FosterPower Leverages Tech to Demystify the Law and Empower Foster Families

By Dorna Moini

While well-meaning resources about foster children’s rights (and guardians’ powers) are out there, like many legal “things” they are often dense and difficult to sift through. Taylor Sartor, creator, co-founder, and legal director of FosterPower, experienced this firsthand when she served as the guardian ad litem (GAL) volunteer for two teenagers.

“I was impossibly frustrated in trying to find information online about what I could do or should do as a GAL volunteer. Was I supposed to take the kids to the doctor when they got sick? Or was it the kids’ case manager or the group home where the kids lived who had that responsibility? Both said it was the others’ job.”

Taylor knew that the answers to her questions were out there but wading through the legislation and statutes to find the answers, even as a law student at the time, wasn’t easy. She knew that there had to be a better way, so she got working.

What Taylor ended up creating, with the help of Rastko Durica, David Gray and Heather Tager, was a powerful and accessible product.

Meeting the Audience Where They Are, and Putting in the Omnichannel Hustle to Reach Them

The first iteration of FosterPower began as a printed informational pamphlet for teenagers in foster care titled “Know Your Rights — an Informational Guide for Teenagers in Foster Care.” These pamphlets then evolved into the website fosterpower.org after Taylor noticed that the teenagers who received the physical pamphlets would lose them. While the pamphlets distilled dense law into digestible segments, there was still an unaddressed problem: the “accessibility of law.”

FosterPower has since grown to be a technological hub with robust resources, including explanations of relevant laws, educational videos for both the foster youth and the foster guardians, and a phone app for on-the-go access, which was launched within the last year.

FosterPower currently boasts:

• 4,000+ app downloads
• 10,000+ website visits
• 430 people trained (youths and adults)
• 110,000 videos viewed

David Bonebrake, Deputy Director of the Office of Program Performance at the Legal Services Corporation, was immediately impressed with FosterPower’s vision and execution and isn’t surprised at its success.

“FosterPower is successful because, in addition to recognizing that foster families needed access to better information about their rights and benefits, the whole FosterPower team understands the importance of getting this information to their target demographic in a digestible way,” he said. “FosterPower knows that much of its target audience is foster kids, and its user-centered design reflects this. Both the website and the app employ fun design elements.”

While building a great product is one part of the challenge, getting it into the right hands is arguably just as big of a challenge. Bonebrake praised the tremendous hard work, hustle and creativity this team put into getting widespread attention for FosterPower, noting that the team is constantly “adapting to whatever data they are receiving from their outreach efforts on TikTok, in-person, at conferences, and other events.”

In fact, while LSC encourages all Technology Initiative Grant (TIG) grantees to do outreach, Bonebrake noted that the FosterPower team’s work “really changed [his] perspective on the size of these grants.” Grantees need to be even more ambitious than they think to make their projects successful because “FosterPower’s consistent multi-channel marketing and outreach shows us how much work is involved in getting the product to the right audience.”

Information + Tech = Self Advocacy

FosterPower continues to leverage tech and recently rolled out another resource for Florida foster youth: the Fund Request Letter Form, which enables foster youth to submit fund requests directly to their case managers for needed or desired items and services.

Like the website and app that replaced the physical pamphlets, the Fund Request Letter Form provides a streamlined, accessible and easy-to-use process for foster youth to learn their rights under Florida law and advocate for themselves. By answering a simple questionnaire, the form auto-populates a letter that the foster youth can then send to their respective case manager.

“The Fund Request Letter Form was created to directly address an area of concern we were hearing at the various events we attended,” Taylor explains. “We’re proud of this rollout and hope to use tech to continue to create solutions to real problems.”

FosterPower has also been praised by the judiciary and members of the community for their impact. As Judge Essrig of the 13th Judicial Circuit of Florida noted, “To have the proper information that’s been verified that you know is correct and easily available at your fingertips–I think is just amazing.”

Joining the Fight

While FosterPower has done incredible work in expanding access to reliable legal information and tools for foster youth, its leaders will be the first to say that their work is far from done.

“We’re really excited and proud about the tools we have been able to create. But, as anyone on our team will say, there is still so much to be done to demystify the foster care system. We have a pipeline of other projects that are deep in the works and are so grateful for the generous grants and donors, including the Legal Services Corporation, that enable us to do the work we do.”

To support the work of FosterPower, visit their website at https://fosterpower.org/donate/ and follow the instructions to contribute.

Dorna Moini is the CEO of Gavel, a no-code platform for document automation and building legal products. She is on the Legal Services Corporation’s Emerging Leaders Council and teaches the Legal Innovation Lab at USC Gould School of Law.