
How a former foster youth is helping others in the system
By Kevin Thurm, acting chief executive officer at the Clinton Foundation
I recently traveled to San Diego with colleagues from the Clinton Health Matters Initiative as part of its work with The San Diego Foundation and the County of San Diego to improve the health and well-being of children and families in the community. Local leaders are coming together to create meaningful change for children and families, particularly those impacted by the foster care system.
Having worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which supports states’ foster care programs, one woman’s story resonated with me in particular. Sarah Pauter grew up in the foster care system, and today she is the founder and CEO of a nonprofit that helps others in foster care create flourishing families of their own.
Here’s Sarah’s story.
Sarah Pauter was one and a half when she was placed into foster care by her parents. She stayed there until she aged out of the system at 18.
“I’m a May baby so I graduated from high school at the same time that I emancipated, losing all of the resources I depended on at once,” Sarah said. She received a $500 check from the county of San Diego, and she went on her way feeling frustrated and angry.
This abrupt transition to adulthood happens to approximately 26,000 young people in the United States every year as they age out of the foster care system.
Today, Sarah is married and has an almost two-year-old son to whom she is determined to give aspects of the life she never had — including a college savings plan (which already started) and a relationship with his grandparents (Sarah reunited with her birth parents before her son was born).


Elements of Sarah’s story are rather uncommon among people who grow up in foster care. Most never reunite with their birth parents, and many struggle to create families of their own.
“There are children in foster care who are victims of abuse and neglect, which means there has to be a perpetrator — and that often ends up being their parents. So the idea of becoming a parent becomes stigmatized. There’s also a sense of shame and guilt that other people place on foster care youth who become parents,” Sarah said.
Sarah wants to change that. That’s why she founded Phenomenal Families, a nonprofit that helps youth in foster care and juvenile probation develop healthy relationships and create strong and flourishing families.
Her journey to this point began ten years ago when she left the system determined to channel the anger she felt to help other foster care youth. Sarah earned a bachelor’s degree in social work and a master’s degree in public policy and administration. She worked in various capacities to help shape policy that would strengthen public child-serving systems. And she also testified before Congress and the California Senate about mental health treatment options for foster care youth.

But a defining moment in her career happened in 2009 while advocating for legislation to extend foster care from age 18 to 21 in California.
“When we were discussing AB 12 [the legislation], someone was concerned that there would be an increase in the number of pregnant and parenting people in the system,” she said.
Sarah didn’t see this as a challenge, but rather as an opportunity.
“People working on issues related to foster care tend to be reactive. Not enough is done to prevent trauma and adversity. To do that, we need to focus on parenting.”
Phenomenal Families helps to normalize parenting for foster care youth by offering classes on parenting and baby caretaking, as well as providing access to peer support groups and other resources for creating healthy relationships and families.
Even something as simple as making sure parents take photos so their children can cherish memories they didn’t have, or calming a mom who — because of her past trauma — fears that her child is going to get taken away from her because he got hurt after falling off his bike, can make a world of difference. This community of support can not only help foster youth build strong families of their own but also help break the cycle of intergenerational involvement in the system.

Sarah’s work is just beginning. She hopes to expand the reach of her nonprofit so that more foster youth can have the best possible start on their parenting journey, including access to transitional housing. We’re so proud to work with people like Sarah, who are working tirelessly to help children and families lead happy and healthy lives.
