Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Well, foster care as it was modernized not its inception, but as it was modernized was actually in-home services primarily afforded to white mothers. And then as black people gained more rights in the fifties and forward they did not walk black mothers who access those in-home services, especially with this whole like hysteria around the child welfare. Right. So then instead of offering in-home services, they then created out of home foster care because they did not want to give money to black mothers, but they would say, we will take care of her child if you can not take care of them.

Susana Muñoz:
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs Now. I’m your host Susana Muñoz. Today on the podcast. We’re discussing college students who have experienced foster care. As we get ready to welcome college students back to our college campuses, how are we mindful of our language around family parents support or how we’re using asset-based the framing in our work with college students with foster care experiences. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope that you’ll find these conversations, make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us at studentaffairsnow.com on Twitter, our episodes today are sponsored by LeaderShape and EverFi. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Susana Muñoz.

Susana Muñoz:
My pronouns are she her hers, ella and I’m broadcasting from Colorado, Fort Collins, near the campus of Colorado state university, which occupies the ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne Arapaho and people from wherever you’re listening today, we urge you to investigate the original occupants of the land. I am thrilled to have the following individuals present for today’s conversation. Let me introduce our panelists. We have Angela Hoffman-Cooper, Kenyon Lee Whitman, and Royel Johnson. So if each of you can introduce yourself to our listeners, please tell us a little bit about your interests and how you’re entering into the conversation today. We’ll start with Angela.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
Thank you, Dr. Munoz. I’m really excited to be here today. My name is Angela Hoffman-Cooper. I use pronouns, she and her, and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to reflect on my positionality. And it’s something that I do regularly in terms of how I enter into the work of supporting students with experience in foster care, in terms of practice, research and advocacy.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
I experienced foster care as a teenage youth and aged out of foster care when I went to college. And so that shaped my personhood and how I continue to experience the world today, but also previously as a college student and now even still as a doctoral student as a person, as a mother and the various other positionalities that I hold. I also think it’s really important to me to share the experience the world as a white cisgender pansexual and able-bodied woman. And so those experiences and identities also intersect with my experience in foster care and some of the outcomes that maybe I have experienced that maybe similar to or different from other folks with experience in foster care. I am also a part of the foster scholars the foster scholars that org community of scholars who work together, they have lived experience in foster care working to transform the narrative to support students with experience in foster care, through research, practice, and advocacy. And I’ll be focusing my dissertation work on supporting students with experience in foster care and identity development. So thank you. Thanks.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Yes, I am Kenyon Whitman. I am the program director of the office of foster support service at at UC Riverside. I’ve been in this position supporting foster youth for it’ll be six years on August 10th. I’ve been working in student affairs for over 10 years across four campuses and at every stop supporting foster youth in some capacity like Angela I was a former foster youth from ages 0 to 9 months and then from five years old to 18 years old. And so I definitely step into this work with a passion and dedication to serving this population. Like Angela, I am most, I’m also a doctoral student centered to defend actually a week from now. And then I will then start a postdoc at UCLA. Well, then I will continue my research on foster youth. So that’s, that’s how I show up to this work.

Royel Johnson:
Yeah. So I am Royel Johnson assistant professor higher ed and associate director for the center for the study of higher education at Penn State. I am a scholar who does interdisciplinary research around issues related to college access equity and student success with a particular tension and focus on race, gender, and other axes of social inequality for the last six years. I’ve been really concerned with two sort of institutionally marginalized populations, youth in foster care, as well as those who’ve been impacted by the criminal justice system. I’m happy to talk more about that later because there’s a lot of intersection between those groups. I sort of stumbled into this work and I it’s a full circle moment because I was at Ohio state doctoral student working under, who was doing research on African-American men.

Royel Johnson:
So many of the young men in the studies consistently shared insights about their experiences in foster care that ultimately led to work that we started doing with FranklinCounty children’s services. In Columbus, Ohio, we started developing a college access program as part of an outreach commitment for the research center that I worked in, but it wasn’t until several years later that I realized that my own positionality was wrapped into my interest in the topic. I’ve benefited from kinship care for several years as a youth, but having a very limited understanding of what foster care is, did not allow me to sort of see myself reflected in this work the way some of my colleagues today may sort of identify. So I think that’s something that we want to get at too. And demystifying, what is it, you know, what constitutes as foster care, the range of experiences and how that impacts the trajectories of students? So I’m also a part of a national conference team for the national conference for engaged scholarship on foster alumni. So shameless plug all the student affairs practitioners who are looking for a space to learn more about research and practice related to young people impacted by foster care.

Susana Muñoz:
Nice. One of the things that I’ve noticed from all of you is the language that you’re using and how the language that I see readily in higher education as foster care college students. I mean, you’re using youth in foster care individuals or college students that have experienced foster care. So I’m assuming that’s the intention.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
Yeah. We had a lot of conversations about that. I remember even at an Ash conference a couple of years ago, one of the first times Kenyon and I had the opportunity to present together. We had a lot of conversations around, how do you prefer to be referred to, or how do you refer to students in your work or youth in your work? And there are different perspectives. I, you know, I think amongst our community, and so folks have a variety of different ways that they maybe feel comfortable being referred to or not. But oftentimes that person, first language of person with experience in foster care is sort of the best starting place. If you don’t have the opportunity to ask someone directly how they prefer to refer to their experience and Royel, I think you’ve, you’ve written on that in some of your pieces too, of why you’ve specifically chosen that language.

Royel Johnson:
Yeah. You know, my commitment has been to use person first language but I’ve also gone back and forth about whether or not I use alumni. And I know Kenyon has some ideas about whether or not you use alumni. And, but my own sort of commitment has been centering the people, the person leading with that as not defined, being defined by the experience in foster care. So I think it’s best to sort of engage students and figure out how they would like to be referred. But my own sort of commitments have been to use person first language.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Yeah Definitely. You know, I think for, I think in many ways, the reasons why so many people have different kinds of ways of identifying themselves as foster in some way is because the experiences are different. Not, not all of them are the same. And so for someone like me who spent nearly my entire adolescents in the care I definitely identify more with being a foster youth as a part of my identity where some folks might look at as more of an experience. Maybe they were in care for a couple of years, right. Maybe they had the fortunate opportunity to be reunited. Right. And then, so for other folks, they emancipated when they’re 18 or 21, depending on what state you live in. Right. And so I think there’s a spectrum of, of is an experience. Isn’t an identity, but I think for many of the youth that I work with at UCR and the other campus is this is definitely letting them let you know how they want to be identified.

Susana Muñoz:
Yeah. Thank you for that.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
I struggled and struggled with the link, like feeling confined by the language at times that was used to describe me. And so I’ll never forget the first time a colleague and friend of mine said, you know, when I was told I was a foster youth, I thought that’s all I was ever going to be. And then it sort of clicked for her. Please say I experienced foster care because I did, I experienced being moved between homes. These were experiences, not a mythical place that I went and, you know, a defined moment that ended in my life. It continues. I continue to experience these things even retrospectively. And so that really changed my own way of reflecting on my experience and challenging the language that had been applied to me over the years.

Royel Johnson:
I’ll just add that, you know, there are stigma also associated with name and language at the individual interpersonal instructional level, because there are implications for how you identify and on forms and the services and so forth you’d benefit from or not. So, you know, folks are wrestling with how to identify in ways that make sense for them. And sometimes as a protective measure because of the consequences associated with outing oneself as being impacted by the foster care system.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
Yeah. That construction of identity and disclosure is a huge component and a huge consideration for many of our student affairs practitioners serving this population. And for many folks with lived experience, whether that be students or practitioners themselves remembering that there are a variety of many folks again, as I think we’ve demonstrated that are engaging in this work that they do have the lived experience themselves. So being aware of, of how that’s landing on our practitioners to.

Susana Muñoz:
yes, no, thank you for that. That’s super helpful to understand. If you could just talk a little bit about who we’re talking about in terms of what does the national landscape look like for this, the student group?

Royel Johnson:
Yeah. I’m happy to chime in there. I’ll, I’ll start by saying that, you know, we know very limited little information about the academic trajectories of youth impacted by foster care in part, because in datasets national center for education statistics, don’t include proxies and demographic items that allow us to sort of estimate the number of students nationally who have false secure experience. How many of access college that we do have data that’s collected nationally about youth in foster care. So they roughly 430 ish thousand youth who are currently in foster care from some of the studies, some regional, some national reports. We’re able to estimate that roughly, you know, though about 50%, I think graduate from college, it’s estimated upwards of 70% aspired to attend college. As little as 20% can expect to enroll in anywhere between one to 10% are expected to earn a bachelor’s degree. So you see you start wide with 430 and the number just sort of dissipates. Now, there’s lots that happens in between that time, that shapes and disrupts students pathways to, and one thing to sort of distinguish is that while one aspires to attend college, what one can reasonably expect to attain is different. So, you know, while youth may exceptionally high rates of interest and aspirations for college, their expectations for college may be diminished because of a range of academic and social challenges that thort, their college going experience.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
And those statistics are so powerful too. I, you know, oftentimes find myself citing them or needing to cite them, whether it be in research or in practice to justify sort of why this work matters or why the student population matters and the numbers do matter. And when we talk about construction of identity and the rhetoric around it, there’s huge impact to those statistics too. I think Dr. Tony Watt in interviewing a student and included in one of her publications, a quote from a student saying everything in the news is negative. The statistics are so negative. It makes me think that this is all I can sort of aspire to be on the flip side there, you know, I think self included there’s, this can be this clinging to, I am a part of the 3%. I think about Dr. Molly Cerebri is a title of her dissertation, the stories of the 3%, you know, let’s learn more about the students that make it through and there’s pride and resilience and all of these things tied up in that, but the statistics are, can be really complicated things too, to even think about talking about.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Definitely in, in, in, in doing so I do think that there’s an unintended consequence, quinces of framing this population from a deficit lens. Right. And so that’s a lot of pushback I’ve gotten from my dissertation chair around, like, how do we continue to frame this population through a strengths baserd perspective? And so but however, as we know, when it comes to funding, when, you know, as, at least as a student affairs practitioner definitely ears perk up when you say only 1% of foster youth graduate. Right. but I would also say that we don’t know enough about the other 90, 97, 93%, depending on which stat you want to use from our Courtney’s work. Right. I sit on think we, we, we, we, we really know the full extent of, of those who are not be able to go to college. And also, I would say you know, in my practice at UCR, one thing that we do know is that when foster youth are supported, they outperform their peers.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Passport cohorts at UCR have a hundred percent first year attention rate. And in the six years I’ve been at UCR, I have a 92% graduation rate. Right. and, and that’s not because I’m doing anything super special, it’s because they are already special, right. They already have the tools and they have the navigational capital to succeed in higher ed, as long as we’re able to meet their basic needs and really honored like the full humanity of who they are, which they’ve been in largely denied through their foster care experience. Right. And so I think it’s really important to, to continue to understand, not only like the 3%, but also the 97% as well.

Royel Johnson:
The other I’ve written about this in the systematic review that I published, you know, one of the challenges is that national student success discourse also doesn’t include conversation about youth with experience in foster care. When you think about some of the national college student success initiatives led by major funders, youth in foster care, never mentioned in those conversations. So you get commitments for racially, ethnic minorities, students, LGBT students, veterans, first generation students, youth in foster care, cut across these identities at disproportionate rates. So if you’re thinking about opportunity to really support a group who is, Multipli marginalized through a sort of web of institutional structures, you ought to be concerned about youth and foster care. But part of the pushback I get too sometimes with grant funders is population size, sample size. Is that how, how, how many students can we serve through a national project? And so some people are not convinced that the group is large enough for us to sort of warrant investments in that way. And we ought to reject that sort of idea that there is a population who experiences, you know, these sort of outcomes. It should be enough to get us concerned about it.

Susana Muñoz:
Yes, yes. You remind me of a lot of the conversations ever did. And the community that I work with in, for, in terms of even how universities are investing, even how K-12 institutions our schooling is, is investing. And so it’s almost like we don’t matter unless we’re you know, w we have the numbers and and it makes me think about like, why don’t we move these numbers should not necessarily matter, but you’re talking about the access issue to higher education. And wondering if you can say a little bit more about also what are some of these challenges that are being faced maybe in the K through 12 system, but also like how can access counselors really address some of the access issue? Because we’re talking about a funnel that you’re describing, but I’m wondering if you could touch a little bit about that.

Royel Johnson:
Yeah, I can start and others feel free to chime in placement changes. Our residential placement changes are significant barriers in some of the work that I’ve done on belonging among youth in foster care, in the K-12 sector. We sort of reveal that, you know, students experienced numerous residential placement changes, which have consequences for changes in school. Well, when you change in school, you also fall behind academically. It’s difficult to reintegrate and develop, you know, supportive relationships with teachers and peers who would otherwise be, you know assets to a student and navigating their pathway to college. There’s not a lot of coordination between social workers and you know the school counselors. And though there is now this sort of through ESSA recently, the most recent authorization, they included language that required that you know, child welfare agencies and school agencies have to coordinate and work together to sort of reduce school placement changes among students. Well, the reality is that most states haven’t articulated and report it plans to do so. So there’s not a lot of communication. And so students records aren’t adequately moved. And so when they get to another school, the school was not prepared to serve them and meet their needs in ways that are going to be important for their success. And, and there a wide range of other challenges also, I’m happy to let others chime in.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
Yeah. Just wanted to share that ESSA is that Every Student Succeeds Act and indefinitely has some provisions. I also think about trio programming and summer bridge programs are intended, or one of the kind of lines in there is that there should be specific outreach to youth with experience in foster care. And oftentimes that isn’t happening again, given some of the transient nature of the population. And, and that’s really unfortunate because it is a great resource and programmatic support that could be available. Yeah, I think that there’s a variety of factors really there, that that can be better exercise to support the student population. I think even campus tours, I speaking from personal experience, not having an opportunity to go on campus tours or be able to consider that were outside of a very small pocket of area, and really didn’t see myself as college student potential to begin to begin with and the impact of that.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
And so thinking about, and examining in terms of starting to dig into some of the practices that could be improved on college campuses, how our campus tour is framed, is it framed as, oh, you know, did you bring your mom and dad with you? You know, how was, how are folks encouraged to get to campus if there’s not transportation support, are there other options, a variety of different things? You know, how has parent and family weekend frame does that framed on the campus tour of, Hey, mom and dad, make sure you come back, but also it’s important not to over-correct some of those things either because students have experienced in foster care very well may have moms and dads maybe multiple involved in their life or folks that fill that role. And so how can some of the language be shifted to supportive adults to be the common kind of identifier, perhaps that might be more encompassing of a variety of student experiences, but not assuming that students have a supportive adult in their life and having support options for students to connect with folks that can be a supportive adult if they’re not engaging in the college environment with that already. Those are a few considerations that come to my mind too.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
And then, and I’ll just add to that and talking about the K through 12 experiences is as I continue to kind of reframe my own lens and kind of research of like looking at this population is really looking at foster care, not as a foster care to prison pipeline, but as a carceral nexus in and of itself. And so one of my committee member here at UCR is the one, like really pushing me to really understand like the ways in which foster care operates as a site of servalence per particularly for those families who are Latin X and black, and Dorothy Roberts, a law scholar at a U Penn also writes about this, right? And so what we see in California in LA. LA county is the largest foster care county in the nation, 28% of students who are being educated in LA county, juvenile halls, 20% of them are foster youth, right?

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
So our foster youth are already incarcerated, right, during their foster experiences, which then also makes them a crossover youth. Right. and this is all before they even turned 18. And so I think we need to have a real kind of precise understanding of their lived experiences, even before they go to college and really understand foster care as a carceral nexus, as them trying to navigate a institution that is trying to kind of keep them under this carceral, like we can. Right. And so it’s really interesting, even when you talk about the word emancipation, right. It’s always like emancipation from what, right. And so you’re really emancipating from institution that has profited off of your body, right? And so there is links back to from foster care to even slavery. And then kind of the ways in which children’s bodies are being used to maintain this larger structure where all these adults are making money off for their existence in foster care. Right. But yet their outcomes are not, are their outcomes. Don’t reveal that the system values the care and foster care. Right.

Royel Johnson:
Let me just say, I can’t, I can’t wait to read your work in the dissertation because I think that’s an area that we have to explore more. I wrote a brief for office of community college research and leadership center at Illinois, and made a similar point that foster care is in fact a carceral institution. If we think about the carceral state as extending beyond formal penal institutions, but have adopted the logics of surveillance punishment and what Sojourner talks about as enclosures, that it’s not just that students are policed, surveilled and punished it’s that their odds and life chances are restricted by way of this experiences constitutes an enclosure for them. And I think there is significant, you know, data points and stories that sort of indicate how being in foster care in itself is a, is a carceral experience. And I hope that we can engage that conversation and literature more.

Susana Muñoz:
Yeah.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
The weaponization of foster care is something that I think often goes unexamined and the ways in which, yeah, slavery absolutely was the first out of home child care, if you care in quotes. And from there, how youth were then excluded black youth, indigenous youth were excluded for a time period from foster care immigrant youth. And then it, it was used as a weapon against those populations. And again, if we trace back to you know, the colonization of tribal nations through a foster care system or through the schools the ways in which foster care was weaponized, and then placements, you know, were done transracially you know black and African-American families excluded from being able to care for youth in foster care. I mean, this we’re not talking like ancient history, we’re talking present day, we’re talking policies, you know, for 20, 30 years ago that still exists today which is really alarming. And also not surprising if we look at how systems are designed to get the outcomes that the system wants.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Can I just add a little bit of context and then we can move on to our next question really quick.

Susana Muñoz:
Yes.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Now, well, foster care as it was modernized not its inception, but as it was modernized was actually in-home services primarily afforded to white mothers. And then as black people gained more rights in the fifties and forward they did not walk black mothers who access those in-home services, especially with this whole like hysteria around the child welfare. Right. So then instead of offering in-home services, they then created out of home foster care because they did not want to give money to black mothers, but they would say, we will take care of her child if you can not take care of them. Right. And so that’s the, how they foster care now becomes a kind of weaponized institution to take children away from their families, right?

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Yes, exactly. And so it was basically these white institutions telling black and brown families we will control and we will dictate how you’re allowed to take care of your children. Right? It was first started as in home placement care, and then once black or brown families gain more rights to public welfare, they did not want them to have that money go straight to them. So instead it was redirected and they created this whole institution called out-of-home foster care placements, right? That this money gets funneled through. And the state of California, at least some foster parents get paid upwards of $2,000 a month to take care of a child. When we know that the majority of foster care placements happen because a family is living in poverty, they just don’t have enough money to take care of the child is not, most of them are not these outrageous cases of abuse and neglect. It’s really because they’re just a little bit too poor or a lot of it important, but then it’s. So instead of just directing that money straight to the family and primarily having a white foster family take care of black and brown children,

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
And it extends to the CIS hetero patriarchy, when we start looking at you know, gay couples that are unable to serve as foster parents, unable to adopt, and the child, family finding campaigns of the what, 1920s to 1960s of, oh, you can’t have a child of your own. So here foster a child, or just to the language and talking about language and stigma, that’s associated with that of literally, you know, referring to children on posters, as, you know, this take this wretched soul. And when we talk, we didn’t even get into orphan trains that ran that separated, you know, immigrant children and shipped them, literally shipped them to the Midwest to service, farm labor, and some were even signed as essentially adventured servants on contracts to provide labor. And again, this was a timeframe where certain populations were excluded from foster care and there was whiteness Christianity tied up in all of this.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
So we need to separate these children so that they can go and have a moral upbringing, have a Christian upbringing specifically and not, you know, a Protestant upbringing or things like that. And so, I mean, really, really problematic in the ways in which much of that still can even persist today. It does.

Susana Muñoz:
There’s so many things running through my head right now. I feel like you use this sort of exposed a lot of things to me in terms of like the foster care inherently being racist and also the separation of children continues. And I think my mind goes back to like, what’s happening at the border, what’s happening with our immigration system. We know it’s very much very parallel to what’s happening. So lots of that’s going on. My, my next question for y’all is just concerning student affairs practitioners. What do student affairs practitioners need to know?

Susana Muñoz:
We talk about serving and serving this. What do students practitioners need to know about not only the foster care experiences with that, thank you all really highlighted a lot in terms of the historical underpinnings of foster care, but also how that is being perpetuated today. So what kinds of things do we need to know about how that impacts our students, but in particularly you know, what, what can we do to, to change our structures, to address some of the structures that are not necessarily aligned with the student groups?

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
I’ll just say too, I kind of felt like we might’ve covered some of it and leave room for my other colleagues, but the first one that comes to mind is not all marginalized students have had the same marginalizing experience, right? And so one thing I’m noticing is that what, where else had, because foster youth within the college context are of small population, then they will then to be able to keep your doors open. Do you need to increase your population? So you go from targeting specifically fostering who emancipated from, from care to all foster youth under the FIS umbrella kinship group, home crossover, youth, et cetera, then to formerly incarcerated students and that some campuses now, including undocumented students, all under this umbrella of guardian scholars, our Renaissance scholars are kind of however, your program is named. Well, all those populations are, are important.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
They, and some of them do crossover, right, and intersect rather, but the foster care experience is still unique in and of itself. And it deserves its own space in place at a campus and dedicated staff. And so my other point is staff who are very well trained and supporting the student population. Now, I will say that the idea of supporting foster youth in higher ed is still relatively new. The first program was at Cal State Fullerton in the late nineties. I don’t know the exact year. Excuse me. I know it’s the late nineties, so it’s still a relatively new idea. However, and so we’re, we’re struggling with, so do we hire a coordinator, or director who has an MSW, do we hire someone who has a master’s in higher ed? Do we right kind of, how do we you know, make sure that we have someone who kind of is quote unquote, like an expert in this field.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
And so I think we’re definitely still learning through what is the process of kind of creating a robust support system. But I think what it starts with understanding that like foster youth are foster youth in and of themselves and, and deserve their own space and not just layer on these different marginalized student populations, just to, you know keep the doors open because oftentimes what happens is they feel that pressure. I feel that pressure because of funding, right. You need need, but one thing I’ve noticed, the reason why we have such high graduation rate is because we have a smaller population within our program, which allows me to kind of really know all of the students that participate in our program and really give them targeted individual services. I can’t possibly do that for 150 students, but I can do it for 30.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Right. and then along the way, getting really good training to be able to support these students in very unique ways. I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to have to go to the hospital to support students and having for their needs. I’ve had to talk, you know, arrange of ride for students when they get released from jail, because, because of something happened in their life. Right. And so and it, you know, I kind of had to learn childlike fire, right. And so I hope that as the new generation of practitioners who want to support foster youth have avenues like this podcast to kind of learn how to support foster youth in in critical ways

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
Underscore, yeah, go ahead, Royel. I just want to underscore that Kenyon said

Royel Johnson:
Absolutely. The, the only thing I’ll add is that, you know, the mere placement of youth in foster care can be a really traumatic experience for a student. And there are all sorts of experiences that can happen in foster care that exacerbate vulnerability and, you know exacerbate trauma and those experiences can shape how students take advantage of resources, whether or not they show up, participate on campus. And so all that to say, I think student affair professionals have to be mindful of how, like all students, how your past and previous experiences shape how you show up. And so sometimes we foreclose on students because they don’t show up in the ways that we sort of expect them to. And that we think it’s sufficient to say, well, they know about these resources. They should have the agency to take advantage of them that they don’t, they’re not serious.

Royel Johnson:
And we really need to reject that sort of idea. Because we have an institutional responsibility to support the students who enroll at our institutions and you know, and we need to do more, to learn more and invest in the kinds of professional learning experiences so that we can tailor our practice and resources in ways that are responsive to the needs of students. Some folks are starting to write about trauma informed care, especially as part of student affairs practice, that’s an approach that, that, that is useful and that it has a lot of value in thinking about how you best care and support this particular group. So I’ll just add that. Yeah. Yeah.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
I agree that that’s really important. I think, you know, so much of what we’ve discussed so far around the importance of having a space on campus and having a designated point of contact, a single point of contact, a champion, some campuses call it a variety of different things and use different language. Campus support program is one of the most commonly sort of used terms. Describe it is just so incredibly important. And, you know, I will never forget those moments of feeling incredibly alone. And then those moments of meeting and seeing someone else that has lived experience and care and seeing those possibility models like even being in this space right now, Dr. Royel Johnson, soon to be Dr. Kenyon, Whitman, like these are aspirational goals for, for me to, to be in this space and be like, okay, let’s do this. And just to witness students also having served as a practitioner at a campus support program, having witnessed students saying this was the first time being involved in a campus support program.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
I had a student tell me, I started to see my struggle is my strength. And my story is my resilience. And so that refraining, that rewiring of that trauma experiences, the rewiring of the stigma and the narrative and the reshaping, that’s really what these programs and the support and the community and youth themselves, you know, youth and student led programming and initiatives that are adequately resourced, have the ability to do. And as Kenyon was talking about the size of the program too, I asked to think that there’s great examples of schools scaling up. So I think about Western Michigan university’s program that has about 120 students and at Colorado state university its program is a little bit more grass roots as, as they specifically call it. But it is a collection of staff members that come together that supported the student population.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
And now they do have formalized staffing. So don’t feel like you have to have it all together either to start this work. It was like a representative from financial aid and someone from housing and someone from academic advising, having regular committee meetings and saying, you know, let’s send care packages, let’s ask the student population. If they want care packages, let’s get the roster from financial aid and send them an email and say that we’re here to help for FAFSA and how to fill it out and provide let’s do, you know, occasional dinners off campus, you know, for some students, their folks might come visit them and take them out for a meal. Let’s try to provide that sort of experience in the community. Let’s do these mentoring programs have peer mentors or faculty and staff mentors. And so, I mean, there’s ways to scale at different different levels which I also think does speak to a concern that I have though is resource disparity.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
We see these programs oftentimes at four year institutions across the US. I think California has the act together a little bit more. Sometimes the community college level, depending, and Kenyon may have more familiarity be able to speak to that. But they’re the support you get very much depends on state on institution or how well resourced that institution is which can certainly be concerning. And my last thought was on trauma. And just how this population tends to have a very high number of adverse childhood experiences. If you take a look at the ACEs survey which I believe is what through the CDC and a few other resources the trauma experiences show up and they also don’t end. So I think one of my biggest things is like foster care. Doesn’t just leave you. And that’s something that I’ve learned and understand.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
It still surprises me all the time. And so my dear friend, Dr. Sarah Gomez wrote her dissertation on transition and transitions to through and out using foster Slosberg, excuse me, transition theory, and found that students described the departure from college, even as a second or third emancipation and trauma all over again, because now I found these connections, I made it work. I had maybe some resources and support, and now it’s all over yet again, and now what’s ahead for me. And so I think institutions oftentimes for those that do have support, don’t do a good enough job preparing for that next step of adulthood of post college experiences. And it gives me chills just thinking about it and in that true concern for, you know, now what are we doing? He picks one piece of the pipeline. How do we fix the next piece of the pipeline?

Royel Johnson:
Yeah. For student affairs practitioners who are perhaps listening and who run programs or are coordinators of programs targeted for student affairs or for youth impacted by falsely care, know that there are researchers available to, to help support evaluation and assessment. I know Angela and I are both part of a team now who are studying two college support programs in kind as a sort of in kind contribution for those practitioners, just to help them give them useful information, create a data infrastructure so that you can be able to routinely sort of evaluate and better serve the needs of the students. And so that there are folks who are willing to support, collaborate, and engage with you in ways that also is sort of mindful of the pressures that student affairs practitioners face and having to illustrate and demonstrate outcomes for a program with limited resources and so forth. And so there are folks out here who are committed to doing that as well.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
And then I’ll just add you know, Angela mentioned you know, having a, like a, like a grassroots start, and I think it’s really, that’s really awesome. However, I feel as though foster youth in any marginalized population that has a program at a university deserves the same level of financial support as the university honors program. Right. NASPA, I forget when it was, but it was when Melissa Harris Perry was a keynote. She said the mission of a university is found not online, but in their line item budget. Right. you know, Angela mentioned you know, funding and community colleges in California have it together. I would just say across, because I work at a UC currently across all the UCs, none of us have institutional funding, we all fundraise. And so not only do I do one-on-one support with my students, not only do I manage an entire office and a food pantry and computer lab and all of the things I also have to fund raise about a hundred thousand dollars a year to keep our doors open.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Right. And for about three years that also included my salary. And, and this is not unique to me. This has many of my colleagues are cross California, and I would, I would even say across the nation. Right. And so, and so what’s happening is then we are we not only do academic advising students support case management, but now we work in development. Right. and so what it does is it that takes away my opportunity to further support these students. And so I would say that yes, a grassroots approach is really important. We too have like an advisory board of folks from across campus, but, but really like the university needs to value these students no different than their honors programs.

Susana Muñoz:
Right. I love that you brought that to this space and it really points to sort of how we, you know, our budgets really really dictate sort of the values of the institution and started with the fact that you have to fundraise for some of your support is, is very telling and quite frankly should not be happening. So this was an amazing, amazing conversation. One of the things that I w we’ve been talking about, and particularly on our podcast, by I know, across the nation is sort of COVID-19 and sort of how did, how did COVID-19 impact this particular group that your, that you’re working with?

Royel Johnson:
Yeah. So it’s ironic that, you know, I was already collecting data before the pandemic kid. So I’ve been engaged in life history interviews with a national sample of youth in foster care, current college students, and then the pandemic hit. And then I sort of wrestled with what are the sort of ethics for engaging in research in this particular time, in what ways can I mitigate harm? How can I be supportive and helpful? You know, some of my students and I is crowdsourced resources that were made being made available during the pandemic. We sent it to all of the students who have been participating in our studies. We increase the stipend for students to $50 you know, per interview and just sort of made ourselves available beyond the sort of expectations fire. But I just offer that because I, you know, doing research in a pandemic is really you know, it’s important that we, that we know and learn how a national global health crisis is impacting some of our most vulnerable populations that said, you know, the things that we learned, aren’t surprising, you know, that, that the pandemic exacerbated existing challenges with housing insecurity, Sarah Goldrich-Rob and her center, the hope center have done great work in bringing a sort of a national portrait of the statistics of youth and fall.

Royel Johnson:
Now, some of the data’s imprecise based on the sort of metrics that they use around financial aid to identify youth in foster care, but generally their research is suggesting that, you know, youth in care in college experience higher rates of homeless as high of rates of food insecurity in ways that other populations don’t, but what I’ve been able to get through the stories of experiences is how they, you know, the support structures, the devalued forms of capital that they have activated to navigate in an inequitable sort of situation. So whether it’s kinship networks to couch surf and stay with a friend or family you know, when the doors of college and universities close in January, it, it created an immediate need that, you know, higher ed folks have to think about, you know, the implications of our actions for all students.

Royel Johnson:
And so when housing close would access to food pantries and dining halls closed, it created an exacerbated needs for students access to mental health resources during the pandemic. If you are already dealing with issues related to depression and social alienation and marginalization, the pandemic likely exacerbated that for some folks. And it’s certainly true for the students in my study, but I’ve been just fascinated by the ways that they’ve created a community virtually the way that the risks that they took also to be in community with people given lack of kind of family support. And we’re working on a paper now to try to document some of this for special issue about the pandemic, but certainly others have insights about this.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
Yeah. And foster club. I know, did a survey and has the specific numbers, some specific numbers, again, from, from their specific survey population around how many young people, you know, lost their jobs during this time lost their, their housing and also the impact of isolation. And I also think about how what’s coming down the pipeline, how did the continued COVID-19 pandemics, we’re not through it impact those that are at the age of transitioning out of foster care or preparing to go to college. And how does that impact how they’re entering into college? You know, for some, it meant having to linger in foster care for maybe longer than they intended, because there wasn’t another option. Maybe they wanted to move out of their foster home and move somewhere else and find a job, or, you know, before going to college. And that was no longer an option, a variety of things happen there, it delayed reunifications for some folks that may have been lined up to be reunited with family and with biological family or family of origin.

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
And so, you know, that can pose some challenges. We might see down the pipeline two years from now, when students start coming to college that you know, talk about, well, I was supposed to be reunited, but it was the way because the pandemic, right, didn’t get to see my siblings that were placed in another home for X period of time. And they get to see me have visitation with my family you know, get into wifi and the need for universal wifi and the limitations around where that’s available and how a variety of, of things there. But there is some federal provisions that allow in the midst of the pandemic, allow you with experience in foster care, to remain in foster care for a longer of time for those that, that can be a safety net in some regards. But again, if that’s, if you’re totally done with the foster care system, because of all the harm that it’s caused you, is that something you want to continue to engage in? Maybe not. So it’s really complicated.

Susana Muñoz:
So that’s, I think that really just sums up a lot of you know, what, what where students are also facing that are also first generation low income. But but yes, so thank you for that. As we conclude this podcast, it’s called Student Affairs Now. I’d love to hear what each of you are pondering questioning troubling now. So I’m gonna start with Kenyon.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
I’m not sure just say if I’m pondering questioning, but as I leave my current you know, position working with foster youth full-time and in the trenches, it feels like sometimes I’ve always kind of had the motto, our motto that if you can learn to serve the most marginalized you can learn to serve everyone. And I, and I, and I do believe that when you, when you look at the directors and coordinators that do the amazing work of serving foster youth, they are some of the more marginalized students on college campuses and these coordinators and directors do amazing work. And I do think there’s a, there is a although kind of our field and kind of the idea of supporting foster youth is kind of relatively new still within higher ed. I think that there’s a lot of best practices that other student affairs practitioners and other units of higher ed can learn from coordinators and directors that support foster youth kind of like I alluded to earlier, you know, we have to do everything from one-on-one advising to case management to developing, you know, and so all these multiple hats that we wear makes us really versatile and agile to, to really serve the unique needs of students, foster youth show up as black, Latin X, LGBTQ.

Kenyon Lee Whitman:
Right. and then on top of all of that, what we’re really trying to do is really fill in that gap of family privilege, right? Like the family that foster care robbed them off, we’re really trying to fill in that gap to our best of ability, right. That, you know, Angela said a a night where you fill out your financial aid application for, for many students who did not grow up in foster care, they would have a trusting parent or an adult to call upon to help them with that application process. And so for many of the students who participate in, in my program for better, or for worse, I often become that person. Right. And so I think there’s a lot that we could learn from student affairs practitioners who support foster youth.

Susana Muñoz:
Thank you. Angela Do you want to go next?

Angela Hoffman-Cooper:
Yeah, I think, you know, as Kenyon was talking, it reminded me of, of all of the things that I am also pondering. I think about when we talk about, you know, the stigma and family privilege and all of these pieces, it makes me think about Kathy Davidson in the new education book says one of the first steps in revolutionizing higher ed is to look at the legacy assumptions and then identify models that respond to different assumptions. And I’ve been using that to think about my, my work and my research and supporting students with experience in foster care. And I think about what are the legacy assumptions of higher education? I think that higher education hasn’t done a good enough job at looking at those legacy assumptions that impact a variety of populations impact all of our students, all of our students of all identities, these legacy assumptions impact.

Susana Muñoz:
But specifically as it relates to students with experience in foster care, and institution’s assumption that there is family privilege, that there is this stable family support structure. It is so ingrained in really, almost every aspect of the going to college experience, the college experience, the graduation experience post-graduation support that sort of expected in the launch to adulthood. And I think it’s important to acknowledge to that, that that assumption of family privilege not only impacts students with experience in foster care. So we got into all of the reasons why that experience is unique, but there are a variety of other populations that this also harms this expectation. And then when we get into the assumption, a legacy assumption, as it relates to who is a person with experience in foster care and the identity construction, that could be a whole other conversation. But I think that there’s hope so when we think about models, responding to other assumptions, I think about campus based support programs as that model is that beacon of how can we do better? How can we do different and reaching out to those offices and staff to better understand how forms and processes and events can, can be improved, but also keeping in mind that these folks, as Kenyon talked about are incredibly taxed and any time that you are taking from them is taking away from serving a direct students. So encouraging folks to, to educate themselves. So that’s really troubling me and something I’m pondering about is how do we examine these assumptions and continue to do better and serve the student population.

Susana Muñoz:
Yeah.

Royel Johnson:
So I am thinking a lot about what does it mean to defund foster care. And I listened to the podcast with Charles Jude and Erin around policing. And, you know, I’m aware of the conversations around defund policing. And if we think about policing as part of a larger carceral apparatus that punishes criminalizes surveils regulates mostly black, LatinX, and other, you know economically disenfranchised populations across a number of identities, foster care is the same. If you think about a system that purports to do good by, you know, removing youth from dangerous, vulnerable sorts of situations to protect it’s a system that desparately impacts black and brown youth youth from, you know low, and it doesn’t deal with root cause issues. So if we think about Kenyon’s point early about poverty is connected to this conversation, residential segregation is connected to deal with the root cause issues, and we don’t need foster care.

Royel Johnson:
We have less issues sort of mounting in homes and families that lead to their placement in foster care. Not even that is sort of a imprecise because what we also know is that communities of color are most disparately impacted when it’s a referral to foster care. So families black and brown families are more likely to be deemed unsafe for kids than white environment. So there’s so many other root issues that foster care doesn’t deal with it. And I, and I’m still wrestling with, what does it mean to defund this system that in effect does more harm for a group in community that just deserves better. So I I’m still figuring it out.

Susana Muñoz:
Yeah, those are really great points to end on. And I know all of you dropped a lot of scholarship in in the conversation. So hopefully we can get those in our show notes that I’m excited to even read them, the scholarship that you’re all producing. So definitely let us know how we can highlight that work here on this podcast. So I thank you so much to all the knowledge that you brought to the space. I appreciate too. I appreciate all the learnings that transpired here. I’m very grateful. I just had to take an opportunity to thank our sponsors, LeaderShape and EverFi. LeaderShape partners with colleges and universities to create transformational leadership experiences, both virtual and in-person for students professionals with a focus on creating a more, just caring and thriving world. LeaderShape offers, engaging learning experiences on courageous dialogue, integrity, equity, resilience, and community building.

Susana Muñoz:
Please visit the LeaderShape website www.LeaderShape.org/virtualprograms or connect with their Facebook or Twitter. And they’re all on the social media. And also we want to give a shout out to EverFi. How will your institution rise to reach today’s socially conscious generation. These students rate commitment to safety, wellbeing, and inclusion, as important as academics and extracurriculars. It’s time to reimagine the work of student affairs as an investment, not as expense. Over 20 years EverFi has been the trusted partner for 1500 colleges and universities with nine efficiency studies behind our courses, you will have the confidence that you’re using the standard of care for students’ safety and wellbeing, with the results to prove, to transform the future of your institution and the community you serve.

Susana Muñoz:
Learn more about at everfi.com/SAnow. Huge shout out to Nat Ambrosey. Who’s our production assistant who makes us all look good here and sound good. If you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at Juniper calm. It’s down below to our homepage to add your name to our MailChimp list while you’re checking out our archives. So again, my name is Susannah Munoz. Thanks again for a great fabulous guests today who shared their knowledge and to everyone who’s listening and watching make it a great week.

Podcasts: 

Leigh, D. (Co-Host), Watkins, R. (Co-Host), Johnson, R.M. (Interviewee). Undergraduates formerly in foster care. [Audio podcast episode]. In Parsing Science https://www.parsingscience.org/2020/02/18/royel-johnson

Articles:

Johnson, R.M. & Strayhorn, T.L. (2019). Preparing youth in foster care for college through an early outreach program. Journal of College Student Development, 60(5), 612-616. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2019.0051

Johnson, R.M., Strayhorn, T.L., & Parler, B.A. (2020). “I just want to be a regular kid:” A qualitative study of sense of belonging high school youth in high school in foster care. Children and Youth Services Review, 111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104832

Johnson, R.M. (2021). The state of research on undergraduate youth formerly in foster care: A systematic review of literature. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 14(1), 147-160 https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000150

Johnson, R.M. (2021). Black youth in foster care and the school-prison nexus. Feature: The Community College Context. Champaign, IL: Office of Community College Research and Leadership. https://doi.org/ 10.13140/RG.2.2.16430.43843/2

Johnson, R.M. (2021). Advancing anti-racist research and praxis on BIPOC youth in foster care. NRC-FAHE: National Collaborative for Foster Alumni and Higher Education. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sJGaS3JajUPiRuxVhiNadrjuQCpiEP4Q/view

Johnson, R.M. (2020) Institutionalizing support for college students impacted by foster care. Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. https://diverseeducation.com/article/167357/