“It Takes a Village…”

“It takes a village to raise a child,” this now, well-known African proverb aptly describes exactly what is needed in order to help transitioning teens from foster care become happy, healthy and successful adults. Adults who some day will be raising the next generation of little villagers.

In our first installment of It Takes a Village, we discussed Step I: Community Needs Assessment/Environmental Scan. In our second and third installments, we began discussing Step II: Prioritizing Strategic Needs & Issues and Operationalizing Plans. Understanding the most pressing needs and issues of the village will allow us the opportunity of addressing them the best way possible and to finding solutions.

Under Step II, we have discussed the educational life of a young villager as well as how life skills and daily normalcy matter in their life. Today, we will look at Life-long Connections and Relationship Development – in many ways, the most important aspect of not just our own personal villages but for young adults transitioning from care as well.

Who do you count on in life to be there for you? Who constitutes your family, core as well as extended? Who are your closest friends? Who are your mentors? Who are your colleagues or acquaintances? What is the shopkeeper’s name down at your local 7-Eleven? Or how about your neighbor’s for that matter?

The answers to the above questions constitute the inner-circle of your village. The people mentioned are closest in blood, friendship, “likes,” or in geographical proximity. The more of these folks you can count on and also lend a hand, the more supportive a village can be.

We count on our close relationships for many things in life: for love and understanding; for modeling on how to act; for guidance in helping us learn new things – about ourselves, our surroundings, and our future; for spiritual support as we shape our own beliefs; for emotional support as we develop a healthy psyche; and for financial support (and in the early days of our life for a roof over our head and for food on the table). These relationships are part parental, part sisterly, part friend, part teacher, part priest. We are shaped by them as well as shape them.

These relationships will become our safety and support network; they are and will become our personal village.

Many young people who are born into a life of abuse or neglect begin in familial villages that are broken; ones full of pain. Children who are harmed by those closest around them begin to fear others. They begin to put up walls to relationships feeling much safer behind them. Only to find that later in life, these walls prevented them from establishing healthy relationships that would some day help them survive and thrive.

Bounced from house to house in care, a young villager does not have the opportunity to develop as many longstanding, caring relationships. Attending a dozen schools in a lifetime or living with 7 different families does not create the atmosphere suitable for developing your own village of caring folks. The child welfare realm now has a much better understanding of this – of the huge importance of healthy relationships and life-long connections. And to this end, we have now been able to implement some building blocks which will help young people who live in out of home care.

Communities are focusing on prevention and family preservations where they can in order to use natural relationships of family and friends as the starting point. Where that is not possible, villages are keeping children and young people closer to home, closer to surroundings, closer to family and friends. The village leaders in child welfare are crafting strategies to keep a young person in the same placement when possible or to keep a young person in their same school or church, synagogue, or mosque. These village elders now look toward natural occurring relationships, especially those which a young villager identifies as important in their life.

We try to keep care managers more long-term in the life of a young person. Further, we look for mentoring arrangements to further add to the “community of people” for whom a young person must rely. And finally, the foster care village, the one found inside of every community in America, now knows that we must continue to be a guiding part of the lives of young people as they transition out of care and into adulthood. We now know that to offer this guidance, we must be there for them; not just in spirit or as lender, but be there in person.

Finally, to wrap up this edition of village-speak, a healthy village for a transitioning teen from care calls for healthy relationships for these young villagers. Relationships that are diverse in the specific attributes offered as well as with the possibility of becoming life-long.