awesome let's do it let's craft a bill by the way have you ever considered running and i'm like there's not a situation where i work for the government. I'm sorry. That's not going to happen.

1:17:07But I will craft a bill. Then this person will remain nameless for safety reasons. We met with somebody, this is a 2020, we met with somebody who was very high up in health and human services. So they're on the federal level of handling child welfare, child warfare, Freudian slip or something. Yeah. And this person literally says like, leave your phones outside this room they are definitely listening i need to talk to you before you get into this i'm like okay cool she brings me in a room with dr de garmo because we're there on capitol hill advocating for reunification premature reunification reform in all 50 states and that should happen she's like look you can spend your time creating a law making sure it gets passed that's how you want to spend your time advocating for kids go ahead.

1:18:01But let me tell you what's going to happen. They're going to make your bill all of a sudden is going to be 300 pages long and they're going to do something that's called a Christmas training. That's what we call it in politics, where all of a sudden something that like you would completely oppose and disagree with gets slipped into your bill because most representatives and I can't blame them. I want to blame them. Most representatives, they're so busy, they don't have time to read 300 page bill they're going to read the broad strokes or they're going to get their assistants or their interns to basically be like give me the summary give me the cliff notes of what this bill is a lot of these people don't even know what the hell they're voting for they don't even know yes like the good ones at least get their assistance what is my stance on this i've had their aides tell me this shit yeah 100 they want the cliff notes tell me how to vote for this so they don't even know what they're passing into law and they also want to know i mean now this is why i don't like politics they also want to know like well what's going to get me reelected it's all a game right so this woman from hhs was higher up she was like they're going to stick something in your bill that like you never intended to go into law and it's going to jack up kids and there are many laws like we will hopefully discuss that have happened in the last eight years to foster care that have taken it from bad to worse.

1:19:25And so it was in that moment that I was like, no, you know what? I don't, I care about premature reunification, but she's right. It's going to suck up my entire time. And then God knows what I'm putting into a bill. And I have to like face God with that, just stand before like God who I fear in a healthy way. I have a healthy fear of the Lord. I love him so much. And I'm going to have to be held accountable for some like Christmas tree, like some clown put into my bill, like something that I disagree with? No. So I quickly decided like the only way to help solve this problem is I got to recruit better foster parents.

1:19:58I got to multiply myself. I got to get good people in this fight. So that's what I pivoted and that's what I've been doing ever since.

1:20:08Most gear looks good until you actually start using it. Then you find out pretty quickly what holds up and what doesn't. That's why I keep coming back to Roka. These aren't just lifestyle sunglasses pretending to be performance gear. I've worn mine training on the range, traveling, and outdoors for long days, and they stay locked in place the entire time. They're incredibly lightweight. The optics are razor sharp with zero glare, and you honestly forget you're even wearing them. But they still look clean enough to wear anywhere. Not overly tactical, just modern, functional design that works every day.

1:20:54Roca was born in Austin, Texas, and everything about them reflects that performance-first mindset. And if you need prescription lenses, they offer both sunglasses and eyeglasses options built to the same standard. And whether you're outfitting a law enforcement unit, a military team, or looking for corporate gifts that don't suck, Roka offers wholesale partnerships to make it happen. Roka isn't just eyewear. It's confidence. You can wear every single day. They're the real deal. Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out for yourself at Roka.com and use code SRS for 20 % off site-wide at checkout.

1:21:34That's R-O-K-A dot com and use code SRS.

1:22:04Gotta silence it.

1:22:10In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. Proprietary magazines. Supposedly the best engineering in the world. When that breaks, you're f***ing f***. And now we're bringing them back.

1:22:28It does look pretty f***ing cool. I gotta admit that. All right, Jen, we're back from the break. Yes. The numbers. Okay. What numbers? There are so many numbers in foster care. I'll just start with the statistics so we don't get so far down this rabbit hole that we forget to go back. Okay. The first thing I'll say is that statistics are tricky because it depends, I have found, who funds the study, when was the study, what was the sample, like how many people were surveyed, how was the study conducted, right? So, like, these numbers can be all... They can fluctuate. There are different statistics in my book than the ones that I'm about to say.

1:23:11But when I was preparing for the show and I was looking at the current numbers, these are the current numbers and I have all the data to back them up. Okay. Kids who age out of foster care, which means they never got adopted, they never got guardianship, they had no permanency placement, and they turned 18 and that's it. They're out of the system. They're on their own. of those kids, that's called aging out of foster care, okay? Of those kids, here are the statistics. 46 % will end up homeless by the time they're 26. 46 %? 46 % is a way lower number. To me, that number smells bad. That number smells like a lie.

1:23:53However, I'll stick to the number. At least 46 % end up homeless by the time they're 26. Like I mentioned earlier with educational outcomes, only 3 % will go to college. Only about half will graduate high school or get a GED. Boys who age out of foster care, five times more likely than their peers to be arrested. Girls who age out of foster care, 14 times more likely to be arrested than their peers. boys who age out of foster care six times more likely to be convicted of a crime than their peers and a lot of that is because kids in foster care are easily criminalized because a lot of situations that would normally be handled within a family situation where you as a parent would straighten your kid out or do something or intervene or hire an attorney or do something if your kid was acting out, that doesn't exist for these kids because they don't have anybody stable correcting them.

1:24:54That leads to having a rap sheet, having a record, which makes employment harder. It makes all things harder, you know, getting jobs, job security, all these things. Okay. About half will have a substance abuse problem. Girls in foster care who age out are two times more likely. Actually, it might not even be who age out, but girls in foster care, definitely who age out are two times more likely to get pregnant um for the age of 21 than their peers again it's a cycle that repeats itself and uh yeah and then here's and i think i said it earlier maybe there's like a prison pipeline and that's very interesting because i think i said it earlier but like kids in foster care only make up one percent of the kids or less than one percent of the kids in the united states yet currently in all of our prisons and jails 17 to 20 percent of the people in jail came from foster care.

1:25:4717 to 20 percent. That's a way lower statistic than is in my book, which I also have like the stats for where I found that. All of it's really crazy. Trafficking is crazy. We'll get into trafficking. Trafficking, I'm like, I could just talk about the trafficking statistics right now. There's a thing I'm sure you're very, very, very familiar with it and probably your audience is too called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They estimate that 63 children out of foster care disappear every single day. And those are just the ones that are reported. So HHS, Health and Human Services, which again, that's the government office for like handling child welfare and lots of things in our country.

1:26:33They actually estimate that it's tens of thousands more of children go missing. but we know the ones that are reported that's just the ones that are reported 63 kids disappear out of foster care every day now a lot of them go unreported in foster care for a lot of reasons it is very common very common i have dealt with this many times we've dealt with this many times at tulsa girls home child help all the organizations that i work with it's very common for children in foster care to run away um that is for a lot of reasons Many times it's because they've gone from abuse and neglect by their biological parent into an abusive neglected foster home and they want to run away.

1:27:17They've been bounced placement, placement, placement. And then again, maybe they get into a good placement and it's too good to be true and they want to evict you on their own terms. They want to run away. A lot of times those are not reported because it's become normalized. Running away has become normalized. A lot of times the social worker or the person who's caring for them is like, I know they're at their boyfriend's house. I know they're at, you know, their friend's house. They just kind of assume they know where that kid is. Meanwhile, that kid is very vulnerable to traffickers because they'll meet a trafficker.

1:27:50And, you know, you guys talked about this, like Roblox, social media. That's probably the majority of the way it's happening is social media. these disgusting perverts, these traffickers, will lure the child in, thinking that they're gonna give them everything foster care didn't. Stability, food, housing, love and affection. I mean, these kids are so primed to be trafficked. And then they go missing, it's unreported, and they get trafficked. So there's a huge trafficking pipeline that goes on in foster care. Now, do you think that they are targeted because they're in foster care? Yes. Or is they just falling victim more than the normal child because of the circumstances?

1:28:34I think it's both. I think traffickers know that children in foster care, many of them are not, nobody's looking for them. How would they know who's in a foster care program and who isn't? I have no idea. I do not know how traffickers know that. I don't know. I don't know how it works. You know, I don't know how long they stalk them. I have no idea how a trafficker's mind works. But here's something I learned about human trafficking the other day that I will say to your audience, who is so wonderful to be watching in this hard conversation, that I'm gonna spread some hope, I'm gonna spread some love and some light at the end of the tunnel, but this is not that moment.

1:29:17So if this conversation's already been hard for them, now is the time to go get a water. Bear used to it. Uh-huh. So anybody else? Here we go. Because I learned this the other day, and I was literally on a flight, and I thought things from foster care could not shock me. And I almost barfed on the plane. I was like, I don't think I can handle this. All right.

1:29:50I have fact-checked this seven ways to Sunday. So I am 100 % confident about what I am about to say. There is no federal law, nor is there any state law in any of the 50 states, that makes it a crime to adopt a child out of foster care for the explicit intent of sexually exploiting that child. It's not illegal. What do you mean it's not illegal? there is no law so like let's say trafficker a knows this and this is already going on because i was like should i say that on the show is this educating people how to traffic no traffickers already know all this crap that's why i'm like you're like how do how do they know if they're in foster care i'm like i don't know i just know that these people have a insatiable demonic hunger for children, and I don't know how they figure it out.

1:30:48Okay. Right now in all 50 states, if a trafficker adopts a child out of foster care for the intent of selling them for sex, there is nothing the government can do. It is not prosecutable. There is a loophole in the system, but it gets so much worse than that. When a person adopts somebody out of foster care, they're given all the parental rights that a normal biological parent would have okay so i have the same rights over my adopted children as i do my biological children same z's trafficker a knows this trafficker a adopts a child out of foster care with the intent of sexually exploiting them it's not prosecutable how is it not prosecutable it's It's not a law.

1:31:37And by the way, it has been brought up. Congress is aware of this gap. Congress is aware of this gap. This situation apparently has been discussed in Congress. Nobody's doing anything about it. Congress doesn't give a fuck about kids. Like, I don't even know. Look at the Epstein shit. Look at the entire fucking administration. That's a whole different episode you and I can talk about. They don't care. They don't, I guess. They don't give a fuck about anything but padding their own pockets. Everybody knows, almost everybody knows it. Maybe the extreme right and extreme left don't realize it yet, but that's who the fuck they are.

1:32:09That's what our government is. Speaking of that, before we continue with Trafficker A and the adoption, let me tell you how I got into, like, this whole situation. So I found out when I booked General Hospital. 2011, I booked General Hospital. I booked this movie called The Artist. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. It won five, including Best Picture. Amazing. Like, I'm on the map. and my publicist at the time who promptly got fired she's like you need to you know i'm thinking about like what is going to be this the subject that i talk about right i'm all into the world water crisis i'm a school tour speaker it's true there's a water crisis going on the facts are there's more people that die in the world every day than war malaria and aids combined horrible clean drinking water such an easy solution it was a great thing to talk about i talked about it for like years there's a lot of celebrities talking about that this is a really cool issue it's very clean it's very easy there's a solution it's very easy to talk about so i start praying because i'm a person of faith and i literally feel like the lord's like you need to look into what's going on in your own backyard and i was like what's going on like what what issue he was like this is all great but there's people already talking about this there's an issue that needs sunlight that nobody's talking about.

1:33:24So I'm in my office. Start looking on charitynavigator.org because there, I'm sure you know, are a lot of horrible charities that like don't do at all what they say they're going to do. I always tell people, I'm like, listen, if charity wants you to support them, ask them for their 990. That's their tax return sheet. You better look at their 990 and know exactly where those dollars are going because anybody will ask you for a dollar, but you better know where it's freaking going because there's a lot of bad non-profits that are totally profiting off of your you know generosity of heart this is 2011 i come across what is now called and you're well versed in it child sexually explicit material okay 2011 it's just called child pornography we don't call it child pornography anymore because of course that implies consent and the kids of course do not have any consent and i find out that the united states like you said is the number one producer and consumer of child pornography in the entire world.

1:34:21It's not Thailand and it's not, you know, Russia and all these countries. We want to like point our fingers at them and be like, oh, child brides, whatever. No, we're the number one producers. We're the number one exporters. The average victim is under the age of five. So back in 2011, before Snapchat, which was like one of the worst things that ever happened to children. Snapchat is like the devil. And the dark net wasn't like fully a dark, it wasn't as dark and deep as it is now, right? 2011 was still a time when basically, and I'm oversimplifying this, but like, whatever. The broad strokes is true.

1:34:59Basically, you could monitor from cell phone reception towers and you could figure out like which IP address is, like, where is the house that's making these child pornography files. I'm just going to call it child porn because it's easier to say, okay? If I'm in California, you're in Tennessee, and I create child pornography, and I toss it over to you via email, however they were doing it, it now kind of becomes, it falls under federal jurisdiction because it's crossed state lines. So that sort of lifts a lot of the parameters, or at least at the time that maybe things have changed. But at least in 2011, it lifted a lot of parameters for warrants and like how you could kind of get these guys.

1:35:43So there was I was part of this organization called the Innocent Justice Foundation, which at the time was getting money. And they were training like SWAT teams and police officers saying, like, here's how you basically figure out where the purpose. And one in five of those cases, you would find a child like actually on site. That was the victim. OK, it was 98 percent success or higher. maybe it was 99 it's at least 98 success conviction rate because you would find like on the guy's you know computer like here's all the files we know you did it it had high conviction rates so i start talking about that i'm like dude i need to talk about that my publicist at the time is like you cannot talk about that in hollywood i didn't understand why i was like why like why somebody needs to talk about this this is an issue that desperately needs sunlight like i'm gonna not talk about it.

1:36:31She, promptly fired again, is like, why don't you talk about like the ASPCA or like abused animals? I'm like, because Betty White's doing a fine job talking about that. Like lots of people talk about these issues. Are you kidding me? If people knew this was going on, like people would be up in arms about it. Why do you think they want to hide it? Why do you think the publicist wanted to hide it? Probably because Hollywood's complicit to it. Now, I don't know that from a personal standpoint, I, but I, well, I sort of do, but I like, I'm like, I think not all Hollywood is bad, but they're totally part of it.

1:37:04Totally part of it. Like, are you kidding me? So she knows, and she's like, you cannot talk about this in Hollywood. Cause I think like, not all of Hollywood, again, I know so many good people. I hope that I'm one of them, you know, but there are bad players in every industry and there are definitely bad players in media. definitely i mean the whole epstein thing please p diddy like come on there's so many rings that's going on child abuse child actor abuse there's like a documentary called quiet on set i mean you know this is a real thing that's going on in hollywood whether people want to face it or not so i think that she's like you can't talk about this in hollywood because you're gonna make a lot of enemies and i'm like screw that again like if there's one hill i would get canceled on Like, you can't silence me.

1:37:50You can't buy me out when it comes to, like, advocating for children. So that's how I got involved. And this is really important. Then we'll get back to Traffic Array. So the organization, Innocent Justice Foundation, I was not with them, but they went to Sacramento. And they asked Sacramento. It was at least$200 ,000. It was either$200 ,000 or$250 ,000. Let's just be conservative and say we asked for$200 ,000 in order to get more equipment to train law enforcement. Like, here's how you figure out which cell tone towers these are bouncing off of. It was, like, very ironclad. It was a formula. The dark web didn't really exist so much.

1:38:28Human trafficking was, like, not even a phrase to my knowledge. Like, people were not calling it that. So we had a super high success rate. Go and make the case in Sacramento. We need$200 ,000 in order to buy this equipment, in order to train law enforcement how to find these perverts and get them locked up forever. We have a 98 % conviction rate. Meanwhile, true story, another group, advocacy group, comes and asks for at least$200 ,000 worth of white paint in order to cover up graffiti. Guess who got funding? The graffiti. Mm-hmm. So when we went back and said, well, how could you pay$200 ,000 for white paint, wouldn't you agree this is a more serious subject?

1:39:10And this was the answer we got from Sacramento. Now, I don't know who said this. I just know somebody from Sacramento in power. We don't get calls about kids being trafficked. You know what we get calls about all the time? Graffiti. what the fuck man so this is the same thing when you're saying politicians don't care i'm like look i think some politicians would care but it's not a pressing issue and it's like that's why we got to make it a pressing issue because they're addicted to this fucking power that they think they have they really have no power the love of power the love of money because they i don't i just all of them all of them you see it right now like all these all these people it's just fucking crazy man it's like right you have no fucking power dude you're a representative is how it's supposed to be set up you have no yeah you're fucking scared to talk about kids being trafficked you're powerless you are completely fucking consumed by this fear of being canceled fear of being not elected you're consumed by power that doesn't even fucking exist you're completely controlled you can't even stand up for fucking kids because you're addicted to a power that you don't fucking have your position we know you don't have it because you can't talk about fucking kids yeah fear it's all of them it's fucking all of them it's all of them okay so back to trafficker a trafficker a knows he or she cannot be prosecuted so they adopt a kid out of foster care.

1:40:46They now have all the parental rights. Currently, right now, these are the current stats, because again, this is Friday night. I'm on a plane gagging as I go down the rabbit hole. I fact-checked this because I just did not want it to be true. Currently, right now in the United States, in 33 states, a parent, trafficker A, can sign away their child to get married before the age of 18. They give parental consent. Child does not have to have their opinion. Child's not asked. I can sign away this child that's now legally mine, trafficker A, to trafficker B. Trafficker B can legally pay trafficker A a bridal fee or a dowry.

1:41:38It's not prosecutable because we can call it a bridal fee when what it really is is i'm purchasing a human for sex now in these 33 states 19 of them if you have a marriage license you are legally shielded from statutory rape because it's not considered rape inside of marriage you you're not raping a child you're raping you're having sex with your spouse your husband your wife holy shit dude and in the other 14 law is tricky right that's why you always like if you ever need to be in a lawsuit you need to get a good attorney because law is subjective to how someone interprets the law so in those other so 33 states where you can trafficker a can sign away their child to trafficker b in the other remaining 14 states maybe that person would be prosecuted but there's a case right because there's a marriage license it's not a get out of jail free card but maybe holy shit and they know this there's also something called being rehomed which is as a parent as a parent you know if i'm having an issue with my child like i can go send my kid to live with their grandparent or whoever i want i have that right as a parent you're gonna go live with your aunt you're gonna go live with your neighbor because i can't handle you right now that's the excuse or whatever it is whatever reason it's called rehoming and they just get traffic traffic traffic traffic yep

1:43:19pretty freaking bleak yep

1:43:26so that's that's one thing that's happening in foster care and again that's why I hope it upsets people, but it's like, what's it going to take for us to get upset enough to become a foster parent? What's it going to take for people to be upset enough to mentor a child in foster care or become a child-appointed special advocate, a CASA? You know what I mean? I get it. Not everyone can foster. There's a lot of reasons why people couldn't foster. Maybe they have a medical diagnosis or something. They're not able to. No one's ever going to put a gun to your head and be like, you better foster. I get it.

1:44:05Not everyone's called to foster. But everyone is called to foster care. Because if you care about homelessness, if you care about human trafficking victims, if you care about domestic violence, if you care about substance abuse, if you care about child abuse and neglect, this is ground zero. And the statistics I told you earlier, that's the outcomes that happen if we don't step in. But if you step into a child's trauma young, when they're young, and even as a teenager, I mean, we have girls that come through Tulsa Girls Home, which is a qualified residential treatment program, which we can get into.

1:44:43It's like a whole thing. Group homes are not designed for kids. Group homes is like one of the last places you put a child. Because it's not good. They've been bounced around. They have so many behavioral issues that they need to end up in a qualified residential treatment program. That's the fancy term for it, a therapeutic group home. They're jacked. Like, they land here. They land in, like, the group home. They are jacked up. Still, with the right therapy, the right love, the right encouragement, the right, you don't have to be a statistic, the right person saying, you know what, you are more than a statistic.

1:45:20You are more than a number. Statistics are so numbing. These are children. Those stats, they're children. And when people realize that this is a person who has never been told that they matter, when you tell them they matter, even if they're a teenager, those statistics go down. So it's like we've got to get involved. All right. Back to the numbers. This is so crazy. It's all crazy. It's like not like I haven't said a thousand crazy things. All right. So currently, like I said, Health and Human Services says there are 344 ,000 children in foster care. AFGAR says about 330. When I got the call to do this interview, I was like, they were like, do you know stats?

1:46:01And I was like, yeah, sure. I went to Congress. I used to be able to rattle them off. So I'm like, let me just quickly look at the AFGAR's report. I can tell you the current numbers. And I see that there's 330 ,000 in foster care on the AFGAR's report. And I'm like, what? that can't be right because when i was like super active in this on any given day it was safe to say there are 430 000 children in foster care so i call it dr john de garmo who's the leading expert in foster care in our nation who does this eat breathe sleeps like he is an expert witness all across the country that's what he does he's an expert on child abuse neglect in our country And I'm like, John, can you explain to me what happened?

1:46:47Like, why are the numbers like, why have they dropped by 100 ,000 children? Because as long as I was an advocate, and as long as everybody I know who has been an advocate who is blue in the face, we have been like trying to put a dent in this system. how are the numbers this low what happened like did we really like are we fixing this he's like no no it's like the worst thing that's ever happened to foster care hidden foster care i was like what okay if you look at the so there's 344 there used to be 437 kids in foster care at the peak. And in and around 2018, 2019, there was 437. It was like the worst numbers in foster care.

1:47:33I looked at the AFGARS report, because again, that's the report that everybody uses, adoption and foster care reporting, analysis reporting system. In 2018, there were 675 children who had any sort of interaction with foster care. They might get a stipend. Somehow they're involved with child welfare. They might not be in foster care. 437 ,000 were in foster care, but 675 ,000 are being served in some capacity by the child welfare system. In 2024, there's only 505 ,000 being served by foster care. And I'm like, where did all these kids go? Right? All right. They go into, to explain this properly, that's 170 ,000 children gone, cleared off the books.

1:48:21And you can imagine this looks great for all the politicians. Ooh, we're solving foster care. Look at the numbers. They've never been so low. The press release writes itself. But the truth is so much worse. So to understand where these 170 go, I got to put them into two buckets. The first bucket is 55 ,000 children. This is according with the 2025 report. There's 55 ,000 children who are in foster care right now who are in what's called kinship care. Kinship is they're placed with grandma. They're placed with a relative, kin. Okay. They're with some sort of relative. That's called kinship care.

1:49:0355 ,000 of them are placed with an unlicensed relative, which is fine. You know, they go with grandma. The problem is when they go to an unlicensed kinship, because that relative is unlicensed, he or she either gets very little assistance financially to pay for all the needs of that child, or they get none. The child often doesn't come with Medicaid. The child doesn't come with therapy and what we call wraparound services where you're trying to rehabilitate them. Grandma, let's just call it Grandma. Grandma gets no assistance. She's not getting any help. She's doing it out of the goodness of her heart because, like, maybe her child was an addict.

1:49:52And maybe it's not generational. Maybe Grandma was a good person. And her child just became an addict. You know, that happens. It's horrible. And so her grandkid is going to end up in foster care. Of course Grandma's going to be like, no, no, no, put the baby with me. But Grandma's not licensed, so Grandma's just stuck out here with no services, like, doing her best. If grandma's a good person, and a lot of them are. I know many cases where they are. So, like, I want to, like, kudos to the grandmas. I'm pro-kinship care when it's a good fit. But if you're not also, like, giving them assistance, you're not giving them parenting classes they need, if you're not educating grandma on the fact that, like, there is a huge thing going on right now with, like, child traffickers, like, targeting them online, If she doesn't know, she's not like, she doesn't have to keep a license.

1:50:41So she doesn't have to have parenting classes. She doesn't have to have like ongoing kind of state of the union that a normal foster parent has to know. Hey, guys, you know what's going on is like traffickers are targeting these children online. We take online predator classes. We take like, here's what's going on in child welfare. That's another reason why you can't lower the bar with a home for every child. Like, tell me what's going on. Tell me how to protect these kids. Grandma's not getting any of that. And who's pocketing the money? I guess the government. So there's 55 ,000 that are over here.

1:51:14Now, there is 100 ,000 to 300 ,000 is the current number. Current estimates are between 100 ,000 and 300 ,000 children who are in what's called hidden foster care. This is based on the 2024 or 2025 Child Analysis Trend Report put on by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. They're great, to my knowledge. They put out great studies. I assume they're great. These are children who child welfare knows that they need to be removed from the home, but they just rehome them and put them with a relative or somebody else. but there's no court case that's ever opened. There's no record, which means there's no social worker checking up on their welfare.

1:52:09There's nobody looking at them. There's no case. So they've just taken the crisis and moved it off the books. Look at us. We're solving foster care. Holy shit. And you want to know why they're doing that? Of course you do. In 2018, In my opinion, at least in my lifetime, to my knowledge, the worst thing that could have ever happened to foster care happened. It was called, or it is called, the Family First Prevention and Services Act. Let me tell you what that is. That is, it was a bipartisan act. They had a lot of advocacy groups that were part of crafting the law. The law had great intentions on paper.

1:53:03Okay, so I don't know any of these people. I'm going to assume they had great intentions. Here's what the broad basis idea was. You know what? We have something in the government. I got to like break this down step by step. The broad strokes idea was, what if we, instead of putting children in foster care, focused our energy on prevention so they never enter the system in the first place? That's a great idea. Prevention, great idea. Okay? Family First Services law passes. And there's something in the government called Title 4E. I'm only going to say it once because I don't want to lose people on, like, the nitty-gritty of it.

1:53:46Title IV-E is$9.6 billion a year is spent on children in foster care. So it's basically like a federal open checkbook. But the problem with Title IV-E and that$9.6 billion with a B dollars is that this money only comes into play after the child has entered foster care. So, again, it's bipartisan. This law passed with flying colors. Advocacy groups were part of crafting it, though I remember Dr. John DeGarmo specifically and a lot of my friends were like, this is going to be a disaster, and it has been. When the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act came along, they were like, hey, why don't we take some of the Title IV-E$9.6 billion and put it toward prevention?

1:54:39Great. This is a great idea on paper. On paper, I could be a huge supporter of this. Here's why. The majority of kids who end up in foster care end up in foster care because of neglect. And many of that neglect is poverty-related neglect. Okay, so again, not to oversimplify it because a social worker really is not, to my knowledge, in any case I've really heard, just like yanking a kid out of foster care or out of their home because they don't have anywhere to put them. but there are a lot of times where the kid enters foster care because of poverty related neglect which means they don't have a bed mom doesn't have groceries mom's a single mom there are amazing organizations one is called care portal i'm obsessed with care portal care portal is a christian organization that's basically like the christian craigslist of foster care so the whole premise of it, it is prevention.

1:55:33The whole premise is like, hey, let's apply common sense to this crappy system. Maybe if mom is single and she doesn't have food in her pantry and she can't afford a bed for the child, maybe instead of traumatizing all parties involved, we should just get the mom a bed, fill her pantry. And by the way, as the church, wrap around that mom and be like, Like, hey, sweetheart, being a single mom is got to be tough. What can we do as a church to help you? Right? So there are amazing organizations that are helping with prevention. So Family First Prevention Services Act passes, and the idea is like, let's prevent children from entering care.

1:56:17Great. what it ended up creating was more bureaucracy and red tape on a system that already had enough bureaucracy and red tape so it's caused a lot of problems very first problem that it's created is um it's like oh my gosh i like so many things swimming in my head i'm like i want to tell you all the things about family first prevention services act I would say the first problem that advocates talk about with Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 is that Congress decided in order to make sure prevention is actually working, we're only going to give the money allocated for prevention to programs that have at least 50 % of the money that we're allocating for this whole prevention.

1:57:12At least 50 % of the budget has to go toward programs that have like the most high scientific data behind them. Also, sounds great. Sounds like common sense. However, there are many wonderful programs that common sense would say, get the mom groceries, get the mom a bed. That is preventing that child from entering foster care. But because they're in a rural community or they're serving minority and maybe they're in a lower income area, they can't afford the research. they're not like tied to some like fancy college running data analysis so even so social workers found themselves being like okay even though we know this service prevents children from entering care we can't do anything about it because they don't have research so that was one problem yeah the next and so like the solution to that the common sense solution to that would be like all right, look, you can do several things.

1:58:10You can, instead of creating like this government federal clearinghouse list, that's what it is. Like these people have to be on a list. Their program like definitely has scientific research, you know, showing that their program works. You could just get an expert panel to be like, you know what? This program's working. We see it. You know, put an expert panel on it is like one of the many solutions you could do for that. But That's one of the problems that Family First Prevention Services Act caused. More bureaucracy. Second, it funds the entirely wrong thing. And it's like, Sean, I don't even know.

1:58:45I don't even know of all the—there's seven problems that this whole system has created. I don't know which one makes my blood boil the most. Maybe this one. I don't know until I get to the next one. It funds the totally wrong thing, okay? So you have social workers. Social workers, again, like I said, some of them have 86 kids on their case. They are doing their best. The one thing that Child Welfare Services does that no other government office does is called case management. Case management looks like coordinating the visitations, the monitored visits, making sure that parent is getting the biological parent is getting the parenting classes he or she needs, making sure that they get the drug and substance abuse program that they need, making sure that the social worker is like air traffic control for, you know, Talking to the court, talking to the guardian ad litem, talking to the therapist, talking to the foster parent and making sure that there's a holistic view of what is going on.

1:59:42That's called case management. That's what you would think that you would fund with prevention services. But they didn't fund that. Instead, the prevention services, whoever was in charge of it, decided that what they would fund is like, let's fund the drug substance abuse program. Let's fund the therapy for the child. Let's fund whatever the hell they're funding. And again, that sounds great until you realize that Medicaid already covers that. So now what happened is these social workers who just want to do case management, their entire day is now taken up, pointing fingers, trying to decide how to exhaust Medicaid before they can get any Title IV-E money put into their case.

2:00:27So it's like, who's funding what? Now who's on first? And so critics of the Family First Prevention Services Act would say, let Medicaid fund what Medicaid funds and let us fund case management. You want to hear something else that's crazy? Another problem? This is mind boggling to me. Family First Prevention and Services Act of 2018 does not require any data attached to it. There are no analytics. So they say prevention works, but they have no way to measure the outcomes. Correct. What? Correct. So states are not required by this law. This law does not require states to measure the outcomes. So they can track how much they're spending, but they can't track whether it's working.

2:01:22There is no data system that shows how many people did your program help. How many kids actually were successfully prevented from entering foster care. Nobody knows because the law does not require the data to be measured. Holy shit. it.

2:01:48Starting this podcast was one of the biggest leaps of faith I've ever taken. And at the time, I had no idea if anybody would listen, if it would grow, or if it would turn into what it is today. And when you build something from scratch, you realize fast how many moving parts there are. That's why having the right tools matters. And for me, in millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all e-commerce in the US, from brands just getting started to massive companies you already know. And what I like is everything's in one place.

2:02:31Inventory, payments, analytics, marketing, all of it. They've also got AI tools that help with things like product descriptions, page headlines, and even product photography. And you've definitely seen that Purple Shop Pay button online. There's a reason it's everywhere. It makes checkout ridiculously easy and helps businesses convert more sales. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify. And start hearing, Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com. Go to shopify.com slash SRS. That's shopify.com slash SRS.

2:03:19Next problem. Residential treatment programs got way harder. So, again, I think this law had great intentions. A lot of experts like Dr. DeGarmo was like, this is going to be a train wreck. There were a lot of people that saw the red flags, but for whatever reason, nobody listened to them. And by the way, there has been a lot of advocates advocating for things to change, and I'm not 100 % sure why, but they don't even make it to the floor. And I think it's because, if I'm just speculating, I think everybody kind of wants to get credit for passing a bill, but nobody wants to own up to the unintended consequences of the bill.

2:04:08Right? Everybody wants to point their fingers. So residential treatment programs. There was an old 1965 Medicaid law called the IMD, the Institutions for Mental Disease Law of 1965. This law was a Medicaid law that was passed in order to basically it blocked Medicaid federal funding for mental health institutions for adults. right because the federal government's like we don't want to pay forever for an adult who's just going to end up in a mental institution for the rest of their life and i have a lot of compassion on people that live in mental institutions i could talk about that for days i have a lot of empathy there but there was a law whatever 1965 imd institutions for mental disease passed in 1965 it was meant for adults it was never meant to touch children in foster care but when the family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 passed, what an unintended consequence of that was that group homes, if they had more than 16 beds or residential therapeutic treatment programs had more than 16 beds, now they were like, ooh, are they falling under the old 1965 IMD law?

2:05:22We can't fund this anymore. So you have these great programs, and I believe Child Help actually, which is an organization I love, I think that this law, I think this is one of the ways it backfired on them. They used to have a village in California. And in that village, it was like a bunch of cottages. There were little like group homes that were like in a neighborhood structure. There was a school on the property. There was therapy. And these are kids that have been so severely abused that the federal government's like, there is no hope for this. There's no hope for this child. Like just send them to jail or send them to the mental institution.

2:06:04There is no going back with this child. And the founders of Child Help over 60 years ago were like, not on our watch. Let's just give it a go. I think love can heal a child. So they opened up this village, for example, in Beaumont, California. I used to be one of their mentors, but the program's been shut down. And it shut down as one of the consequences of Family First Prevention Services Act. It complicated it. Children who end up at child help are literally, I know this case, children that like some of them were raised as dogs, for example. They've been raised their entire life in a cage. They made it to nine years old.

2:06:40They don't know they're not a dog. No one's ever taught them how to speak English. No one, they don't know how to eat food. They don't know how to speak, they don't know they're not a dog. You can't put that child in a foster home. You can't. That's why there's levels to foster care. There's normal foster homes. There's trauma-informed therapeutic foster homes. There's group homes. There's qualified residential treatment programs. And then there's jail and menstrual institutions. And then there was child help. So of course they have more than 16 beds. And the outcomes for the children who went through child help are incredible.

2:07:19Some of them went to go on to be like politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers. These are the most severely abused cases that the federal government literally ships them in from all 50 states. And they're like, if you don't help them, nobody else will. Child help, their village in California doesn't exist anymore. Because you lose all your funding because somehow, you know nobody wants to pay for that anymore so that was one of the problems and i don't know if that's specifically why child help got shut down it was like a compounding of a lot of issues it's kind of a complicated issue but like that was one of the compoundings you have something that that this law of 2018 created and it's called qualified residential treatment program people and social you know in foster care they call it a qrtp i'm not going to do abbreviations for you that is a group home that provides a lot of therapy that's what pulsa girls home is so you get the cases where like the kid's been bounced around bounced around bounced around adopted to be raped that's extremely common that happened with the girl that we took in at 18 we asked her we said do you do you want us to adopt you and she was like no and we were like whoa and she's like, sorry, sorry, when I hear the, when I, when I hear adoption to me, that means rape.

2:08:41And I know you guys don't want to rape me, but that's what I hear. That's not uncommon. Yes. And it's not the first time I've heard it, Sean. I can't tell you, I can tell you at least five kids that I've talked to that have said the same thing. I'm sorry. Adoption means rape to me. And then once they're caught in that adoptive home for being raped, if they're caught, they just get put back in the system it's so jacked so family first prevention services act created something called a qrtp which is a qualified residential treatment program and they basically said um you know we're gonna put these kids into this program but we want to eliminate all these programs because the whole idea is if the statistics are so bleak, the statistics we went over, they age out, you know, they become homeless, substance abuse problems, arrest pipeline, all of that.

2:09:40Well, they look at the data and it says that if they lived in a group home, their statistical, you know, outcomes, likelihood of having these outcomes is 2.5 times more likely if they end up in a group home. It's not the therapeutic group home that's causing those statistics. It's that by the time you've worked your way up from family to family to family where you need a group home, it's the trauma. It's the unresolved trauma that nobody wanted to deal with. It's not the qualified residential, like, therapeutic treatment program that's causing that outcome. Nobody's looking at it right. And the other thing that this law created for people that are actually doing it right is the assessment to get into the residential treatment program that was put into place, more bureaucracy because of this law, is maddening.

2:10:30It's called the CANS system. I do not know what CANS stands for. It's on all 50 states. Before a child can receive the therapeutic level of treatment that they need, like a Tulsa Girls Home, there has to be some sort of analysis that's run on them to determine whether they're eligible for those services. But it's like a online portal that has some sort of strange algorithm that nobody can figure out. And like, we've seen this. It tells the girls home. Hey, this girl is suicidal. She is cutting and she says she's going to kill herself and this, this and that. Hey, this girl is suicidal. She's cutting herself and this, this and that.

2:11:12Same case on paper. she qualifies she doesn't why i don't know thank you family first prevention services act for trying to prevent these kids from ending up in group homes it's bizarre and then another problem that's complicated because of it is that there was this thing it's fancy fancy term is revenue neutrality trap. All that means is that instead of creating an entirely new revenue stream to say, you know what, we believe in prevention, but we know that we're going to have to pump money into preventative services. We want to like stop the kid from ever entering foster care. Instead of creating a revenue stream and like building this up and like working toward prevention, let's get those families, especially if they're poverty related neglect, let's get them taken care of, which is not what Family First Prevention Services Act is budgeted for.

2:12:09Instead of doing all that, sorry, I lost my place because it's like, it's like so, it's literally just like, it's the messiest thing in the world, but it's like, okay.

2:12:24Oh, I lost my place. Let me look it up. Where is it? Where's the bullet point? revenue neutrality okay yeah so instead of instead of just creating a new revenue stream they they whoever whoever they is congress thought if we want to stop group home placements we'll just defund the group homes and assume that we can put these kids back with normal families but again if the kid qualifies for a group home they're so jacked up that they need this level of care. You can't put them with a foster parent. And most foster parents won't take them because they're like, I'm not qualified for that level of trauma.

2:13:04I'm not a therapist. I don't have, it's a totally different set of qualification that would qualify you to take a child that has been through that much trauma. So there's nowhere to put them. So all these kids like fall into the gap. Now they're being put in detention home centers because it's like, oh crap, we shut down your therapeutic residential treatment program you didn't qualify to get in now we have nowhere to place you i guess we'll just put you into a hotel until you age out geez or jail or jail so they they basically like burned the bridge before they you know it was like let them get the therapy they need you assume that these kids if you took the therapy away that they wouldn't need it, but they need it.

2:13:53And then they did not do the math on there's nowhere to put them. Who comes up with this? Dude, I don't even know. It's, again, there were advocacy groups. It was bipartisan. I don't know why people didn't see the red flags. But regardless, if you didn't see the red flags, but now you do. By the way, 2025 study, eight years in, seven years in was the data. We're eight years in now. Data showed from 2025, this is mind-blowing, that of that$9.6 billion, only two cents of every dollar actually went toward prevention. And of that two cents, 60 % went to administrative drag because there's so much paperwork now that all the kids are falling into the gap.

2:14:50Nobody can keep up with the paperwork because you got to have research and you got to have Medicaid billing first and you got to have all the paperwork and you got to have the CANS assessment. You got to prove that this kid is jacked up enough to need this therapy. And so all of these social workers who are already bogged down are bogged down with even more paperwork. And here's the stats. Here's the current stats as the result. 36 % turnover rate in social workers within 18 months. That's just the national average. It's 57 % in Florida. Annual, well, 18-month turnover rate. It might be annual in Florida.

2:15:30Foster parents, depending upon where you're surveying them, 30 to 50 percent of foster parents burn out within 12 months because you feel like you're in the system. The good players are quitting because they're like, I can't win. It's the worst thing that ever happened to foster care. And nobody wants to take blame for it. So nobody's really addressing the issue. And so, again, it sounds so bleak, but my answer is then good people have to foster. Because you're never going to solve all of this, but if you advocate for a kid, and you actually champion your social worker, who might seem like a total jerk, but maybe they're just overworked, underpaid, and feel like they're not making any difference, so they're depressed.

2:16:19Social workers don't feel like they have any say. Guardians that lied on the lawyers, sometimes they feel like they have no say. And it's because foster care is so complicated that every single person has a piece and nobody has total control. But you gotta get the good people to stay in the fight. You gotta fund the social workers, fund the case management. Let Medicaid pay for what Medicaid pays for already. It's such a mess. How do you fix it? I think I genuinely think that the number one way to fix it is you get better people in the fight. You recruit better foster parents. You give them community.

2:17:01You support your social workers. You know, you petition Congress or your representatives. Make the phone calls. Hey, it's not about graffiti this time. It's about children. Make them care. Put the pressure on them. And get involved. I mean, it's like if you care about homelessness, all these things. Like if you care about all these things and ground zero is foster care, you have to get involved. If you don't want to be a foster parent, there are so many ways people can get involved. If you're a hairdresser. These girls in foster care, they've never had their hair done. On prom night, on homecoming night, just open up your salon.

2:17:42Do, like, free. Just make them feel good. just make them feel pretty. It seems so simple, but they will remember that for the rest of their life. They've never felt pretty. They've never felt worthy. Open up your salon and let them come. You might not feel like you're doing heavy lifting, but for that kid, it was like the first time they were told that they like deserve to feel like everybody else. Give them school supplies. Don't give them trash bags. Donate your suitcases. get involved in care portal tell your church to get involved like get involved like people have to get involved the christians have no excuse we have no excuse we were not called to a life of convenience it's true damn man i know Want to take another break?

2:18:43Sure.

2:18:52I could also say, before we take a break, so don't forget it. Are we still rolling, or did we cut? We're rolling. Okay. The other thing people can do is that 29 % of the kids that are in foster care are currently eligible for adoption. They've been emancipated. And they've been told nobody wants them. And by the way, it's free to adopt from foster care. Actually, they pay you. There's an adoption assistance program, like I said, I discovered. Consider adoption. There's organizations like the Dave Thomas Center Foundation for Adoption. There's AdoptUSKids. There's many organizations where you can adopt a child out of foster care.

2:19:34Some of them are aging out, and they just need a place to come home to, you know, for the holidays. Help them transition into being an adult. If you're a financial planner, like maybe once a month give financial planning to these kids. The outcomes for children who are adopted into foster care are far better than children who age out of the system. Kids who have guardianship, their outcomes are pretty parallel with adoption. Same for mentoring. Children who are mentored, like you don't even have to adopt. Children who are mentored, the statistics go way down favorable. There's a mentoring program?

2:20:12There's tons of mentoring programs. What is that? Big Brothers Big Sisters. Child Help has a program called Special Friends. That's how I got involved in it. There's so many ways you can mentor kids in foster care. I promise across the United States right now, you could call up your local Department of Children and Family Services and child welfare services, you know, and say like, hey, are there any programs in our area that do mentorships for teens in foster care or kids in foster care? And they'd be like, yes, we are so grateful to have your call and they will put you in touch. I mean, I talk about it in my book.

2:20:47We have a whole chapter on like, here's all the resources. Here's all the ways you can get involved without actually becoming a foster parent. But we also need foster parents and we need social workers. Or you can like go to a social worker. Like, what does it look like if you give them even$5? That'll buy a small latte at Starbucks. You know, give them a$5 Starbucks gift card. You don't know the straw that you take off the camel's back. Like, maybe they were just about to quit. And you walked in their office and said, you know what? I see you. I know you're burnt out and frustrated.

2:21:22Do something. so this this village in california you're talking about shut down i think it's now a detention home does that mean all of these have shut down not all of them um there are many still qualified residential treatment programs oh and by the way here's what's also crazy about this the data since Family First Prevention Services Act passed in 2018, the data on the rate of group homes, because there are also group homes that are hell holes. I'm sure there are. Where trafficking is happening out of the group home. I'm sure. Page, you know, back page there. I mean, it's bad because nobody pays attention to those kids.

2:22:11I mean, you're talking about these statistics. Yeah. You know, and it's 50 to 80 % of trafficking victims have child welfare involvement. 60 % of likely victims missing to NCMEC were in foster care. I mean, 15 ,000 to 16 ,000... By the way, the statistic... ...a year with no family. About 40 a day. 40 kids age out of foster care every single day. These... Five children die in the United States every day due to child abuse and neglect. Five children every day.

2:22:58so i'm what i'm saying is with these statistics it just kind of it kind of it paints the it just paints the story i mean it's everywhere they go yeah they're abused they're raped they're sexually exploited and that becomes their normal because it is their it is their normal yeah and And then they do the same thing over and over, generation after generation after generation. Yeah. And a lot of them, especially the girls that I, I can't get into a boy's brain, but the girls, a lot of them will commit a crime just to go to jail. Well, that's the other thing. I mean, if that's all they know is, I mean, if they're going to put them in detention centers, that's home.

2:23:42It's literally like I'm aging out. I better commit a crime so that I can get like a hot and a cot. That's kind of what I'm getting at. Yep. Nobody tells them they matter. So are any facilities opening or are they all just... I don't know. I mean... Are there any good facilities open? Let me say that. Are there any good... I'm sure there's facilities opening. Yeah. There are a lot of really good programs. I mean, Tulsa Girls Home is exceptional. Tulsa Boys' Home, I can't comment on. How many people do they care for? We only care for eight girls. Tulsa Women to Tulsa Girls' Home? Tulsa Girls' Home, yeah, we have enough beds for eight.

2:24:21But because the CANS assessment is so jacked up, we can't even fill the beds. You can't fill eight beds? Nope. Because of the bureaucratic system that says, well, they don't qualify. Holy shit. Yep. But we also created transitional homes. And these homes are gorgeous. Like, Sean, I'm a celebrity. I would love to live in these houses. They are bougie as all get out. And that's what we hear. It's so heartbreaking. The girls walk into Tulsa Girls Home and they're like, wow, it's so clean. Like, it's so clean and it's so nice. And then we created these beautiful, like, row home transition homes where when they age out of foster care, they can go into our transitional program where we give them, like, financial classes.

2:25:08make sure they have a job like we don't just leave them you know well that's something i wanted to ask only just break a kid in the regular foster program who doesn't have a good family who does age out there it's nobody's what is it was like getting out of jail like here you go you're 18 now figure it out that's what it is you're done get out of my house that's why we took in that one girl she had a week left before she knew she was going to get kicked out she had nowhere to go and my husband was like we have to help her and i was like great yeah i would love to help her we have an extra room let's help her i mean the church has to get involved there's also an amazing organization called olive crest why do you think most churches don't get involved i mean you look we're in tennessee here yeah there's a church on every fucking corner you are the buckle of the bible belt yeah and you know i'll go to these churches you know where they all go they all go out of country they're all free and slaves they're all but nobody's doing anything here in the community i want why is why is that is it is it the red tape is it all bullshit i want to really free Freeing the slaves?

2:26:27Yeah. I want to believe that most don't know. Because I've been to a lot of these places where they go free the slaves as a SEAL and as a CIA guy. I didn't see any fucking slaves being freed. Yeah. That's a whole different discussion. Yeah. I want to say the overwhelming majority is not aware. You know? They're like me. I even had a leg up on foster care because I was some exposure to it as a child. I didn't know the statistics. I didn't know what was going on in my backyard. I didn't know there was like a epidemic of child abuse in the United States. I had no idea. So I want to say the majority of people just don't know.

2:27:14Then there's the bystander effect. Somebody else will do it. I mean, we've been saying there's a church on every corner of one person out of every four churches fostered. We've been saying that for over 10 years. Numbers haven't gone down. Oh, numbers have gone down, by the way. People will be like, aren't you excited? These numbers are amazing. I'm like, these numbers are BS. These numbers are not real. These numbers are hidden foster care. Take the crisis off the books. And where's that money going, by the way? Because if it's not going with grandma, grandma's not getting the monthly stipend.

2:27:46Kinship care is not getting the monthly stipend. Well, they came out a couple of months ago and said that there's an estimated$600 billion in fraud every year in the United States.

2:27:57So much for the GAO, Government Accountability Office. Yeah. Was that a real thing? That's what I'm saying. It's just like you're never... I think people get overwhelmed. Myself included. You know, statistics are numbing. It's numbing. You get numb. You want to turn away because it's so uncomfortable. Or you assume that you can't do it. And it's like, or we just get fed this prosperity gospel that like the Lord wants to bless you. It's like, yeah, he wants to bless you, but what's the definition of blessing? Foster care has stretched me in ways that I would not trade for the world. I am so grateful for every single thing that I have learned through foster care, as painful as it has been.

2:28:46There was not a day I didn't cry, but foster care made me so tenderhearted. I see people differently now when I look at people I look at them with so much empathy empathy I would never would have received and that is an overwhelming thing that I hear from parents who have children in their own home that are their biological children when they become foster parents they make their children part of the discussion because that's healthy like hey we're thinking about fostering as a family what do you think and a lot of people say oh I I'll foster I'll foster once my kids are out of the house. No. Listen, not no.

2:29:25That's between you and your family. Have a freaking discussion. But at the same time, every parent I have ever talked to that is fostered while they have their own kids, they have told me, and this is the people I've talked to, I acknowledge stuff can happen in foster care. Children that have been molested can molest other children. You go through all of that in training. By the way, nobody forces you to say no when you get the phone call. My son, Caden, I said no at first. No, because they say in training, don't worry about saying no to this child. Do not let it break your heart because there will be another phone call in five minutes.

2:30:04You're not forced to take any case. You can pick the case that you feel is the best fit for your family. I don't recommend that someone takes a child when they have other young children, if that child has been known, if that child's been molested, it's not a good idea to put them in your house with younger children. How would you even know? Because the caseworkers know. You, and you can, yeah, not always, not always, not all, the thing doesn't come all the way. You are trained in foster care training to ask them. That's what I had to ask, like, the girl who lived with us. I took her social workers aside and I was like, look, It's not necessarily a no, but I need to know.

2:30:42Like, just be straight with me because I'm an advocate. I will find a home for that girl. There is no way that girl is aging out of foster care homeless next week. I will figure it flipping out. I just need you to be straight with me. Has she molested other children because I have three young children and I have an infant and I had a newborn? My husband works night shift. Like, I am not cognizantly. I have three children under three. Like, I can't also be managing that. So they train you in foster care training, like the questions to ask. If that child's been molested, it's really great if you put them in your home and you don't have other kids because there's nobody else for them to accuse.

2:31:18All of this, you go through foster care training. All of this is covered in my book, like how do you navigate this mess? But you don't have to say yes. And there is going to be a child that is right for your family. And these families that have other children that foster, their kids learn that same empathy. They are wiser than many adults I've talked to. Their children have been exposed to a world with empathy, compassion, action. I mean, these are kids that are going to conquer the world. I cannot wait to expose my children fully to foster care. They're aware of it. But, like, people shouldn't not foster because they have other kids.

2:32:00How old are your kids now? Four, six, eight, and ten. About to be four, seven, eight, and ten. And also single people can foster. You don't have to be married to foster.

2:32:16How do your kids handle it? I mean, I'm being serious. You know, for somebody that doesn't know this, here's some fears that will go through my head. You know, how do I treat my kids? How do I treat these kids in comparison to my kids? How do I treat my biological kids? Yeah. How do we keep it fair? A lot of that they go through in training that you would have. So, like, one of the things is, like, you know, I'm obviously a huge advocate against child abuse. I would say you are, too. Spanking, I personally think there is a time and a place to spank as long as you're not doing it in anger. I'm not a big proponent of spanking, but I don't think that if somebody spanks their children, they're automatic child abusers.

2:33:04I know people that are excellent parents that spank their kids on occasion, but they don't do it in anger. They do it in the right way. Like, I'm not, I would not call that child abuse if it's done. I wouldn't either. Right. Right. However, a child that's in foster care, obviously, if you spank your own children, you cannot spank that child. You cannot. It's against the law. You cannot. So you're going to have to discipline them. Like we have a whole chapter on discipline, like timeouts, you know, take toys or incentivize the other way. Same things you would do with like other, you know, other kids in your care when you're a parent.

2:33:38You know, like, it's like, you feel like you have all these tools in your parenting belt. And there are days that you're like, I don't even know. Like, where do I, how do I even, I have exhausted every form of discipline. And now I don't know what to do with you. You know, but there, you are going to have to maybe discipline them different. But hopefully, if a child is in your care, you are going to give them the boundaries from the get go. So they feel secure. These are the rules in our house cold. We don't hit, we don't whatever. But hopefully, if you're a foster parent, you're also going to not be spanking your kid either because that's traumatizing for that child so you kind of have to like have the same rules lay them out for the child um but my children i have not fostered while i've had my own children because it wasn't until my boys cases were going to adoption that literally i just turned to my husband and uh i was like hey like looking at my ovulation calendar because we used to be like on five forms of birth control because i'm an actress never wanted to be a parent like i was like, I'll foster.

2:34:34I'm so naive. I talk about it in the book. I'm like, I'll foster and I'll save the world and I'll help these kids. And then when they leave, I'll just be destroyed and I'll grieve and we'll go to Europe and we'll have some pasta. And when we're ready, we'll like take the next kid. So once I decided we were going to adopt and the case went toward adoption, which was so great because my son Caden would not be alive. There is no way that kid would have made it to his third birthday if he had not been adopted. My son Jeffrey maybe would have had a really crappy childhood if he had not been adopted.

2:35:04Once we realized Caden's case was going to adoption, I was literally looking at my ovulation calendar on my app and I'm looking at my filming schedule. I'm like doing Hallmark movies and all this stuff. And I was like, out of town, out of town, out of town. There's this thing called the Shettles method. I love science. Basically, you can probably predict whether you're going to have a boy or girl based on when you have sex. I looked at my husband and I'm like, yeah. So like, so it's totally, it works. Okay. For everybody that's listening that's like, tell me how the shuttle's method works. Okay, here's how the shuttle's method works.

2:35:34Two times it worked. Totally. Well, Jackie was a surprise that we didn't know we needed. She knows that. Anyway, shuttle's method, because you're going to be curious. It's awesome. Shuttle's method is girl... Okay, so obviously we know a little lesson in biology. Men are the... It's their sperm that determines the sex of the baby, the gender of their baby. and girl sperm swim slower than boy sperm, but the boys swim fast and die quickly and the girls swim slow and they camp out for up to five days. So if you have sex before your egg drops and then you don't have sex, you're more likely to have a girl because the girl sperm's just hanging out, like waiting to get that egg.

2:36:19So we looked at the calendar and I'm like, I don't want to have a boy. Of course, I would have accepted a boy if that's what I got pregnant with, But I was like, I, if I'm going to have, if I know these boys are going to adoption and if Caden's going to adoption, Jeff's definitely going to adoption too. The odds are like in my favor that Jeff's going to be adopted too. I guess that means we're going to be like in for a lot of sleepless nights and college tuition anyway. So, um, I think I'd like to have a girl cause I don't want to have a boy that like my adopted kids would have like a genetic boy to compare themselves to.

2:36:49So look at my husband. I'm like, Hey, if we have sex right now, we'll be in the girl window. And, you know, otherwise we're five months out. And he was just like, a man. He's like, let's go. So we got pregnant with my daughter, Julie. Right on. Yeah. Right on. Yep. Wow.

2:37:11Yeah, I mean, so how do you, I mean, how about your, how about like the biological kids? I mean, do they, do they? They know. I mean, my kids are very, my boys know they're adopted out of foster care. I explain their mom by saying, like, she really loved you. She just did not know how to be a mommy because nobody ever taught her how. And it was not safe for you to be with her. And God knew that you were going to be placed in my home. When I was pregnant with my daughter, Julie, a lot of people would ask me, like, are you worried that you're going to love your biological child more than your adoptive child?

2:37:48And I'm like, well, I wasn't. But now that you're saying it, God, I hope not. I don't love her any more than I love my boys. And when I was pregnant with Jackie, who's my fourth, and she was a big surprise, it was like a very painful pregnancy. I did not want to be pregnant. I was like, this is like hard. And I'm like, I have no torso. And like, I'm like losing acting jobs. Like, this is not on my bingo card. I'm really grateful that I'm pregnant. But like, also, oh my God, I wanted to foster. You know, I wanted a fourth kid by foster care. I said to my boys one day, I was home with Caden and my husband was like at band practice for church.

2:38:22And I had to get something, and I was way too pregnant to get whatever it was that I needed. I was in so much pain, and I said to Kate, and I said, just in case you or your brother ever wonder whether I love you the same as these girls, let me tell you something. I might love you and Jeff a little bit more because you never did this to me. Like, if I only fostered, I could jump on a trampoline. You know? Like, there is no easy way to have a baby. What kind of questions do they have for you? The boys? Mm-hmm. Uh, Jeff wants to know everything there is to know about everything, and Caden doesn't want to talk about it.

2:38:58Do they know about the trauma that they experienced? Or do you tell them? Or is that a secret? They know a little bit. They don't know about their dads yet. I haven't, um, they know they have a dad. They know, they know, listen, because of Roblox, because of all this sexual exploitation of children that's happening, kids unfortunately in our nation are exposed to pornography by the age of seven. That's the average age. It is so bad. So I always tell parents, I'm like, look, it's really uncomfortable. You don't have to have like the nitty gritty conversation with them about sex. But like you better be the first person that talks to them about sex and present yourself as an expert because otherwise they're going to learn it from kids or disgusting people who tell them this is normal.

2:39:40So they know biologically they have a, you know, sperm donor. They don't know about their dads. They haven't asked me about their dads. Caden's dad is way more complicated than Jeffrey's. I'm dying. I do not want to have that conversation with him. I still don't know whether I will talk to him about all the nitty gritty of his dad until he's like in his 20s. And the only reason I say 20s is because your cerebral frontal cortex is not developed as a male until about the age of 26. And so I think, I personally think that one of the worst things you could do to a child who's adopted out of foster care is like try to talk to them about all the questions they have or introduce them to their biological parent as a teenager because they've got all these hormones and they don't know.

2:40:29Like that's just a hard time in your life where you're trying to sort through like who you are and what are you going to do. And if you're not stable when you're introducing all these new problems, like it can definitely backfire. How do you deflect? Well, Caden doesn't ask me. Caden doesn't want to know anything. Jeffrey, I always tell them, like, look, this is your story, and you're allowed to ask me any question, and I will do my very best to explain it to you. So they just haven't asked me.

2:40:57Caden, you know, their biological mom was on drugs. He was a meth baby. And so there's a lot of aftermath that comes from that. There's a lot of trauma that comes from that. And we were the only homes that both of our boys have ever, well, Jeffrey had one placement before us, but it was a really good home. But they were placed with us at four months old. But regardless, the trauma that Caden endured, even in utero and in those first four months of life, he's still paying for it. So, I mean, you navigate it the best that you can. you know I always tell them like if you have any questions you can ask me and I assure them that like I love them so much I'm doing the best I can and I know that like God loves you and you were created on purpose and for a purpose Caden struggles with that I mean he's literally like I should be dead I should never have come to live with you I should just be dead jeez how old is he 10 10 years old and he's saying that Mm-hmm.

2:42:00He's been through every form of therapy. But I always think, I'm like, well, if he didn't end up in my home, what would your story be? You know what I mean? Because at least he got a mom that, like, I might not have all the answers, but I'll find them. I'll do everything I can. You know? And then Jeff wants to know everything. He wants to know all the details about everything. So I try to talk to them about it separately, because what will inevitably happen is they share a room. They don't have to share a room, they just want to share a room. Jeff gets really chatty at night. It's like he's tired and he's like, let me ask you why.

2:42:30What is the purpose of life? Like he's a very introspective child. And Caden's like across the way and he's like, shut up, Jeff. And he's like, I don't want to talk about this. So it's like, Jeff, hey, really deep philosophical questions, you know. He's like, well, what happened to Sheila? You know, what happened to my mom? Like, why doesn't she, what's her deal? And I'm like, well, honey, nobody ever loved her. Well, why did nobody ever love her? I don't know, I guess because somebody never loved their parent. And their parent, like, well, what hap - You know, like, he wants to know all of it.

2:43:05Caden doesn't want to know a thing. Wow. So, and I told the mom that. I told the bio mom that. We have a closed adoption case, but I - Which means that she can't have any contact with the kids, and I'm not supposed to have any contact with her. But I'm like, I have contact with her. I don't update her on everything on their life. I don't because she doesn't need that and it's probably confusing for her but she knows she can talk to me at any point but she also knows that I'm like look I don't really talk to the boys about you. I've told them a little bit about you like they know that you exist and I told her I said I'm telling you this right now just so you can brace yourself.

2:43:47I think Jeff is going to want a relationship with you when he's older and I don't think that Caden will. And... They have the same parents? They have the same mom. They have the same mom. Yeah, they have the same mom. Different dads. Did you get him at the same time? Well, we got Caden first because he's older. But then I knew that she was pregnant with Jeff the whole time. And I mean, I was literally like, her staple diet was like Mountain Dew and Cheetos. And I knew, like, that's my baby in there. because I uh this is not something that you should do I write about it in my book like it's totally shady and it's not something you should do and I'm like whatever I created catfish accounts uh which is like a social media profile that's not real and I I like knew what was going on with the bio parent's actual life to keep my kids safe.

2:44:45Caden's case was bleak. Like, it was like, I'm gonna do this because if I don't, like, he's dead. He's not making it to his third birthday. So I knew she was pregnant. She put it on Facebook, like, for a sonogram. And I was like, all right. So when I got pregnant, I sat her down because we already had Jeffrey's case. And I was like, just so you know, I'm pregnant, so like, my turn. Do not give me twins. I'm close enough with Jeff and Julie are like 14 months apart. Like, it's my turn. Just hold off. Please. Please. Please, I'll get you on birth control. Please. Please don't have any more kids, just for a second.

2:45:22So that I can like, manage this. Because I don't know how I would not take a sibling. If he or she ended up in the system, you know? Shit. How often do you talk to her? Not. She's not doing well. She was doing well for a long time. She was doing so well for so long. And now she's going to like pack back in old patterns. So, I mean, I'll talk to her on her birthday. I'll wish her happy birthday. I text her on Mother's Day. She normally texts me on the boy's birthday or like the day after to be like, oh, yeah, it was her birthday. Please tell them I love them. And I'm like, I'm going to pass on a message, but I will let you know they're doing great.

2:46:01And I might tell her like, Jeffrey lost his first tooth or, you know, whatever. Or, hey, Caden's on the honor roll. You know. People say you shouldn't do that, but I'm like, why? To me, that's compassion. You know? It wasn't easy for her. She wasn't a willful child abuser. She just, she didn't know what healthy love looks like. To her, love looks like getting beat up or being taken advantage of, being raped. And, you know, like, that's love.

2:46:33Menards is your one-stop shop for all your summer essentials. Whether you're stocking up on everyone's favorite snacks, making a patio perfect for entertaining family and friends, or getting ready to gather around the grill, Menards has everything you need for your get-togethers all summer long. Save big money now at Menards. Plus, don't forget to check out our weekly flyer on menards.com for all the great deals happening now. Save big money at the Nards. It's cozy season and nothing compares to wrapping yourself in a Minky Couture blanket. Luxuriously soft. Perfectly warm. Thoughtfully made. From movie nights to chilly mornings, Minky Couture turns everyday moments into pure comfort.

2:47:22Once you feel it, you'll understand why it's called the original best blanket ever. Visit minkycouture.com or a store near you and make this cozy season your softest one yet.

2:48:05Want to stay up to date on all things SRS? You bet your ass you do. Our newsletter brings you the latest SRS news and critical updates. Get instant alerts on the newest episodes. Never miss a beat. Exclusive intel briefs from counterterrorism expert Sarah Adams. You've seen her many times on the show. She's going to give unfiltered insights on global terrorist activity. For Patreon exclusives, you're going to get epic range days with me and damn near every guest that's come in the studio. You're also going to get behind the scenes content and guest updates. You're going to get first dibs on new merch drops and limited edition items that will never be sold again.

2:48:48Plus, exclusive offers from our partners you won't find anywhere else. So subscribe to the Vigilance Elite newsletter right now.

2:49:02All right, we're back from the break. All right. Questions, questions. What's that thing that Melania was talking about a couple months ago? Okay, so... Some new fostering program or something. Yes, it's called the Fostering the Futures Act, and it was bipartisan as well, passed with flying colors. basically there's something called the John I think it's F John F Chafee people know it's called the Chafee program and basically she her big focus is on kids who are aging out of foster care so it deals with an entirely different stream of kids than Family First Prevention Services Act which are trying to prevent kids from ever entering the system hers is dealing with the kids that are about to exit you know what do we do with kids that are aging out how do we help them?

2:49:46So what that law did is it lowered the Chafee age from 16 to 14. So like they are eligible for services from 16 to 14. What that means is, and they extended it from 18 to 21. I don't know if aging out of foster care will now be 21 in all 50 states. I'm not 100 % sure how that's going to be implemented in states if this is like a federal new law where 21 is the new age of aging out of foster care. I think 21 would be a better age just because, I mean, 18 to 21 is a pivotal time in your life where you're, you know, becoming an adult. But I know that they basically expanded the age from 16 to 18 to 14 to 21.

2:50:26And what that means is now if a child is still in foster care at the age of 14, that child is now eligible for stipends to go to college. So we're trying to, like, raise the statistical outcomes for high school graduation, college graduation, like getting a degree of some sort. It also opens up whatever budgetary allocation is given for affordable housing. So now kids who have been in foster care from the ages of 14 to 21 are now also eligible for, I mean, I guess HUD, whatever it is that provides housing or reasonable housing rates. It also, I think, incentivizes businesses to hire or have interns come out of foster care.

2:51:12Like there's a lot of incentives for businesses to work with children who have experienced foster care. I'm really glad it passed. I don't know the ins and outs of it, but I know it focuses on kids who age out of foster care. I think one of my concerns about it is that because it was in the news and it was so big, what I don't want to have happen is for legislative branch to in our government to be like oh good checked it off the list like we handled foster care next because like there's still this gaping problem that's much more dire which i would say is fixing the family first prevention services act but these are a totally different age bracket so you know it's great but it deals with like a totally different demographic of children in care.

2:51:59Mm-hmm. Yeah. What is the road to fostering a child? Like, if you want to become licensed? Mm-hmm. Well, now, thanks to a home for every child, apparently it's going to get real easy. But it's so much easier than people think that it is. I mean, the first thing people can do is they can go down to their local child welfare office. It's called different things in different states and different counties. Some call it DCFS, which is Department of Children and Family Services. Some call it HHS, which is Health and Human Services. Some call it CPS, which is Child Protective Services. Whatever. Just Google, what's my local child welfare service, you know, in my area?

2:52:41And they can go and just take an orientation class. This is something my husband and I talked about because I wanted to foster. And he, like I said, he was like 51 % of surveyed Americans that were like, there's no way we could foster. Aren't kids in foster care bad kids? And I'm like, no, they're not bad kids. They're like put into a broken system against their will. And once he got on board with fostering, well, when we were having that argument, I talk about it. Like we were having that argument, you're seven of our marriage. I said, I don't have a problem with you saying no to being a foster parent.

2:53:12I will advocate for these kids till I die. I will use my platform for this until I die. However, I do have a major problem with you saying no to something that you don't know what you're saying no to. get the information. Like, just go down to your office and be like, hey, when's the next time you're doing a foster care orientation class? I'd like to learn more about it. No one's going to force you to become a foster parent. So that's one way that you can do it. There's also private agencies that license foster parents. So that's what I did. I went through ChildHelp. ChildHelp is the original reason in our country we even know about child abuse.

2:53:46They've been around for over 60 years. They've rescued 13 million U.S. kids. They're the ones that are responsible for 1-800-4 a child, which is the child abuse hotline, that any kid can call or now text. If they're being abused at home, 1-800-4-A-CHILD. They can text, they can call, it's anonymous. There are therapists who are trained, I think, in 170 languages to take that call and get that child help. I got licensed through their program because they're the ones, again, that had the village in California. They have a village in Virginia, the Alice C. Tyler Village. I think they have a village in Tennessee, but I'm not sure.

2:54:25I know they're like major in Tennessee as well. But I'm like, listen, if I'm going to get licensed as a foster parent, I want to go to like the highest echelon. I want to go like see how hard could it be. So I went the hard route just to see like how, how like much is like an abuser sustaining in order to get licensed. Next time I do it, I would go low bar, which would be through the Department of Children and Family Services. It's much easier. So there are private agencies. One reason to go through a private agency is because they have their own caseworkers. And so those children that go through the agencies are probably going to get a bit more attention because you have a whole other caseworker who's not bogged down with 86 kids.

2:55:07Who is going to maybe help coordinate services a little bit better with you. You have like another advocate on your team. And also, for whatever reason, and I don't know why, your stipend, your monthly stipend is a little bit higher. Or you can go through your local Department of Children and Family Services, and it's a lot easier. You have to get CPR certified. You know, you have to take parenting classes, basically. You have to do a water safety class. And then you have to do what's called a home study. They want to make sure that you have your Medicaid. And they tell you all of this. Like, none of this is a surprise.

2:55:37They want to make sure that you have food in your pantry. They want to make sure, you know, you have a bed for the child. They want to make sure, like, if you have pills or prescriptions, they have to be behind a lock so that that child doesn't just... They just want to know you're a responsible little. Yeah, like, if you have guns, they have to be locked up. If you have knives, they have to be locked up. Kind of common sense stuff. And then, um, that's it. Like, you're licensed. But I tell people, listen, if you're in... What about... Go ahead. How does the child get presented to you? Do you pick?

2:56:06No. Do they pick? No. I'll tell you how that works. Also, there's a thing in foster care called respite care, which there are far too respite homes. So respite is what it sounds like. It is, if you are literally, if you're a foster parent and you're like, I'm losing my mind, I can't do this anymore. I just need one night off. I just need one night off. You can access something called respite care. However, respite care is barely ever available because there's not enough respite homes. This is a home that is licensed, fully licensed, so they could become foster parents if they fell in love with a child.

2:56:43They're basically like the vacation home. Sometimes a foster parent, like they have a death in their family. You know, I can't just fly to my parents' funeral because I can't just take my child who's in foster care with me. I have to get the judge to sign off that that kid can cross county lines, right? So I might need respite care because I can't get the court order in fast enough to like take that child with me. That child has to go somewhere because I'm definitely going to like go to my parents' funeral. That would fall into respite care. I always tell people, I'm like, if you're considering fostering, consider respite care because you will save another foster parent.

2:57:13And also, you're going to get that child on his or her best behavior because you get to be like the fun aunt or the fun uncle. I used to do respite care for my mentor through child help. And it was awesome. We would have her for all the holidays because her foster mom didn't really want her during the holidays. And I was like, I will take her for all the things. I wanted to adopt her so bad. Many reasons why we weren't allowed. It's ridiculous. so ridiculous, bureaucratic red tape, awful, whatever. She was allowed to do respite with us. And it was like, she was on her best behavior. We'd take her to like Six Flags, take her to Disneyland, you know, take her to go get frozen yogurt because like my home's the vacation home.

2:57:47And then when she leaves, I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna go take a five hour nap because I'm exhausted. But I didn't have to take on like the full burden of being a foster parent. And yet at the same time, if I'm a respite home and I love that child and I, and that child tells me, hey my foster home is a piece of crap I can now say I actually volunteer as tribute I want to I want to be this kid's foster parent now and their case might likely get transferred to you so you're already fully licensed you can foster at any time so it's a great way to get involved in foster care like you're like one night a week a weekend easy how do you get the call I mean the social worker calls you up and is like look I got a child I got a baby they're in NICU So, you know, mom was on drugs and left him at the hospital.

2:58:33Can you take this placement? And if you can't, you just say no. Because again, in my training, they always said, please don't feel bad. You're going to feel bad when you say no. But if it's not the right fit, it's actually in the benefit. It's to the benefit of the child to not take them. Don't take them if it's not a good fit for you right now. Because what's more traumatizing is bouncing home to home. You know? Or you'll get an emergency placement. I mean, my husband and I did that where we get a call and it's like, look, I got an eight month old boy and he's been separated from a sibling. And can you take him?

2:59:05And I'm like, yeah, I got a crib. Like, drop him off. We're just trying to find a placement. And so we just need you to be the emergency placement. So this kiddo doesn't have to this infant. This was the literally I got a call 11 p.m. at night one time. And the social worker was just like, I think I was still on Days of Our Lives at our time at the time, which is like bananas. Like, soap operas are bananas. We shoot 150 to 220 pages a day. Like, it's crazy. Like, everything's one take. It's crazy. But it was an 11 o 'clock at night call, and the social worker was like... You know I would not be calling you if this was not an emergency.

2:59:46But this case just came across my desk, and I know that, like, the buck stops with you. There's no way you're gonna say no. I got an a-month-old boy. It's an emergency placement. but like if you don't take him, he's going to a homeless shelter alone. Alone. Alone? Alone at eight months old. Alone. Nobody's going with him. They just drop the baby off at the shelter. This is happening. Wh-what? So of course we took him. And it ended up being like two weeks. But I mean, you know, I was, I started calling up with the caseworker. I'm calling every foster parent I know. I'm calling churches. Like, hey, he's got a sibling he's been separated from.

3:00:23And I could not take that sibling because I took him at a time when I knew Jeffrey, like the mom was pregnant with my son Jeffrey. And I was like, if I say yes to this kid, if I say yes to Dylan's brother, I'm not going to be able to say yes to Caden's brother. It was a very hard decision. But I was like, I cannot look my son in the eyes when he's older and be like, yeah, you have a sibling. And we couldn't take him because I would have been at capacity because I lived like in a 750 square foot townhome with two bedrooms. legally I could not take four kids. So I had to find a placement for Dylan and his brother and I did.

3:01:00But I'm telling the social worker, I'm like, give me the list. Like, give me the list. I know you have 86 people on your caseload. I will call. I will make calls. And here's what I learned when I was making those calls, dude. I would make calls and the agencies or the other foster parents would be like, no, we only take girls from the ages of three to five. And I'm like, why? You know why? Exactly.

3:01:33Why are we lowering the bar for foster parents thinking that's going to be the solution to recruit more homes? Yeah, they'll have a bed that they're getting raped in. I mean, people have to get involved. So, like, take a class. Get licensed. You can get your license and keep it valid and not have a placement. You don't have to take your first placement. You could just get licensed, and that's what I would encourage people to do. get licensed so when you get the call and it is the right time you can be like that kid's coming to me i'm keeping that kid and if you can keep siblings together please keep siblings together

3:02:10my kids are so excited to foster again they're begging me i'm like we wait till jackie's in kindergarten then we will take the kid don't ask me to foster again unless i do respite care that's awesome yeah man what a sad subject

3:02:30when i went to congress one of the things that i said to different congressional members is i said look if you can't care about these kids from like a heart standpoint can i appeal to your tax your tax dollar standpoint if you want overcrowding in jails to go down you want homelessness to go down. You want the opioid crisis and substance abuse to go down.

3:02:57Take a kid from foster care. Tell them they matter. Tell them they matter. It's not that hard. You do not have to be the perfect foster parent. If you're not abusing them, you're already going to be probably better than, you know, 40%. Again, that's generally conjecture that's not a study that i've done but i know way too many personal stories of kids being telling me yeah well you want to end this with a prayer yeah man be leading it sure all right okay

3:03:35father i thank you so much for this interview and i ask in the name of jesus that it would go forth lord into the hearts of the viewers that you would open all of our eyes to see like we see God, to see like you see Jesus, that you would open our ears to hear, that you would bring to our minds, Holy Spirit, ways we could help or families we could support somehow, how we could get involved. Show us how we can get involved. Father, I ask for every single child that is saying a prayer right now to get out of the situation there. And I ask in Jesus' name that you would send ministering angels to them, Lord, that you would protect that child and let them be placed into the right home.

3:04:17I ask for social workers, Father, who feel like they're going to burn out with good ones, Lord. Give them the energy to stay in the fight. Give the social workers and the foster parents the energy to stay in the fight. And Father, for your bride, for your church, Lord, would we be cut to the heart that you said through James, that faith without works is dead. You cannot go up to someone and say, be warm and be filled if they are hungry and naked without first having given them clothes and a meal. Let us not just be hearers of your word, but doers of your word, Father God. Give us ways, open our eyes, open our hearts to this subject, Lord.

3:04:57And I just ask for every single legislator, every single person that's considering running for government, Lord, Lord, the ones that got in it for the right reasons, would you give them courage, Father, to stand up for the right things no matter the cost? Would you just, I just come against the spirit of fear that might be controlling them in Jesus' name, and I ask that it would just be bound, Lord, that we would just become people who would not be afraid anymore to open our mouths and to look into the things that need to be looked into. God, maybe run toward brokenness and not look away from it any longer.

3:05:34And I just thank you for that in Jesus' name.

3:05:43I just hope this episode reaches who it needs to reach. We put a dent in this thing. Save some kids. Amen. Amen. Well, Chad, Super thankful we met. I'm so grateful we met. Thank you for coming and educating me and everybody else about what's going on and how to get involved. I'll be hitting the subject again. I got tons of people I can recommend. I'll take them. Yeah, great. You got anything off the top of your head? Oh, absolutely. Brittany Stokes from Tulsa Girls Home. The girl is a licensed therapist. She runs Tulsa Girls Home. She's now part of legislation. She got legislation passed, by the way, in Oklahoma so that you can prosecute people.

3:06:29Nice. Because we had that active. She is a beast. She is a foster parent herself. She's an adoptive parent herself. She is like I am the appetizer to her steak. Like, she is ridiculous. Dr. John DeGarmo is amazing. Michael Maduro from Child Help. Lynn Johnson from All In for Kids. I mean, I got people for days. Perfect. Yeah. Be a touch. Thanks. God bless. Thank you. Thank you.

3:07:06No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review. Summer adventures are better with Minky Couture. From road trips to ball games, beach nights to backyard movies, Minky has you covered. Don't miss the everywhere blanket. Water resistant, ultra soft, and made for life on the go. Wherever summer takes you, bring comfort along. MinkyCouture.com, the original best blanket ever.