Last month, Australian pop singer Sia took my breath away. It wasn’t her over-the-top style or one of her addictive tracks that did it. Rather, it was her revelation that, in 2019, she’d adopted two teenage boys who were aging out the foster care system. In this understated, almost offhand announcement, Sia gave us a glimpse of how we can change the lives of people who need us most.
Right now in America, there are 120,000 children waiting to be adopted. That means parental rights have been severed and these kids in need of homes are drifting through our broken child welfare system. But even stopping short of adoption, by taking them into our communities to support them, mentor them and offer them the kinds of opportunities that can help them break free from a devastating cycle, we can have an enormous — and indelible — impact on the lives of these kids.
There are a lot of reasons families choose not to adopt kids in need of safe and loving homes. One is the mistaken belief that once a child in the system reaches a certain age it’s difficult (if not impossible) to change their behavior path. As a dad who’s taken in older as well as younger children, I can tell you that’s simply not true. Each child is an individual, a fully formed human being with his or her own challenges and gifts.
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We similarly hear families explain they aren’t equipped to deal with the various diagnostic labels the system places on so many kids in the system. We see children slapped with these labels — “therapeutic children,” as they’re euphemistically called — which adds yet another layer of stigma to already stigmatized children.
But even putting these more systemic issues aside, we can see the shortcoming in the all-or-nothing terms of this conversation. While finding safe and loving homes for children in the system is the eventual goal, it’s not the only solution. Many of the emotionally nourishing aspects of growing up that we take for granted for our own children — summer camps, role models, a sense of belonging, field trips, learning a musical instrument, or even an afternoon spent watching a movie — are simply not available to kids in the system. But these seemingly small acts of generosity can give kids in the system something they badly need — a sense of family and of belonging.
America is a big, diverse and socially engaged country. Studies estimate that there are roughly 300,000 churches in America. Add to that number all the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and other faith communities, all of whom are bonded by a shared belief in the importance of the family to human well-being. If each of these communities resolved to take in just one of the kids in foster care, we’d put the system out of business.
But even short of adoption, these communities — and people of all stripes, creeds and backgrounds — can decide today to take a child in the system under their wing, in a kind of deep form of mentorship. They can bring these children on outings, to gatherings or even to regular family dinners. They can tutor these kids, set up college funds, help them uncover their natural gifts and skills, tell them jokes and read them stories, and most simply, but profoundly, teach about life.
What’s truly astonishing is that the members of these communities would benefit from these relationships as much, if not more, than the kids in the system. Probably for the first time, they will be able to grasp what life is like for thousands of families in our country. They will have the opportunity to learn from kids who have been forced to find resiliency in the face of unthinkable adversity. And they can perform an act of kindness that will affect not just a single person but will ripple across hundreds of lives.
We know it takes a village to raise a child. But if we act together as communities, we can raise a generation of children. We can change the face of America at a time when our country needs us most to act, to give and to live up the moral ideals that unite us.
Rob Scheer, who has been named a CNN Hero, is the founder of Comfort Cases, an organization which provides a sense of dignity and hope for children in the foster care system. Scheer was given a trash bag to pack his belongings on his way to his first foster home at the age of 12. When he aged out of the system at 18, he became homeless, and again packed up his belongings in a trash bag. Nearly 30 years later, when he became a foster parent, his four children arrived at his home with trash bags. Saddened that nothing had changed, Scheer’s family and community founded Comfort Cases in 2013, with the goal of eliminating trash bags from the foster care system by creating cases that include pajamas, a stuffed animal, toothbrush, soap and other personal care items.
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