Vocal Point-Sixto Cancel

Topic: Foster Care System

A recent study (called “Away from Home”) on the foster care system recommends some strong changes to the system. They write, “During youths’ most formative years, the system repeated to them that there was nowhere else for them to go. This killed youths’ imaginative capacity to envision what could lie beyond institutional placements….Youth felt that family placements would be better than institutions, but only with improvements to the foster family system. Such improvements could include removing barriers to kinship care, recruiting more loving families, ensuring families foster adolescents, supporting families in taking care of youth with higher needs, thwarting abuse in foster families….Almost no youth felt that an institutional placement was the best placement for them personally.” Sixto Cancel, who helped lead this study for the organization “Think of Us,” joins Jerry Newcombe on Vocal Point to discuss foster care. www.thinkof-us.org