Belmont Students Fight for Foster Care Reform
- Olivia Abernathy
- 45 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Two Belmont students are working for foster care reform through community involvement and legislative action.
“As a Christ-centered university, we are called to care for vulnerable children,” said sophomore Finley White, who works with Belmont Innovation Labs as a social entrepreneurship fellow.
Finley White and freshman Ella Bat-Ami are both channeling their personal experiences in foster care to improve the system for all. One way they’re doing this is by working with Belmont Innovation Labs.
Belmont Innovation Labs is partnering with the Governor’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative and the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services to solve problems in the foster care system.
“Our foster care system is in a state of crisis,” said Bat-Ami, who is a former foster youth. At the age of 18, she aged out of the foster care system and was left to fend for herself.
She took a gap year, where she “wrote, lobbied, and passed the Tennessee Foster Youth Bill of Rights, which established fundamental rights for youth in foster care.”
However, most foster youth aren’t as able to take care of themselves after aging out as Bat-Ami is.
“Foster care sets kids up to fail. Even if they don't actively die in foster care, they end up homeless or incarcerated by the age of 21. I mean, we're setting them up not to be able to live their lives,” said Bat-Ami.
More than 23,000 children age out of the U.S. foster care system every year, and of those 23,000, 20% end up immediately homeless. Only 50% are employed by 24. Very few ever complete post-secondary education.
Belmont Innovation Labs aims to change those statistics. The Innovation Labs studies and researches problems carefully, collects data, and works to understand the root causes of the problem. After studying the foster care system carefully, they created possible solutions.
Currently, the Innovation Labs, the Governor’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative and the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services are working together to implement these solutions.
“When they figure out if those things work, then those get deployed on a bigger scale. We start to roll those into government and philanthropy-type efforts,” said Lori Baker, Executive Vice President for Global Strategy & Programs within Belmont Global.
The solutions created by the Innovation Labs include legislative solutions, community solutions and Belmont solutions. Belmont is working to become more and more foster-friendly, meaning the university specifically provides pathways for former foster youth to attend.
“We're considered a foster-friendly campus and we're writing the playbook for other schools to do what we're doing in Belmont,” said Baker. As Belmont works to create a more welcoming campus for former foster youth, Bat-Ami visits local high schools and educates foster youth on their options after high school and to mentor them, said Baker. Bat-Ami also works with the Tennessee legislature.
Last year, the legislature passed the Tennessee Foster Youth Bill of Rights, which was written by Bat-Ami herself. Before, it wasn’t guaranteed that foster youth would have access to education, healthcare, a caring household or legal representation.
Bat-Ami said that Tennessee has never done a particularly good job taking care of foster youth. “On every legal document that a foster kid has, their legal guardian is the state of Tennessee. That's what it says. The state is a really terrible parent,” said Bat-Ami.
Another problem in the foster care system is that foster families often feel overwhelmed, alone and unable to properly care for their foster children.
One way Belmont tackles this problem is by partnering with Crowded Table. Crowded Table is an organization that provides wraparound care to foster families. They create teams of community members to support foster families by providing meals, gift cards, clothes, and friendship.
White created a version of Crowded Table for Belmont students, named Belmont Tables. Belmont Tables provides the same services as Crowded Table, but it is specifically for Belmont students to get involved with helping foster families.
Her family started fostering when she was a junior in high school.
“And so I just have a heart to see the Lord's vulnerable children be taken care of,” she said.
“Our goal is by providing meals, hopefully childcare, and groceries, the family feels supported externally, so they're able to provide for their child internally, and they last longer as a foster family,” said White.
Baker, White and Bat-Ami do all this work because they say it’s just their responsibility.
“These are our fellow friends and these are kids that are vulnerable and they have really poor outcomes. And so if we invest a little bit, we can see those outcomes change, which means having a completely different life than you would if you were in jail or trafficked or homeless,” said Baker.
Bat-Ami said she wants people to understand that foster youth are the same as all the other children and deserve all the same rights and all the same privileges.
“We're not different. I mean, my foster siblings are the same kids. They're the kids with wiggly teeth playing hopscotch who go on bike rides and say that they forgot to wear their helmet because they just didn't want to wear their helmet. They’re the same as regular children and they deserve a regular childhood – and that's not what we're giving them,” said Bat-Ami.
Written by Olivia Abernathy