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Structural racism has been at the foundation of federal funding for foster care for decades. The initiation of federal funding for foster care in 1961 can be traced directly to practices intended to target Black mothers and children in Louisiana in 1960. Understanding the foundation of child welfare funding and its structural inequities at the base of our foster care system is critical to understanding the disparities so prevalent today.

The system is not working as it should. Sometimes, it seems like people in power pick and choose who they want to incriminate. I have heard about youth that have minor cases who get tried as adults and are no more than 15 or 16 years old. This is sad because they are legally minors in the state of Pennsylvania but the state is considering them to be adults to criminalize them.

Throughout my time in the juvenile justice system, the education I received seemed very mediocre. Not only was it not challenging, but it was not on the grade level of education I was supposed to receive. This made me believe that education was supposed to be like that from here on out, but I realized that was not the case as I got older.

Building the Field of Ethical, Authentic, and Youth-led Advocacy: Key Components of a Youth Advocacy Program is twelve years in the making with countless social workers, attorneys, graduate interns, fellows, and young advocates with lived experience working and re-working to craft a model for developing youth-led advocacy efforts and programming.