[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 106 (Wednesday, June 22, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H5740-H5741]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             CHANGING THE CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM FROM INSIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Bass) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. BASS. Madam Speaker, today, I rise to talk about the nearly half 
a million young people in our Nation's child welfare system.
  Last month was National Foster Care Month, a time for our country to 
come together to acknowledge the half million people in our system, the 
hundreds of thousands who work within the system day in and day out, 
and the millions of adults who have exited the system and are no longer 
in care.
  No one knows the child welfare system like the foster youth who have 
grown up in the system. Today, the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth 
and the National Foster Youth Institute have brought more than 35 young 
people from all over the country to shadow their Members of Congress. I 
would like to take a second to thank the Members of Congress who are 
spending this morning learning from a constituent and delegate of the 
program about their personal experiences and ideas to make impactful 
change in the child welfare system.
  Each year, our participants have a real hand in making change. From 
the Chafee Grant extensions to the passage of the Families First 
Prevention Services Act to securing COVID relief for foster youth, this 
group's voices have changed our child welfare system forever.
  As a matter of fact, when COVID first struck and none of us in the 
country knew what to do, the young people who were members of the 
National Foster Youth Institute contacted Members of Congress and said: 
While you are passing legislation to address the pandemic, don't forget 
us because we have very specific needs. And Members of Congress 
responded.
  When we put together the emergency packages, we took their input. We 
took specifically what they requested, such as the Chafee Grant 
extensions and other extensions of programs, and put it into law and 
made sure that they had resources.

                              {time}  1030

  The reality is this: When the government removes children from their 
parents, the government becomes that child's parent. Too often, the 
government forgets this commitment, and life goes on for those not in 
the child welfare system; but for those in it, they come to feel 
trapped and forgotten.
  These young people here today have traveled thousands of miles to 
share their stories of their challenges with abuse, trafficking, 
overmedication, and homelessness. In addition, they are sharing their 
successes with mentorship, adoption, family reunification, community 
activism, and independent living. They are resilient and have the 
ability to navigate challenges in their life and succeed, even in spite 
of their hardships. Their goal is to leave Congress with a better 
understanding of the reality faced today by our Nation's youth in care.
  I will share some words from Xandra Ruby Vaughn, who is shadowing me 
this morning. She told me just yesterday that her time in care helped 
shape the person she is today. While in care, she saw that resources 
for foster youth, especially when it came to education, were hard to 
find and hard to access. She manages a Facebook page of resources for 
foster youth of all ages, assisting them with finding and assessing

[[Page H5741]]

housing support, educational funds, and mental health services.
  While in college, she experienced firsthand the impact of age 
requirements for former foster youth to receive assistance, a problem 
she would like lawmakers to pay attention to, to better help the former 
foster youth in our district.
  There are several other young people that are here with me today. 
Jennifer Martinez is a former foster youth from Los Angeles who is now 
a foster youth advocate.
  Amber Rosado-Esteves entered the child welfare system when she was 14 
and aged out when she was 18, and now she is very successful in 
college.
  Anthony Vizcarrondo spent 10 years in foster care, from the ages of 6 
to 16, in California's Central Valley. His placements included foster 
homes and juvenile hall. Anthony is a strong foster youth advocate who 
is focused on expanding educational opportunities and child welfare 
reform.
  Between her placements in foster care and being behind by 19 credits, 
Lucinda ``Lucy'' Langley thought she had no chance of graduating high 
school. But after years of hard work, that is exactly what she did.
  Sapphire Murphy Powell also joined us all the way from New Zealand.
  We need to understand, as a country, and as a Congress, that when we 
address the child welfare system, this is a way of preventing these 
children from becoming homeless. In the city of Los Angeles alone, we 
have 50,000 people who sleep on the street every night. We have tents 
all over our city, and in those tents, there are thousands of young 
people who aged out of the foster care system when they were 18 or 21. 
Essentially, what we have done as a society is cut them off of 
resources, and they wind up on the streets, they wind up incarcerated, 
or they wind up trafficked. This is a failure of the system, the system 
that we are responsible for.
  Our country is the richest country in the history of the world, and 
there is no excuse for us not to take care of the half million young 
people in the foster care system. This is why we need to transform the 
system.

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