Amelia Franck Meyer, on the Future of Foster Care
Hi, I’m Amelia, creator of: Alternatives to foster care that give children an uninterrupted sense of belonging. We’re working to de-bureaucratize the current foster care system via Alia.
Home base: Twin Cities for a long time now. I grew up outside of Chicago.
10 years ago, I said: We need to help children out of stranger care, back into permanent families — their own, whenever possible.
Now, I say: We must do more to prevent abuse and neglect in the first place, design new ways to support parents and keep children safely with their families, not from their families.
Surprising facts: 1) 670,00 American children live outside of their family’s home — a dramatic escalation from 450,000 just 3 years ago. 2) Around 80% are related to neglect due to a parent’s drug or alcohol addiction. 3) The (taxpayer) cost of maintaining the foster care system in its current form: $29.9 billion every year — that includes foster care payments, social services, case workers, medical insurance, and court costs. 4) For every $1.00 invested in foster care, we lose $3.64 — and that’s when we do it well. When we do it the way we typically do it, the loss is around $9.55. Why? Because separating children from their families creates lifelong, intergenerational, predictive harm that sets a trajectory of other costly problems.
Innovations & trends I’m tracking: Including parents and young people in developing the new way of work — in other words, authentically partnering with those who have lived experience; prioritizing primary prevention over secondary prevention so the abuse doesn’t happen in the first place; and nurturing community solutions that support and strengthen families to meet each other’s needs.
My commitment moment: My father has an early history of severe abuse and neglect — I learned about this only in my 20s. Then, early in my foster care work, a 12-year old died in routine surgery. There were three people at his funeral, all of whom were paid strangers. I told myself that no child should have to die alone like that.
My success depends on: The brave, tenacious leaders and innovators working within our child welfare system. They are evolving this new way of working every day in their agencies.
On my bookshelf: Leadership On The Line, by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky — an important book about how to navigate the backlash of disruptive innovation.
What I say to young people: The world needs you, especially now. We have many significant challenges. Pick something that matters and dig in. Be the makers of change.
Learning curve: 1) How to incorporate more voices into our movement without compromising speed and urgency. There’s a tension there. 2) How to extract more joy from living and work — and how to help my team and collaborators do the same.
Dana Mortenson tagged me, now I’m tagging: Megan Marcus, a fellow Ashoka Fellow, to tell us about the future of teacher wellbeing. Megan’s got an important piece of the puzzle of caring for caregivers — in school communities in Texas and elsewhere in her case. There are many lessons and relatable learnings for the parents and families I work with.
Amelia Franck Meyer joined Ashoka in 2014 — read more about her and her impact here. Follow along on Twitter: @alfranckmeyer and @AliaInnovations — and here’s the Alia team in Minneapolis!
