Innovative Thinking in Foster Care: Changing the Paradigm

We all want children to succeed in life. To do this, a child needs a firm foundation and relationships that are healthy and for the long haul. Children thrive when individuals care. Foster care affects over 600,000 children each year in the United States. It needs innovation from the government and from our communities, coming together to better serve children. If we don’t champion innovation, we have some terrible statistics. A third of human traffick victims lived in foster care. Their relational needs were not met nor were they able to establish a stable young adulthood. Academic standardized scores are lower across the board for these children, lower than any other group, even lower than for children struggling through poverty.

With innovation, children begin to thrive. There is positive talk and solutions building for keeping children out of foster care unless absolutely necessary. But what happens when children are forced to enter foster care?  How do we help an unstable situation become immensely more stable?  Let’s hear from David White, the CEO & Founder of Fostering Great Ideas, a nonprofit that changes perspectives and builds systems that develop long-term relationship and restores dignity to children in the foster care system.   David comes to us with a Masters degree in corporate finance and in child welfare, an unusual combination for this work. He had an “early mid life crisis” at age 34, launching his career to “go change the world for the better.” The website of his work is here at Fostering Great Ideas: https://fgi4kids.org/. The work is national with one “great idea” across 14 states now and with most ideas still only in SC, but ready to launch further.