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

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Kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu, kuten varaston suunnittelu. Behind the scenes, you and your husband open your home to children and foster care, eventually fostering multiple children and adopting through the foster system. Through that journey, you've witnessed the realities faced by vulnerable children, foster families, and the system meant to support them. What started as advocacy quickly grew into a renewed calling to fight harder for those who often don't have a voice. You recently co-authored, called to foster, an honest guide to getting started, helping prospective foster parents better understand the realities of the journey. That's awesome that you're doing that, and so before we get too far into this, everybody gets a gift. Oh! They're John Celi, gummy bears, made in the USA, legal in all 50 states, and just a little thing for the flight home. And then we have a Patreon account, just a subscription account, we've turned it into quite the community. So they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question, because it wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. That's right. So this is from Eric Alger. Okay. You've worked in Hollywood for decades, and have also been deeply involved in foster care and adoption. Which institution do you think is doing more damage to America's children right now? The entertainment industry, the education system, or the foster care system? And what is one hard truth Americans don't want to hear about it? Shoe. This guy's name is Eric. Eric, you're awesome. Great question. Without a doubt. I mean, I don't even think Hollywood and the education system and the problems that they have, they're dipping their toe in the pool. Foster care is the deep end. It is so dark. And the darkest issue of foster care that nobody wants to talk about is how it's a pipeline for human trafficking. Man, you know, I was just talking. What do you do? Like I was just talking to my editors in the editing room and we were checking the camera angles. And I'd brought up an experience. But I mean, I think a lot of people have this experience. What do you do if you have that gut feeling that foster kids are being fucking abused? But there's no evidence. It's just a gut feeling. Listen. Because you know what's happening. Oh, you know. And it's just like, you know, what do you do? You get involved. I mean, you get involved. Well, the biggest way obviously to get involved is become the foster parent. And it's not as hard as people think it is. It's actually. There's a situation not to go deep really fast, but there's a situation going on right now. It's like a big buzz that's going on in foster care. Alex Adams over at Health and Human Services, which is he's the head of the child welfare, basically on the federal level. He has started a new campaign called Home for Every Child. And, you know, here's the thing. It doesn't matter what your religion is, it doesn't matter what your socioeconomic background is, it doesn't matter what your politics are. Most people, the overwhelming majority of people would agree that you don't mess with kids. Most people want the well-being of children. Most people believe that children deserve to have autonomy over their body and not be sexually violated. Most people agree that children should not be brutally abused. They should be fed. They should be paid. They should be well cared for. I don't care what your politics are. That's true. So when Alex Adams comes up with a, you know, slogan or a campaign called Home for Every Child, the political optics is amazing. You know what I mean? Like, that sounds great. And I'm not accusing Alex Adams of anything. I've never talked to him. I don't know his intentions. I think that a lot of people have really good intentions, but the road to hell is paid with good intentions. A Home for Every Child, what Alex Adams and the HHS is doing on a federal level right now with this campaign is they are lowering the standards of what it takes to become a licensed foster parent. And when you lower the standards and make it easier to become a foster parent, you're going to recruit all the wrong people. I think the idea was we are in a crisis like we've never seen before in this nation with a lack of foster homes. We've lost 36,000 foster homes since 2018. And I'm sure at some point we will get into all the wise behind that. But if you're basically hemorrhaging out foster homes, you know, and you're like, we desperately need more people to foster. How can we get more people to foster? Oh, I know. We'll just make it easier to foster. No. If people know anything about foster care, and there's a lot of myths and misconceptions surrounding foster care, but one thing that's not a myth is that foster care is a hellhole. Not every home is like my home. There are wonderful people that foster. Yes. Some of my best friends, people that I think are rock stars, and I cry when I'm around them because their heart is so beautiful. They foster. The co-author of my book, "Dr. John DeGarmo." That man is a saint. There are many really good people that foster. But this is like in my mind, it's not as statistic that I've heard, but like I almost would wait. that like half are good. Hmm, if actually I wanna break it up and statistically in my mind, what is like, what does John Lilly's mind think? I'd say 30 to 40% is really good. Homes like my home, they really care. They got involved for the right reasons. Maybe 30% is good, 30 is good, 30% kind of okay. They're not really abusing the kids, but they're just like okay people that like got involved and like they're jaded and they don't really care. They're not like sexually trafficking the kids. They're just okay. And then I would say maybe 40% are awful, healthfuls. And so these people, if you lower the standards of what it takes to become a foster parent, you're just gonna recruit more of the bad. Make it hard, make it hard to foster. - God don't disagree with that. I mean, that's one thing that I've been trying to get people to understand when I do these interviews, like we did a, I think the last, I can't remember the last big one was Elizabeth Phillips with a can of cook, the big Christian camp. - Okay. - We, I don't know if you know about that. - I don't, I don't know about it. - What are tropious? Lots and lots and lots and lots of sexual abuse. And then they would NDA these kids so they can't ever talk about it. And so Elizabeth Phillips is going around that's her new mission, her brother killed himself because of it. So she's, she's pushing legislation for this law. They're calling a trace law where the kids can't be held accountable. - Yeah. - NDAs don't matter. And it ain't even be possible if you're under 18. - It's fucking ridiculous. It's ridiculous. That's crazy. - And then, - Yeah. - And then can a cook trying to get me for defamation and-- - No, it's not defamation of it true. - But we've done that. We've done, I had my friend Schlepp on an uncovered all the shit that's going on on roadblocks and had my mom gun me on about twice, about 7, 6, 4 cold and then just in general sex exploitation and how they lure kids off the internet and chemtibo. And, you know, and so every time I do one of these, the audience, they're infuriated with an institution. - Yeah. - Whether that's, you know, a church or a gaming conflomerant or whatever it is, but in their right, you know, they should be 'cause a lot of these, they cover it up. You know, can a cook, they try to cover it up and they didn't even hold the people that were doing the abuse accountable, they covered for them. You know, they're like, oh, well, we reprimanded them and told them that it's inappropriate to be playing naked basketball with kids. - Oh, and my god, this is a Christian camp. - This is the biggest Christian camp in the country. Was, I'm pretty sure we destroyed it. But, but it does, but that's not the point. The point is, you know, that ever all the attention goes to the institution, but just like what you're saying, if you make, if you ease the restrictions on fostering a kid, then that, it's a, it's a fucking magnet for pedophiles. It's a magnet for pedophiles. We're gonna get into it so deep and obsessed. - And so, you know, and these are, - Yeah. - These are people that are of, it's not, it's not like a demographic, like a lot of crime you can put on, you know, a demographic of people. - Yeah. - This is everybody. It's the rich, it's the poor, it's black, it's white, it's every country, it's, it's, we're the, we're the number one country of, it consumes. - Yes, this is how I became a trial advocate. - Finding that out, yeah. - And so, like the United States is a cesspool for this shit. - It's so bad. - It's a cesspool for this. - Yes. - And so, what I'm saying is, these people, they don't look like scumbags. They don't even, you know, you think you, oh, that guy looks, you don't know, man. - No. - You don't know. This is everybody. - Yep. - Of every color, every, every race, every, financial situation, yeah, economic profile, and they just flow to the next thing, you know what I mean? And so, it's, it's so great, cool. We took cana cook down. Yeah, maybe we got a couple of pedophiles uncovered out of it, but the majority of them are just gonna flow to the next camp. - Exactly. - And it's what the parents are gonna do. They're gonna just be like, oh, that institution's bad. Well, I'll put my kids in this one. Dude, these fuckers are everywhere. They are. - Just like how did the other counselors not, how does everybody become complicit to that? I guess because they, their life is threatened, but I don't know. For me, I'm like, if there's one thing I'd be willing to get canceled if that's even a thing over, you know. If there's one thing I'd be willing to lay it all on the line, give my career up for outside of my faith, it's children who are being at used. - Yeah. I don't even give a shit anymore. They can pull my platform. - That's amazing. Like, literally, I'll go live off grid, you know? Like, great, thank you. - But, but I think, before we dive into it, I think people just need to get that. That, you know, this isn't just an institution that's covering, trying to protect itself. It's all the people inside of it that are gonna flow into the next thing. And there's millions of these people in the US alone. And so, you know, I was even thinking, I was talking to my wife because this is the thing that I'm most passionate about. So, I mean, Ryan Montgomery and I are gonna develop an application for parents to protect their kids from the shit that's going online, you know? - Yes. - But then, diving into this, I'm like that. I was talking to my wife. I was like, maybe we were not there yet, but maybe eventually, you know, things continue to go the way they're going in my life. Maybe we open a foster care home. - Yeah. - But then I started thinking, I'm like, how the fuck do you staff it? How do you trust? You could have, you could have the most pure heart in the world and open one of these, but how do you find the right people to staff it? - Yeah. - What if, what if you hire a fucking abuser? - I mean, I know, but yeah, I got people you can talk to that will tell you exactly how they do it. It's like, I wanna have the answer for that question, but I know who does. - Okay. - A lot of people don't love the idea of getting put on medicine for their cholesterol longterm. And I get that because once you start going down that road, it can feel like you're locked into something without really understanding what your options are. And I think most people, they just wanna feel like they still have some control over how they take care of themselves. They want to understand what they're putting in their body and why, not just be told to take something and let's move on. 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So there's a thing in foster care where you, it's hard to do, but you're supposed to as a foster parent remain unbiased because one of the myths and myths conception. So one of the myths and misconceptions of foster care is that people are like, oh, so are you gonna adopt? And it's like, no, the goal of foster care is not adoption. The goal of foster care is to reunite the child with their biological caretaker. So mom, dad, whoever they left, who they're family, you wanna put the families back together. So foster care is basically, let's take this child out of this abusive or neglectful situation. And by the way, it's a myth and misconception. I believe that people are taking their kids out of abusive or neglectful homes willy-nilly. Like I don't think social workers are just trying to take kids out of homes. We have far too short, there's a huge shortage of foster homes. In fact, yeah, I'll just go into it right now. In fact, it's gotten so bad in foster care that in 13 states right now, children with no criminal record are being put into detention home centers because there's no room for them. Holy shit. There's something in foster care called stopgap, which is basically, I don't know if it happens in other arenas, but it happens in foster care. It's called stopgap, that's a fancy way of saying, basically we know that this situation is so terrible for this child. I really sympathize with social workers. Are there bad social workers? I'm sure there are, but I think that a lot of social workers are just overworked and underpaid. [BLANK_AUDIO] And I think that they have to make really hard decisions to remove the child from the situation because they know they don't have anywhere to put them, which is why my whole mission is like, I've just got to recruit better foster parents. So they, if a social worker's going into a home where the abuse or neglect is so severe that that child needs to be removed from the home, that social worker has to be pretty bad for that social worker to be like, okay, I have nowhere for you to go, but here are your options and this is going on across every state that I know of. - Oh man. - Stop that placement. The child will either sleep in a shelter until they find a placement. The child will sleep no joke in the social worker's office until they find a placement. They will put them in hotels until they find a placement, which I don't know this for a fact, but I imagine trafficking could happen there, or in 13 states, like I said, they will just put them in detention centers. And by the way, when they child with no criminal record is put in a detention center. - Now they have a record. - They not only have a record, but they're treated as prisoners. There's not like a label on the kids that's like, hey, by the way, this is a child that's like being placed in foster care and they're just here as an emergency placement. We have no room for them. No, they're put in a jumpsuit. I'm like backing up from it and I'll get back to like my parents. We'll get back out of this hole. But imagine a child who the biggest myth in this conception of foster care, and I don't blame people for thinking this. My husband used to think this. My husband's amazing, obviously. Listen, I'm a lot to wrangle. The man's the same. But 51% of surveyed Americans wrongfully assume that children in foster care are bad kids. That's probably the biggest myth in misconception. Children who are in foster care were put into a system that's terribly broken. They never asked to be there. And they were removed because of someone else's choices. Because their caretaker or their biological mom, dad, grandparent, whoever's taking care of them, abused them so severely or neglected them so severely, the child productive services had to step in. Now, imagine being that child. This is what happens all across the nation in all 50 states. Child productive services gets called and if the welfare worker decides that yes, the situation is so dire that the kid needs to be moved right here and right now. If the child is considered lucky, they are given a trash bag. This is real. They are given a trash bag and they are basically said you have five minutes to pick up, put anything you want to bring with you. Yes, there's a whole organization called Comfort Cases. I'm very close with them. That's their whole mission. Rob Scheer, who's the founder of Comfort Cases, he's amazing. He grew up in foster care. And he always had trash bags. And so when his husband started fostering, a child showed up at their house with a trash bag and he was like, I can't believe this is still happening. So he started this amazing organization called Comfort Cases where they basically give him a duffel bag, a journal, stuffy, clean pajamas, like all these toiletries, all the things a child would need. Imagine being a child who all of a sudden child welfare comes in. And what people don't understand is that if a child only knows abuse or neglect is hard as it is to wrap our minds around this, that child still loves their mom or dad. They don't know many times this is not normal behavior. Even kids who are sexually abused. Many of them, they don't know. They don't know this isn't normal. They don't know. It's normal to them. It's normal to them. So a social worker comes in. And then if they're lucky, they get a trash bag to collect their things. They're teddy bear, any piece of home. Nobody tells them why they're being removed. They get put in a car and driven to a stranger's house. And I think about this all the time, like, what must go through their mind? Like, am I a bad kid? They don't know if it's their mom's fault, their dad's fault. Like, they don't know if it's their fault. And then they're going to go to a stranger's house and be told, like, these are your new parents. And it's like, do they like me? A lot of them have shame automatically of what I have done. And then I'm thinking, you're telling me that right now in 13 states, and I don't know the states, because the report is very elusive. I used a lot of AI to try to-- I looked up the entire report and reading the report. It is a bipartisan. There's a government representative. I don't know whether it's Congress or Senator. There's a representative. I think it's Ossof out of Georgia. And a representative out of Virginia. I think it's Hagen or Kagan, something like that, that are working on this. But even in their bipartisan report, because they've uncovered that this is happening in 13 states, the report doesn't exactly say which 13 states this is happening. And this is something I'm currently researching. AI is like, we can probably tell you what four of the states are with a lot of certainty, but we don't know the other nine. Imagine being that child you're in the social worker's car. Nobody's told you why you're being removed. If you even have a trash bag, maybe, you might not. And then you're dropped off at a 10th Tensions Home Center? Of course, you're going to think, this is my fault. I've done something. And no one explains to you why this is happening. Fostercare is so jacked up. It is so jacked up. And I will tell you that it is proven time and time and time again that kids in foster care are two times more likely to suffer from PTSD than combat veterans. Yeah, yeah. So my parents, so I'm going back up out of the rabbit hole. They-- there's a thing in foster care. We have to remain unbiased, which means I can't basically get to attach to the kid and want to adopt them. I need to be unbiased and try to be pro reunification. Listen. I don't know. I miss a misconception that I hear all the time. It was that people would be like, I was so sweet that you're a foster parent. I could never do that. I would get to attached. That statement makes me want to cuss. I won't, because my fans would be very upset, but you can cuss for me. But it makes me want to cuss because it's like, listen. If you don't think you could foster because you would get to attached, then you are the perfect person to foster. Because these kids need your attachment more than you need to protect your heart. You know? That's like the people. They can't watch the Tim Teebo interview, because-- Oh, it's too painful. They can't see it. It's too painful. It's like, well, you're not the one fucking living it. Right. Like, oh, you can't even watch it. So again, huge props to you for tackling this and huge props to your audience for watching this interview. Because this is a seriously dark issue. But basically, because my dad was a judge, my mom was a-- worked at the 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-- It means 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 when it's 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, court case that's opened against the parent. OK. 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-- Gotcha. --you know, swaying the case toward adoption. So my parents never became licensed to 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 at empathy. They became-- made me interested in foster care from a young age. But my husband didn't want to do it, so. I mean, 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? And they're 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 this person's going to be living with us. And we're going to treat them like our family. And it was a teenager. One time we had a teenager living with us. I thought she was so cool. So I was like, I finally have an older sister. So I was like, I was just raised to-- I'd be like, that's my sister. I told everybody. So I think it depends on how your parents raise you. My kids know that my kids desperately want a foster again, but I have four under 10. And I'm like, listen. The youngest just turned four last month. Jackie's got to get into kindergarten before I tackle this again. Like, 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, But once Jackie's in kindergarten, we'll talk about like fostering somebody who's in an elementary school. But by the way, I love to put the fear of God in my case. I'm like, "Guess I'm nice, but I'm also like 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. Like, if I ever hear, if I ever hear that you tell the other kids that they're like, they're a foster kid, I will take every toy you have ever owned. Like, I will treat you like a criminal. Like, like, you like, so I think it depends on like, the person that raises them." Right. You know, like, I don't know. My parents are just like normal. Like, we're going to help them because that's part of my faith. I mean, what is it, what is it like for them coming in, you know, just, yeah, for your growing up with that, you know? I mean, I've read that it was kind of revolving, kind of a revolving door at your house as a child. What was it like for the child who was basically in transition and living with us temporarily? Or me, for the child? Yeah. I mean, is it, I'm genuinely curious, like, 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 would feel- Especially if they're coming from a lot of abuse. I think- 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 and he's really good friends with somebody that's made it out and is doing really well. Where? Here's to be doing really well. Yeah. And she had mentioned something that she went to a house and they were trying to rape her over and over. 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. Yeah. 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 that you're going to have to go through. It's like I lean forward and act like I'm surprised and I'm really surprised. I mean, it's so jacked up. It's not a unique story. I hear- we hear that all the time. It tells the girls, I mean, yeah, I could tell you stories that make your toes, girl. What was it like for that trial? 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 or 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. There's this amazing organization called All of Crust and I don't know whether All of Crust 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. And 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. Anyway, this girl, she's on this panel and the panel is 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. Remember who the third person was and then this girl, who was about to turn 18 in 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. And 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, 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 that saying works, like 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 taking it in. They're the blessed me, blessed me, blessed 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. And by the way, people can foster. There are wonderful people who are not Christians. But am I addressing the church who like 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 ourselves. 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. He 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, 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 are representing our church. We're not pastors. But they were like, yeah, go ahead. You guys are 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. That's what we could do better, like don't, don't sugar code it for us and I'm like, these are my people. Like, yes, give it to me hard, like don't, don't, don't sugar code this for me. You tell me, how is 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 life 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 break. He's like the ebrake. He doesn't want to do anything. He's like a home body, 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 is 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. Like sometimes they're not taught. This is an inappropriate behavior. It's so jacked up. And they're like, no, she doesn't. Because 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, she was 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, do you want 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 I don't know like all of her background, but I was just like, no, sex in my house. You're going to have sex. You go to your boyfriend's house. And 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 worry myself sick. So like, you don't have a curfew, but I need to know where you are in house. I need to make sure so like 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. If you're not in a rush, look, just load it into the dish. 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, they're trying to figure out like, are you gonna hurt me as well? You know, what's this placement gonna 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 you have a good training before foster parenting. You're supposed to, in order to get licensed, you have to take like, it's a very 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 so a child, back to the point, a child will start acting out like crazy if you were a good foster home many times because they call it being a victim, they want to be evicted on their own terms. They'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. 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? Because if you don't learn that when you're getting licensed then like all of a sudden you start acting like Satan, you're gonna be like, whoa, you know, like you're not gonna be prepared for that. And maybe you'll re-house the child. But every time a child gets re-housed it's more trauma and it's a personal rejection that they did something wrong. If you have a dog that gets picky about food you know how frustrating that can be. 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Go right now to sundaysfordogs.com/srs50 and get 50% off your first order. Or you can use code srs50@checkout. That's 50% off your first order at sundaysfordogs.com/srs50. Sundaysfordogs.com/srs50. Or use code srs50@checkout. This is like a typical journey to a foster kid from birth to 18 years old to adulthood. Sure, it depends on the home that they land in, right? But I would say for a typical child who's entering foster care, they'll probably enter as a child, meaning tenor 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 your trash. If they're lucky, I suppose, they end up at a foster home. 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 a foster. We had no intention of adopting, because I wasn't at 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 tell you what goes through their mental process. I can only speculate that part of it is like if they adopt, and they won't have room to keep fostering. But 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 of 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. After that 18 months has expired, the child-- it's a jacked up term. It's so jacked up. 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 bounced to bounce-- home to home to home to home. I know that the average kid in foster care goes-- by the time they've reached fifth grade, just elementary school. They've already had five-- they've gone to five different schools. Which 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 for me. So I owe 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. It was literally like, you're going to go to the University of Virginia, like Conheller Highwater and graduate top-year class, you know what I mean? And I did. Don't worry. That top top of my class, top 3%. I did OK, you know? But I told them I wanted to be an actor. They were like, oh my god, they look good. They put us wrong with you. You know, they're very supportive now. But they were like, get a degree. So I say this jokingly, but like truthfully, because I had two parents that like watched my GPA, like a flip-in hawk. It was like, oh, you studied. Like, oh, you made note cards. Like, you will spell like nobody has ever spelled before. Like, do it again, soldier. Like, my parents were militant on like how, in my opinion, maybe my parents were like, that's unfair. 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. My 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 staying 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. But 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. 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. So 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 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 a military in my family, I'm not a military wife, but I would 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. Foster 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 parents 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 to 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 and 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 psych of that. 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. That was kind of always my myth and misconception I didn't know. So when I learn about there's an adoption assistance program I was like oh cool like we'll 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. People 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. 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 like 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. I'm going to get a couple 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 click kid. I was like oh that's yeah that's why I said I was like what's it what's a D rate kid? What does that mean? And they she goes oh honey. I make $28,000 a month of 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 I 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. And 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 them 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. At 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 not 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. That's it. That's just making money off the government. Yeah. That's not even a real dark shit. We haven't even gotten dark yet. I'm just saying. I mean I'm I mean I'm just it's it's yeah. It's fucking horrific. Yeah. Like yeah. People are fostering kids just for the money from the government. Mm-hmm. So they're gonna encourage them. Encourage the doctors to put them on medications. They're gonna create scenarios to trick doctors to put them on medications. They're gonna encourage the kid to act out at school to not study not. It's like incentivize the other way. Yeah. What if they get on on a roll? Give them a bonus. It's like a demonic. It's listen. That's the 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. Mm-hmm. I read a stat. I think it was in this outline. I think you said it. Every church in the country fostered one child. There would be no none left to foster. Is that correct? Yeah and the statistics even better than that. That's an accurate statistic. One child per church. Okay. Okay. So currently in foster care there are 344,000 children and foster care. That's according to health and human service that 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. Everybody just calls it AFGARS. So I'm just gonna 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 you know 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 gonna go with health and human services because it's a little bit more accurate. You 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 of 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. So 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. You don't get an opinion. However, does the kid get an opinion? Not always. If they're guardian ad lightem, 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 choose a whole reason my husband and I got into foster care, and her social worker was so overworked that I asked her, "How many kids do you have on your docket like on your caseload?" She said 86. How do you have 86? How 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 and 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 just like got to get all the worms out and almost like try to tell you this in order. Don'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. It's not only is it uncomfortable and it's something they don't want to like deal with because we're worried about our heart getting broken, which makes me want to go to spend it. I won't. You 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 to 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'm a thousand children. You know, I'm not the candidate, but if I can do it, they can do it. 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 foster parent could be like, that's not true, when 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, no holistic throughline. But in general, here's how foster care works. Childs remove from their home. They're put into a foster home. And 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 actually went to Congress to like rally and get this done. And everybody was into it. It worked. 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 LA County. And that's because almost 10% of the kids in foster care are in LA County. Are you serious? Yes. Why? Because LA is where no one, everybody goes to chase their dreams, right? I don't want to be a parent. I'm chasing the law. I'm like, I'm climbing the ladder. I'm climbing my status. Like, get out of my way on the next big thing. So LA is like ground zero for foster care. And so with that said, I think LA 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. I think there's bad. 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 works for the government is bad. You can't. There are people that are like in there just dying trying to fight a system that they're never going to win. You'll draw to bad people in foster care. You have a lot of bad players in foster care. Also have good people in foster care. So California, here's how it works. 18 month timeline. The kid is going to have monitored visits with their parent. They're going to have a 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. The 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. Just so they get 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 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, as well, my router wrong. They can't just trust the parent with that child alone. So the parent is monitored. The 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's one time with my son, Kaden. I love their biological mom. I love her. She was not a wilful child abuser. Most children who end up in foster care end up in foster care because of neglect, not because of child abuse. Not the neglect is not abusive, but foster care is a cycle. It'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 know you're 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 wilful child abuser. And I would tell her that I would talk to her very frankly. I'm like, listen sweetheart, if you were a wilful child abuser, my relationship with you would probably look a lot different. I don't know how I would navigate that. But I had to write reports about the meeting after they happened. And these reports were red and 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 and 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. I 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 have- 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 are 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. It was exhausting. And that's not required of all foster parents. So I don't want to deter people, but I write about it all in my book. But there was one time where it was like literally, Kaden 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 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 the science of domestic sharp objects in a socket. Also kids shouldn't have scissors. You know what I'm saying? She's got a wilful child of user. 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 unwanted visits. We're basically, hey, we're going to trust you to babysit your own kid for two hours, right? After 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 that that was not the system in all other fort in the 49 other states. I was like, why not? Because 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, whoa, I did not know. I didn't I have patients like until you asked 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 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. Addiction 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, it 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. Now 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. It's at the point where 36% of infants re-enter foster care. I think it's within 12 months, definitely within 18 months. 12 months. Yeah. And then all other age groups, so infants is 36% re-entry rate. All other age groups, it's between 25 and 29% re-entry 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. I 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 phoenix. 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. By part is in 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. But 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 a federal level of handling child warfare, a welfare, child warfare, Freudian slip or something, yeah. And this person literally says, 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 a doctor to Garmo because we're there on Capitol Hill advocating for 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. Well, let me tell you what's going to happen. They're going to make your bill. All of a sudden it's going to be 300 pages long and they're going to do something that's called Christmas dream. 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 assistance 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. Yeah, like the good ones at least good their assistance. What is my stance on this? I've had their AIDS 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. And 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've 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. I 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. Most gear looks good until you actually start using it. 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You can wear every single day. They're the real deal rated upgrade your eyewear. Check them out for yourself at roka.com and use code srs for 20% off site wide at checkout. That's roka.com and use code srs. Welcome to hollywood versus reality. If I do it right. What does he do in the movies to tell me if I'm doing this wrong because I don't watch it. Little flick like that, right? Seems pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Gotta silence it. In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. The proprietary magazine is supposedly the best engineering in the world. When that breaks, you're f***. And now we're bringing them back. [BLANK_AUDIO] It does look pretty f*cking cool. I got it. I got it, and that's that. All right, Jim, 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. 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, but 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're 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. However, 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 schooler 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. That 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 or two times more likely, actually it might not even be who age out, but girls in foster care definitely who age out or two times more likely to get pregnant for the age of 21 than their peers. Again, it's a cycle that repeats itself. And 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 1% of the kids or less than 1% of the kids in the United States, yet currently in all of our prisons and jails, 17 to 20% of the people in jail came from foster care. 17 to 20%. That's a way lower statistic than is in my book, which I also have like the, 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 two, called the National Center for Missing and Exploded 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. They 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. It also girls home, child help, all the organizations that I work with. It's very common for children in foster care to run away. 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. They've been balanced 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 their boyfriend's house. I know they're at 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. And you know, you guys talked about this, like Roblox, social media. That's probably the majority of the way it's happening as social media. These disgusting perverts, these traffickers will lure the child in thinking that they're going to 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 or they just falling victim more than the normal child because of the circumstances? I 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? 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 going to spread some hope. I'm going to spread some love and some light at the end of the tunnel. But this is not that moment. So if this conversation's already been hard for them, now is the time to go get a water. There used to it. 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 I almost barfed to like on the plane. I was like, I don't think I can handle this. All right. I 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 sexual 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 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. Okay. 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 is not a law. And by the way, it has been brought up. Congress is aware of the scape. Congress is aware of this gap. This situation apparently has been discussed in Congress. Nobody's doing anything about. Congress doesn't give a fuck about kids. Like I don't even 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 patting their own pockets. Everybody knows. Almost everybody knows it. Maybe they scream right and extreme left. Don't realize it yet. But that's who the fuck they are. That's what our government is. Speaking of that, before we continue a Trafficker A in the adoption, let me tell you how I got into like this whole situation. So I found out when I booked General Hospital, 2011 at Book General Hospital, a book this movie called The Artist. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards at 1-5, 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 you know, I'm thinking about like what is gonna 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 because it's 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 words like you need to look into what's going on in your own backyard 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 so in my office Start looking on charity navigator.org because there I'm sure you know are a lot of horrible charities Like don't do it all what they say they're going to do I always tell people and like listen 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 nonprofits They're totally profiting off of your you know generosity of heart This is 2011 I come across What is now called in your world versus 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 It's not Thailand and it's not you know russia and all these countries We want to like point our fingers at them 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 for 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 We still a time when basically and I'm oversimplifying this but like whatever the broad strokes is true basically 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 that's making these child pornography files? I'm just gonna 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 Tossed 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 So 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 onsite that was the victim Okay, it was 98% success or higher maybe it was 99 so 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 She promptly fired again. It's 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? What 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 like I'm like I think not all Hollywood is bad, but they're totally part of it Totally part of it like are you kidding me so she knows and she's like you cannot talk about this in Hollywood because 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 they're 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 hell I would get canceled on Like you you can't silence me you can't buy me out when it comes to like advocating for children So that's how I got involved and um, this is really important little get back to traffic array So the organization instant 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 human 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 whoa How could you pay $200,000 for white paint wouldn't you agree? This is a more serious subject And this was the answer we got from Sacramento. I don't know who said this. I just noticed somebody from Sacramento the power We don't get calls about kids Being trafficked You know, 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 what we got him to get 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 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 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 power You're fucking scared to talk about kids being trafficked. Mm-hmm. You're powerless. You are completely fucking consumed by this fear of being canceled fear of being not elected. Yeah, you're consumed by a power that doesn't even fucking exist You're completely controlled. You can't even stand up for fucking kids Yeah, because you're addicted to a power that you don't fucking have your position and we know you don't have it because you can't talk about fucking kids Yeah, fear 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. They now have all the parental rights Currently, right now, it is at the current stats because again, this is Friday night. I'm on a plane gagging as I go down the rabbit hole I fact check 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. It'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 when there was other so it's 33 states where you You can trafficker a can sign away their child 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 gonna get out of jail free card, but maybe And they know this there's also something called being re-homed Which is 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 re-homing Then you get traffic traffic traffic traffic Yep Pretty freaking bleak Yep So 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 gonna take for us to get upset enough to to become a foster parent What's it gonna take for people to be upset enough to like mentor a child in foster care Or become a child appointed special advocate of kasa. You know what I mean like Not I get it not everyone can foster there's a lot of reasons why people couldn't foster Maybe you know they have a medical diagnosis or something they're not able to No one's no one's ever gonna like put a gun to your head and be like be better foster You know i get it not everyone's called the foster But everyone is called 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 like 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 a Tulsa girls home Which is a qualified residential treatment program which we can get into it's like a whole thing Group homes are not designed for kids Like group homes is like one of the last places you put a child Because it's not 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 and not 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 citizen You 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 that's some crazy thing All right So currently like i said health and human services says there are 344,000 children in foster care Afghars says about 330 When i got the call to do this interview i was like they're like dino stats and 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 afghars report. I can tell you the current numbers And i see that there's 330,000 foster care on the afghars 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 garmel who's the leading expert in foster care in our nation Who does this eat, breathe, sleep, like he is an expert witness all across the country That's what he does. He's an expert on trial to be a snagletton our country and i'm like john Can you explain to me what happened like 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 Like the worst thing that's ever happened in 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 I looked at the afghars report because again that's the report that everybody uses adoption of foster care reporting analysis reporting system In 2018 there were 675 children Who had any sort of interaction with foster care they they might get a stipend there 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 Thousand 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 and 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 rights itself But the truth is so much worse So to understand where these 170 go I got it got to put them into two buckets The first bucket is 55,000 children this is according to 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 55,000 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 like 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 good December heart because like maybe her child Was an addict and 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 grand kid is going to end up in foster care of course grandma is going to be like No, put the baby with me The grandma's not licensed so grandma just stuck out here with no services like doing her best If grandma is 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 grandma's unpro kinship care when it's 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 So she doesn't have to have parenting classes She doesn't have to have like ongoing kind of stated 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 who's not pocketing the money I guess the government. So there's 55,000 that are over here now there is 100,000 to 300,000 It's 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 re-home 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 There's nobody looking at them There's no case So they've just taken the crisis and moved it off the books And look at us. We're solving foster care Holy shit And you want to know why they're doing that? Of course you do Until. 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. 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 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. Family First Services law passes. 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 the nitty gritty of it. Title 4E 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 4E and that $9.6 billion with a B 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 4E $9.6 billion and put it toward prevention? Great. 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 and neglect. Okay. So again, not to over simplify 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 a 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. The 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, hey, sweetheart, being a single mom is gotta 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 Force Prevention Services Act passes and the idea is like, let's prevent child children from entering care. Great. 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 like, oh my gosh, so many things swimming in my head. I'm like, I want to tell you all the things about Family Force Prevention Services Act. I would say the first problem that advocates talk about with Family Force Prevention Services Act 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 thing, at 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 tied to some fancy college running data analysis. 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. And so like the solution to that, the common sense solution to that would be like, all right, look, you can do several things. You can, instead of creating like this government federal clearing house list, that's what it is, like these people have to be on a list, their program, like definitely a scientific research 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 prevented services act caused more bureaucracy. Second, it funds the entirely wrong thing. And it's like, Sean, I don't even know, I 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, you know, 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, I'd like to talking to the therapist, talking to the foster parent and making sure that there's a holistic view of what is going on. That's called case management. That's what she 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, you know, whatever the hell they're funding. And again, that sounds great until you realize that Medicaid already covers that. So now what happened is the 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 for e-money put into their case. So 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 what the outcomes. Correct. Correct. So they can't they don't states don't recall 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. There is no data system that shows how many programs did your 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. 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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/srs. Go to shopify.com/srs Next problem. Residential treatment programs got way harder. So again, I think this law had great intentions. A lot of experts like Dr. DeGarma 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 the to own up to the unintended consequences of the bill. Right. 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 blocked Medicaid federal funding for mental health institutions for adults. Right. Because the federal government is like, we don't want to pay forever for an adult. He's just going to end up in a mental institution for the rest of their life. I have a lot of compassion on people that live in mental institutions. I can talk about that for days. I have a lot of empathy there. But there is a law, whatever 1965, IMD, Institutions for Mental Disease passed in 1965. It was meant for adults. It was never meant to touch children of 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, oh, are they falling under the old 1965 IMD law? We 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 governments like there is no hope for this, there's no hope for this child. Like just sending a jail or sending them to the mental institution, there 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 Belmont, California. It used to be one of their mentors, but the program has been shut down and 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. They 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. 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 mental 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. Some 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 nobody wants to pay for that anymore. So that was one of the problems and I don't know if that's specifically why a child help got shut down. There 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 this law of 2018 created and it's called qualified residential treatment program. People in 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 Tulsa girls' home is. So you get the cases where like the kids have 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 want us to adopt you?" And she was like, "No." And we were like, "Whoa." And she was like, "Sorry. When I hear adoption to me, that means rape." And 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 version prevention services act created something called a QRTP, which is a qualified residential treatment program. And they basically said, "We're going to 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, they become homeless, substance abuse problems, arrest pipeline, all of that. Well, they look at the data, and it says that if they lived in a group home, their statistical 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, is 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 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. It's called the CAN system. I do not know what CAN stands for. It's on all 50 states. Before a child can receive the therapeutic level of treatment that they need, like it tells a girl's 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 an online portal that has some sort of strange algorithm that nobody can figure out. And like we've seen this, it tells a girl's 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. Same 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 a thing, it's a fancy term as 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 before we want to stop the kid from ever entering foster care." Instead of creating a revenue stream and building this up and 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. Instead of doing all that, sorry, I lost my place because it's like, it's literally just like, "Woo!" It's the messiest thing in the world, but it's like, okay. Oh, I lost my place. Let me look it up. Where is it? Where's the bullet point? So instead of just creating a new revenue stream, whoever they as Congress sought, 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 the most foster parents won't take them because they're like, I'm not qualified for that level of trauma. I'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 homes, centers 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 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. And 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, 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, the 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 percent went to administrative drag because there's so much paperwork now that all the kids are falling into the gap. Nobody 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 were already bogged down or bogged down with even more paperwork. And here's the stats. Here's the current stats as the result. 36 percent turnover rate in social workers within 18 months. That's just the national average. It's 57 percent in Florida, annual, well, 18 month turnover rate. That might be annual in Florida. Foster 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, 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. Social workers don't feel like they have any say. Guardians that lie down in 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 got to get the good people to stay in the fight. You got to fund the social workers, fund the case management, let Medicaid pay for what Medicaid pays for already. 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. You 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 on foster care, they've never had the hair done. On prom night, on a homecoming night, just open up your salon. Do you like free? Just make them feel good. Just make them feel pretty. It seems so simple, but they will remember that for their 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 like 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. I want to take another break. Sure. I could also say, before we take a break, so don't forget it. Are we still rolling or do we cut? You're rolling. 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. 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 adopt US kids. There's many organizations where you can adopt a child on foster care. Some 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. There's a mentoring program. There's tons of mentoring programs. 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 can 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'm going to talk about it in my book. We have a whole chapter on like, here's all the resources. Here's all the ways you can get involved with that 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 five dollars? That'll buy a small latte at Starbucks, you know, give them a five dollar Starbucks gift card. You don't know the straw that you take off the Campbell'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 burned out and frustrated. Do something. So this this village in California, you're talking about shutdown. I think it's now a detention home. Does that mean all of these have shut down? Not all of them. 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 holds. I'm sure there are. We're 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. You're talking about these statistics statistics, you know, and it's 50 to 80% of trackficking victims have child welfare involvement. 60% of likely victims missing to NCMEC were in foster care. I mean, 15 to 16 thousand by the way there's no family uh-huh 40 a day 40 40 40 kids age out of foster care every single day these these these five children die in the United States every day did a child abuse in the gut five children every day so i'm what i'm saying is with these statistics it just kind of it kind of paints the it just paints the story i mean it's everything where they go yeah they're abused they're raped they're targeted sexually exploited and that becomes their normal because it is their it is their normal yeah and then they do the same thing um-hmm over and over and over and a lot of them ration after generation after generation yeah and a lot of them especially the girls that i i can't get into a boys 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 the fear gonna put them in detention centers and that big that's that's home that's literally like i'm aging out i better commit a crime so that i can get like a hot and a hot that's kind of what i'm getting at yeah nobody tells them they matter so are any facilities opening or 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 Girl's Home is exceptional Tulsa Boys Home i can't comment on we just have been people do they care for we only care for eight girls Tulsa Women the Tulsa Girls Home yeah we have enough beds for eight but 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 we also created transitional homes and these homes are gorgeous like Sean on a celebrity i would love to live in these houses they are bougie s 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 or when they age out of foster care they can go into our transitional program where we give them like financial classes make sure they have a job like we don't just leave them you know well that's something i wanted to ask going just to break it a kid in the regular foster program who doesn't have a good family they age out there it's nobody what is it 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 so why we took in that one girl she had a week left before she knew she was gonna 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 what's over i mean the church has to get involved there's also an amazing organization called all of crassed why do you think most churches don't get involved i mean you look we're in Tennessee here yeah there's church on every fucking corner you're 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 we're all free and slaves but nobody's doing anything here in the community i want to why is that is it is it the red tape is it all bullshit i want to really freeing the slaves yeah i want to believe that most don't know because i've been to a lot of these places where they go for the slaves is a seal and is say a guy i didn't say any fucking slaves mean free yeah that's a whole different discussion uh yeah um i i 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 then 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 were like aren't you excited these numbers are amazing and like these numbers are bs these numbers are not real these numbers are hidden foster care take the crisis off the books where's that money going by the way because if it's not going with grandma grandma's not getting the monthly stipend kinship care is not getting the monthly stipend well they came out a couple of months ago and said that there's an estimated six hundred billion dollars and fraud every year in the united states so much for the g.a. oh government accountability office yeah was that was was that a real thing well that's the same thing 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 it was the definition of blessing foster care has stretched me in ways that i would not trade for the world i'm so grateful for every single thing that i have learned through foster care as painful as it has been there was on 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 all foster all foster once my kids are out of the house no listen not know that'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 katon 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 you'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 case workers 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 like 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 as she molested other children because i have three young children and i have an infant and i had newborn my husband works night shift like i am not cognitively 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 all of this you go through foster care training all 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 how 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 how do your kids handle it i mean it'd be it 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 like to treat my biological kids. Yeah, you know, it's how do we keep it fair? Um, a lot of that they go through in 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, there is a time and a place to spank as long as you're not doing an anger. I don't, I'm not a big proponent of spanking, but I don't think that if somebody spanks their children, their automatic child abusers, I know people that are excellent parents that spank their kids on occasion, but they don't do it in anger or they do it in the right way. Like, I'm not, I would not call that child abuse if it's done 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 wall. 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, you know, like, it's like, you feel like you have all these tools on your parenting belt in the road 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. But my children, I have not fostered while I've had my own children because it wasn't until my boy's cases were going to adoption that literally I just turned to my husband. And I was like, hey, like getting 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, all foster, I'm so naive. I talk about it in the book. I'm like, I'll foster and I'll save the world and I love 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 good. 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. Once 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, a 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 it's, I'm totally at works. Okay, for everybody, this listening that's like, tell me how this shuttle's met at works. Okay, here's how the shuttle's met at work. Two times it worked. Totally. Well, Jackie was a surprise that we didn't know we needed. She knows that. Anyway, Shettles Method because you're going to be curious. It's awesome. Shettles Method is girl. Okay, so obviously we know the 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 boy swim fast and die quickly and the girl's swim slow and they camp out for up to five days. So if you have sex before your, your egg drops and then you don't have sex, you're more likely to have a girl because the girl sperm is just hanging out, like, waiting to, you know, get that egg. So 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 cadence 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. Guess that means we're going to be like in for a lot of sleepless nights and college tuition anyway. So I think I'd like to have a girl because I don't want to have a boy that like my adopted kids would have like a genetic boy to compare themselves to. So 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. Yeah. I mean, so how do 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, my boys know they're adopted out of foster care. I explained their mom by saying like she really loved you. She just did not know how to be a mummy 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 adopted child? And I'm like, well, I wasn't. But now that you're saying it, God, I hope not. I don't love her anymore 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, my God, I wanted to foster, you know, I wanted a fourth kid by a foster care. I said to my boys one day, I was home with Kaden and my husband was like a band practice for church. And I had to get something. And I was way too pregnant to like get whatever it was that I needed. I was in so much pain. And I said to Kaden, I said, just in case you were your brother ever wonder whether I love you the same as these girls. Let me tell you something. I'm not love you and Jeff a little bit more because you never did this to me. Like, I can like, if I only fostered, I could jump on a trampoline. You know, like, there's no easy way to have a baby. What kind of questions do they have for you? The boys. Jeff wants to know everything there is to know about everything and Kaden doesn't want to talk about it. Do they know about the trauma that they experienced? Or do you tell them words secret? They they they know a little bit. They don't know about their dads yet. I haven't they know they have a dad. They know they know. Listen, because of Roblox, because of all the 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. So 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. Kaden's dad is way more complicated than Jeffries. I'm dying. I do not want to have that conversation with them. 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 the, 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 like 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, Kaden doesn't ask me. Kaden doesn't want to know anything. Jeffrey, I always tell them like look, you're, 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. Kaden, you know, their biological mom was on, dropped, she was a math baby. And so there's a lot of aftermath that comes from that. There's a lot of trauma that comes from that. We, 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 Kaden endured even in utero and in this 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. Kaden 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. Cheers. How old is he? 10. 10 years old, and he said that. He's been through every form of therapy. But I always think I'm like, well, if you didn't end up in my home, what would your story be? Because it like, 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 tried to like talk to them about it separately because what inevitably happens, they share a room. They don't have share room. They just want to share. Just Jeff gets really chatty at night. It's like he's tired and he's like, "Let me ask you why? What is the purpose of life?" Like, he's a very introspective child. And Kayden's like across the way and he's like, "Shop, chop, chop." He's like, "I don't wanna talk about this." So it's like, "Japan, you've really deep philosophical questions." You know? He's like, "Well, what happened to my, 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? Well, I don't know, I guess because they, somebody never loved their parent and their parent, like, well, what, how, you know, like, he wants to know all of it. Kayden doesn't love anything. - Wow. - So, and I told them on that, I told the biomom 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 her life. I don't, 'cause 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. I think Jeff is going to want a relationship with you and he's older." And I don't think that Kayden will. - And. - They had the same parents? They had the same mom. - They had the same mom. - Yeah, the same mom. Different dads. - Yeah. - Did you get them at the same time? - Well, we got Kayden first, 'cause he's older. But then I knew that she was pregnant with Jeff the whole time. And I mean, I was literally like, her stable diet was like Mountain Dew and Cheetos. And I knew, like, that's my baby in there. Because I, this is not something that you should do. I write about it in my book. It's totally shady, and it's not something you should do. And I'm like, whatever. I created catfish accounts, which is like a social media profile that's not real. And I, I like knew what was going on with the bio parents actual life to keep my kids safe. Kayden's case was bleak. Like, it was like, I'm going to 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, put it on Facebook, like, first on a ground. 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, or 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, so 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, I'll often do a doctor not, she's, 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 pack back and 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. I, she normally text me on the boy's birthday or like the day after it'd be like, oh yeah, it was a birthday. Please tell them I love them. And I'm like, I'm going to pass on a message, but I, I will let, you know, they're doing great. And I might tell her like, Jeffrey lost his first tooth or, you know, whatever. Hey, kids, 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 wilful child of user. 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. Olen Shannon Maldonado, Käsintecht ja artesaanituotteita myüven jaui lahja kaupan perustaja. Alitzin Shopify, koska alustoja testa tessani totesin sen ehdotomasti yhdeksi helpokäyttöisimmistä alustoista. Minulo oli tärkeä pohtia kehittymistä me tulevaisuudessa. Kaikki myüntiin tarvittava työkalut, kuten varaston suunnittelu, ovat kätevasti dashboardissa. Perustin pyöräily vaatteita valmistavan ornotin vuonna 2013. Mielestäni parasta Shopify saan se, että voimme harioittaa liiketoimintaa ilman teknista osaamista. Voimme hallinoida yrityksen taustajärjestelmiä ja frontendia sekä myüden verkossa. Vaivatta, jos Shopify olisi pyöräilyvaruste, sollisi mielestäni itse polku pyörä. Sillä asiat hoidetaan ja meida liiketoiminta me hoituu Shopify's. [Music] Want 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 coming 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. Plus exclusive offers from our partners. You won't find anywhere else. So subscribe to the Vigilance Elite Newsletter right now. All right, we're back from the break. Questions, questions. What's that thing that Melania was talking about a couple months ago? Okay, so some new fostering program or so? Yes, it's called the Fostering the Futures Act. And it was bipartisan as well, passifying 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, 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. Heres is dealing with the kids that are about to exit. You know, what do we deal with kids that are aging out? How do we help them? So 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 or 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. And 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. Like 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, check 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 and care. What is the road to fostering a child? Like if you want to become licensed? 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 a department of children and families. 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? And 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 kids and 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. I 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. Just go down to your office and be like, "Hey, once 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 child help. Child help is the original reason in our country we even know about child abuse. They'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. They're 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 the highest echelon. I want to go see how hard could it be. So I went the hard route just to see how much is 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 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 case workers. And so those children that go through the agencies are probably going to get a bit more attention because you have a whole other case worker who's not bogged down with 86 kids. Who is going to maybe help coordinate services a little bit better with you. You have another advocate on your team. And also for whatever reason, 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 Family Services and it's a lot easier. You have to get CPR certified. You have to take parenting classes, basically you have to do a water safety class and that 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. They 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 responsible. 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 that's it, like your license. But I tell people, listen if you're- What about- Go ahead. How does the child get presented to you? Do you pick? Do you pick? No, 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 fully licensed so they could become foster parents if they fell in love with a child. They'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 like if you're considering fostering, consider respite care because you will save another foster parent and 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 mentors or child help and it was awesome. We would have her for all the holidays because their 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 is ridiculous, ridiculous, bureaucratic red tape, all whatever. She was allowed to do respite with us and it was like she was on her best behavior. Take her to like six flags, take her to Disneyland, you know, take her to go get frozen yogurt because like my hums the vacation home. And then when she leaves, I'm like, okay, now I'm going to 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 kids foster parent now. And their case might likely get transferred to you. So you're already fully licensed. You can foster it anytime. 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, you know, mom, mom was on drugs and left him at the hospital. Can 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 eighth month old boy and he's been separated from a sibling. And can you take him? And I'm like, yeah, I got a crib, like dropping 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 PM 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 banana schedule. 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 11 o'clock at night call and social worker was like, you know, I would not be calling you. This was not an emergency, but this case just came across my desk and I know that like the buck stops with you. There's no way you're going to say no. I got a name on the 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. What? 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 case worker, I'm calling it every foster parent. I know I'm calling churches like, hey, he's got a sibling he's been separated from. And 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 kids, if I say yes to Dylan's brother, I'm not going to be able to say yes to Kaden'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 to like in a 750 square foot town home 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, but 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. Why 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. My kids are so excited to foster again. They're begging me. I'm like, we wait till Jackie's in kindergarten and 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. Mm-hmm. When I went to Congress, one of the things that I said to different congressional members, as 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. Take a kid from foster care. 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 percent. 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 laden. Sure. All right. Okay. Father, 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 while they're asked 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. I 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 make it without first having given them clothes and a meal. Let us not just be heroes of your word, but doers of your word, Father God. Give us ways, open our eyes, open our hearts to this subject's word. And I just ask for every single legislator, every single person that's considering running for government, 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, 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. And I just thank you for that in Jesus name. I just hope this episode reaches so it needs to reach, but we put a dent in this thing, save some kids. Amen. Well, Jen, 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. And I'll be hidden the subject again. Oh, I got tons of people I can recommend. I'll take them. Great. You got any off the top of your head? Oh, absolutely. Britney 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. Nice. 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. I got people for days. Perfect. Yeah. I'll be a touch. Thanks. God bless. Thank you. Thank you. No 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. If you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review. I'm Shannon Maldonado, the director of Artesan and I'm a director of the show.