Episode 305 | Dear foster kids: We’re going hyper-local to help you

Carol Jenkins:
Hello and thanks so much for joining the Invisible Americans podcast with Jeff Madrick and Carol Jenkins. We address the travesty of child poverty here.

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Jeff Madrick:
There are nearly 13 million children living in serious material deprivation in America and we don't see them. They are our invisible Americans and we plan to change that.

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Carol Jenkins:
A couple of words about us. The podcast is based on Jeff's book, Invisible Americans, The Tragic Cost of Child Poverty. He's an economics writer, author of seven and co-author of another four books on the American economy.

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Jeff Madrick:
Carol is an Emmy-winning journalist, activist and author, most recently president of the ERA Coalition, working to amend the Constitution to include women.

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Carol Jenkins:
And we are longtime colleagues and friends. In this episode, we look forward post the election of 2024 to actions needed to secure help for children living in poverty. Both activist David Ambrose and non-profit leader Kerry Moles of CASA NYC are long-time experts on the subjects. First, we talk with David, author of his memoir, A Police Call Home. He was honored by the Obama White House for his work on the problems of child poverty and foster care. David, now a lawyer and an advocate, spent the first years of his life unhoused, living in the New York City subway system with his mother and his siblings for several years. David, thanks for joining us as we record this a couple of days after the election of 2024. And what I wanted to get from you, your thoughts on where we stand on issues of homelessness, foster care, child poverty, being the expert that you are in all three.

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David Ambroz:
I want to start with the macro and get down to that specific. I think the macro is there's a lot of confusion over what this election was. And to me, the election was not a condemnation of the left's policies, the Democrats' policies. What it was is folks don't feel like the economy is working for them. And unfortunately, they selected something that's not going to deliver what they hope. necessarily, but I don't think it's a condemnation of our direction to lift people up. If we read it that way, we're going to solve the wrong problem. Folks wanted change, and we put forward a candidate that was amazing, but represented for them continuity of an economy that they don't feel is working for them. And whatever our message was, it did not penetrate that and let them know that we do care, that we are working on it. 

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So even though that's all true, it didn't penetrate the hearts, minds, and candidly the voting decisions of our colleagues and citizens, fellow citizens. So what do we do? I think we have to solve the right problem, but we have to work harder to talk to our fellow Americans not down to our past using language of policies and also put forward candidates that are able to communicate that way. Now, specifically, what does it mean for our folk? Kids in poverty, kids in foster care? I don't know yet. What I will say is there's been some important collaboration, always bipartisan, on foster care, historically. In fact, during President Trump's first administration, he worked with folks like, at the time, Congresswoman Karen Bass, to pass an incredibly important piece of legislation that aided the preservation of families, as opposed to putting them in foster care. Just for example, I'm hopeful, but not ignorant. 

And so, I think we need to be vigilant and make sure that we're guarding against anything. But I also, I'm optimistic in that this issue of foster care has always been bipartisan. Overall, in poverty, not as hopeful. We have a very clear way to reduce child poverty in half, which is the extension of child tax credit. And I don't think that's on the menu. When we discuss the tax cuts I've heard so far, even just the kind of scuttlebutt and during the campaign, no one's talking about child poverty. I mean, Vice President Harris was, but honestly, neither side seemed to put that front and center. It was a lot of other issues, which are important issues. I don't think that's going to be part of the tax cut conversation that we're about to have with regards to the extension of the 2017 tax cuts under President Trump, the first administration. Hopeful on one side, ready to work on the other side.

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Carol Jenkins:
So speaking about the child tax credit, we did hear from the Republican side some support for child tax credit. Was it exactly the same thing that, you know, those of us who are activists would think about? And always it includes some sort of work component to it, which seems to negate the health of the child. Talk to us about that, though.

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David Ambroz:
I think we should be ready to compromise, but not our values. So, if there are things attached that we don't like, we may have to swallow that pill. If it means lifting children out of poverty and we have some stuff we don't like, as long as it doesn't tear people down, we should be willing to make that sacrifice. Legislation and progress is an iterative process. It's not one and done. So, do I think some of those add-ons should be there? No. We should lift kids out of poverty irrespective of their parents' decisions or circumstances. That may not be on the menu. 

And so we can wish and hope and be, you know, in the Willy Wonka chocolate factory wanting an Oompa Loompa. It's not coming. So right now, what do I think? I think we should be ready to stomach some things that we wouldn't prioritize in our own administration. And that should be okay. And then we'll fix it. Progress is not linear. And I want to make sure that we prioritize the well-being of kids, not our political righteousness. What do I think? I think those things are not effective. I think we should lift kids out of poverty, irrespective. 

That should be our number one priority. But if it means, as the left, that we need to be thoughtful as we approach that to make sure we're prioritizing not our values, but our children, then we should do that and not walk away from what we believe in, but realize that progress is incremental and we should take that step and get these kids the services and benefits they need. If that's even on the menu, we don't even know that it will be yet.

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Carol Jenkins:
We've had increasing interest in actually action from states and from cities and from private donors to replace, make up for the lack of it on the federal sphere. What do you think about that? Is that where our activity needs to be?

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David Ambroz:
You are speaking so much to my heart. We fetishize Washington, D.C., and we ignore our own community. Many people can't even name a judge in their community. No one goes to school board meetings. We need to get hyper-local and active where we are. Don't fret over what you can't do. Figure out what you can do. And local is where it's at, especially in the next four years. We need to get local. These solutions are practical and available to us. For example, I talk a lot about supporting social workers as they assist foster kids. And I talk about, for example, providing them interest-free home loans. 

Why? They're underpaid and they're churning through, and we need experienced social workers to help kids and families. We don't need the federal government to provide interest-free home loans. The county can decide to do that. We can keep schools open, another example, from 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. We can make them 24-hour child care centers, drop in, add a clinic. We can do these things locally that really address the core needs of kids in distress and families in poverty and communities in crisis. Would I like the assistance of a very active federal government? Sure. If that's not on the menu, stop complaining. And what can we do? Go local, go local.

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Carol Jenkins:
I want to talk with you a little bit about homelessness.

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David Ambroz:
I think our conversation about homelessness is unfortunately very much like a kid having a meltdown at the theme park. We need to go upstream. If we're going to end homelessness, we need to go upstream. As we think about that, we need to remember our humanity. I hear people say all the time, clean it up, which is the conversation I think you're in part referencing in our friends up north. There's no it. When we begin to whole people, we have lost the thread of our own humanity. And when a left community, if a progressive community is putting forward and it platform, we are in trouble. These are human beings in profound distress. So we need to not clean it up. We need to support people and not condemn them from needing assistance and support, many of them suffering from profound mental health issues. It doesn't mean we want them camping out on our sidewalks or making us afraid to be in public spaces, but we cannot lose the language. We cannot adopt the language of folks that otherwise are fellow Americans. We need to go upstream. The solution to homelessness is not more shelter beds. 

That is a solution to folks that are homeless now. What is causing people to even get near it? More than half of the homeless in America today were in foster care at some point. It is the largest correlation, not causation, correlation, meaning just because you're in foster care doesn't mean you're going to become homeless. But we know that 39% roughly of foster kids in America emancipate to homelessness at 18 or 21. So how do we solve homelessness? Let's build a foster dorm at a community college in each state. So foster kids are emancipating to two-year vocational, career technical education, or a transfer degree. Why don't we provide true affordable housing? For example, in Los Angeles, we have roughly 800,000 housing units that are affordable housing. They're rent-stabilized. Did you know that half of them are filled with wealthy people? What if we truly used rent-stabilized apartments for people that need them. 

So we have real solutions on a local level. Politics is important, but it is a tool. And what I ask everyone on the progressive side is to really think about the humanity of these people. Remember the vulnerability. Almost people's crime in our country is visibility. That is their crime. They make us uncomfortable. They remind us of the failures of our policies, and they scare us. We need to confront those fears, reach upstream and help people avoid it. And also remember that most of those people are not there because they want to be there. They want to get out of that situation. There are many of them are children. Let's remember that as we think about cleaning it up. We must remember their common humanity and actually help them out of that situation. They don't want to be there. We don't want them there. Let's get them out of there. But it's this idea of this. We're going to house X number of people this date. That's not a systemic fix. It's important, but we must have a holistic picture.

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Carol Jenkins:
Let's talk about action. What are your action items now?

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David Ambroz:
I cannot more emphasize two ways. First and foremost, go local. And by local, I mean state and county and city or town. Go local. Show up. How many people listening have in their calendar an hour or month or week called civic participation? Put it in your calendar. Figure out what that is for you. Maybe it's going to a meeting. All the meetings are online. Figure that out. Because we can make real change in our communities. And we have just ignored it. We don't know the name of our assembly person. We don't really follow what goes on locally. We don't support the local newspaper, the local NPR station. They're struggling. They're laying people off in Los Angeles at LAS, formerly KPCC. In LA, they're laying people off. So what can you do? Be upset, but get active, show up at a meeting, figure something out, run for office, and then support local media. It is so important that we support our local media as a bulwark against what's coming. Second, don't forget our friends across the country. 

There are certain peoples that are afraid, and they have every reason to be afraid. Women's rights are probably going to be under attack. Immigrants. There are all sorts of folks that are afraid right now. So if you have the bandwidth, either through volunteer or money, get active in those too. But I put those in that order. We have this cancer in America of learned helplessness. I can't do anything. Cynicism. Cynicism for me is a four-letter word. It's like blowing smoke of a cigarette into the face of a baby. It's disgusting. We don't have the luxury of cynicism. Vulnerable people, children, all these other folks, they need us not to be cynical. What can you do? Change the world. That's what you can do. That's what you must do. And how you do that is, is unique to you. So get local first and foremost. And then if you can also spread the love, however you can, time, money, attention, uh, federally. And then the third thing I would just say is talk to each other. I just returned from a conference of folks that don't necessarily love everything about me. They invited me to speak to them. 

And I asked in advance for a meeting with the CEO of the National Organization. And I just said, hey, you know, just as an FYI, I'm a homosexual Jew, baptized Catholic, formerly homeless foster child who thinks housing is a human right, just so we're all on the same page. And he's like, yeah, I know. And I said, why? And he said, your approach. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, you always talk about can we focus on what we agree on and work on that. And I say that all the time. Can we agree we don't want kids that leave foster care to die? Because in America, you're more likely to die when you leave foster care than go to community college. Can we agree that girls coming out of foster care should not be sex trafficked? That's highly likely. That's the number one source of sex trafficked women in America is foster care. 

So he liked that approach. Can we agree on certain things? It doesn't mean I like everything they stand for. But was it Obama who said we can disagree without being disagreeable? I know it seems hard. And change is hard, but I flew, I took a red eye, I spoke to over a thousand people, and I looked out at that audience, they listened to me for 90 minutes. And I got a standing ovation, and I signed my books after, and I thought, gosh, maybe one or two of them. Maybe one or two. So those are the three things I would say. Be upset right now, and then take action.

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Carol Jenkins:
And as we close out, I'm a bit alarmed, a lot alarmed about the calls going into the LGBTQ suicide lines. Speak to us about that, because as we all know, trans people, LGBTQ people have been in the bullseye of a lot of anger. How do we deal with that?

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David Ambroz:
Such an important point. It seems that every presidential election every few years, the LGBTQ community becomes the stepping stone which people reach for the higher office. They step on the backs of gay marriage. They step on the backs of people in the military. They fear and make us, they make our fellow Americans afraid of us. They otherize us. They make us afraid for our children. What I am always frustrated by I don't agree with that. But what I'm always frustrated by is how readily we on the left dance to that song. Instead of having a national conversation this past election about 10 million children living in abject poverty, never came up. We talk about a small minority of issue, and that's because that's what they wanted us to talk about. And they have got us dancing like marionettes. It doesn't mean we should ignore it, because those people, my people, are under attack. But we must get to a place in our country where we don't accept that. We must set the terms of the debate and the conversation where we talk about 10 million children, not fear mongering, but talk about that. 

Because I think Americans are better than this. And when I talk to them one-on-one or even in the group I mentioned, we are. We need to make sure those people are protected. Point blank. Progress on the queer side of the equation has been dramatic and fantastic. But it fits and starts, isn't it? At the same time, trans communities under attack. We've also seen Sarah McBride, the first openly trans woman elected to Congress. Amazing. And that's really where change is going to happen in terms of when people start sitting next to someone next to them. It's really hard to spread that hate, as we've seen with the L and the G of the LGBTQ community, support those organizations, too, and especially queer youth, we know in foster care, over 35% of kids in foster care identify as queer. Over 35%. These issues are intrinsically tied together. And then on top of that, you layer race. You know, women of color that are trans are under incredible threat in the country. 

So all these issues intersect. You mentioned it, thank you for mentioning it. That's yet another vulnerable community we need to be focused on and make sure that we support and protect. But at the same time, if we do not nourish ourselves on any of the progress we've made over the last four years, we are not going to be ready for the fight ahead of us. So I look at it and I go, this week, California repealed Prop 8. My fellow citizens, by a super majority, decided that we should have equal rights. When less than, what was it, 2008, they voted overwhelmingly to strip me of my right to marry. So we can make progress. We have made progress. And we must nourish ourselves in that if we're going to be ready for the fight. Otherwise, you're just not going to be able to finish the marathon. This is a marathon that never ends. And we've got to make sure we're pacing ourselves and doing the right work to nourish ourselves, support, love each other, get active. Nothing feels better than when something you work on gets done. Go local, get it done and support people.

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Carol Jenkins:
David Ambroz, thanks so much for being with us today.

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David Ambroz:
My honor. Thank you so much.

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Carol Jenkins:
Kerry Moles is the Executive Director of CASA New York City, the non-profit organization that provides special attention to the most complicated foster care situations in the city. CASA NYC provides one-on-one volunteers to over a thousand children a year who need that special attention. Kerry, thanks so much for being with us today, and thanks for the tremendous work you do with our foster kids in New York City. Tell us, for our audience, the services that you provide for almost 1,200 kids this year you're working with.

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Kerry Moles:
Happy to be here with you, Carol. CASA NYC stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates of New York City. We are appointed, we are a volunteer-based organization, first of all, so our staff recruits and trains and supervises volunteers who are appointed by New York City Family Court judges to work with children and youth who are involved in the New York City child welfare system, most of whom are in foster care. But we also work with a smaller group of young people who are at very high risk of foster care placement. 

So, in those cases, judges are appointing us to help keep the kids out of foster care and help the families stabilize so that foster care isn't necessary. And then we also work with a large number of young people who are aging out of foster care. And at age 21, young people are discharged from the foster care system and have to make their way on their own. And our advocates serve as mentors and sort of help guide them into living independently and hopefully successfully as young adults.

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Carol Jenkins:
So many of the people who are living on the streets now are former foster care children. Talk with us about that. And I think that, you know, the percentage of between 31 and 46 percent of foster care young people will find themselves homeless at some point or actually by the time they're 26 years old.

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Kerry Moles:
Yeah, former foster youth are at very, very high risk of homelessness. And in New York, at least, it is not legal for the child welfare system to discharge a young person to homelessness, so they have to be housed when they're discharged, which means that sometimes we're working with several young people who are still in foster care at age 23, 24, sometimes even 25, because they haven't been able to find housing. However, once they are discharged, sometimes they're placed in housing that isn't necessarily stable. 

So, therefore, they're at very high risk of homelessness, and that really stems from the fact that they tend to have a poor education. They haven't gotten a lot of employment skills. If they have mental health issues, you know, they have very high rates of trauma. So, all of those things lead to instability in employment and therefore in housing. So part of what CASA does, part of what a CASA volunteer does is try to help young people establish really permanent affordable housing through, you know, one of a number of systems that we have, at least here in New York City, to try to support people who don't necessarily have the ability to pay market rent. And that's probably one of the biggest buckets of work that we do, both for youth aging out of foster care and for parents who have children in foster care who are trying to bring their children home to them. The housing situation is really a big barrier to stability.

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Carol Jenkins:
So it seems, Kerry, that all of the work that you're doing with the children as they come into the system, the work that your organization is attempting to do is to prevent that aging out issue. So talk with us, how old are most of the children when they reach you and your volunteers?

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Kerry Moles:
So we work with children from age zero up to their discharge from foster care and beyond. So really up until age 26. And you're absolutely right. The goal is to prevent the problems that come with young people being discharged from foster care without having permanent families and without having the stability that they need in order to be able to live, you know, safe and stabilized. So, the longer young people are in foster care, the more trauma they experience, the poorer are their outcomes, the poorer their educational outcomes, the poorer their mental health outcomes. So, our first goal is to either prevent young children from going into foster care in the first place, whatever age that is, and that more children go into foster care at, you know, younger ages, but once they're in foster care, they often stay in foster care for many years and age out of the system. The second goal is if they're in foster care to get them back home with their parents whenever possible. 

So, we work very closely with parents who have lost their children to the system to help them stabilize. There's a myth that children in foster care are there because their parents are abusing them. And that is, the vast majority of the cases, that is not true. Only maybe 15 or 20% of the time is a child physically or sexually abused. The rest of the time, children are removed typically because their parents don't have the resources to provide stability. There's housing issues. There's mental health concerns. There might be domestic violence or addiction. But with the support of a CASA volunteer, they're able to stabilize and provide safe and stable homes so their children can come home to them. And then when that can't happen, we help them try to help facilitate adoption or permanent guardianship with another safe and stable family. However, unfortunately, in New York City, about 500 young people age out of foster care every year and do not have permanent families to support them. So those are the ones that are at very high risk. of homelessness and, you know, all the other outcomes that come along with that.

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Carol Jenkins:
Yeah, I read some quote that apparently many feel that their homelessness begins when they enter the foster care system. I mean, fortunately, you all are there to help with that in itself, that state of homelessness that just perpetuates itself.

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Kerry Moles:
You can't separate homelessness, obviously, from unemployment, from mental health issues, and lack of mental health care, right? They experience just very high levels of trauma, coupled with poor educational supports. Kids in foster care have often moved from one foster home to another foster home. They go through many, many placements. That means there are many, many schools. Typically, between placements, they lose a lot of school, and they have very low rates of high school graduation. I think only 2 to 4 percent of young people who've been in foster care graduate from college. So, obviously, that all contributes to the homelessness.

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Carol Jenkins:
I was just reading about the HUD grant. I guess it's $15 million directed to the foster care system. I don't know, $15 million sounds like virtually no money at all. What do you think the impact of that, you know, a grant like that coming from HUD?

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Kerry Moles:
Yeah, I mean, it seems $15 million spread out to the entire nation, right? And the 400,000 kids that are in foster care every year in this country is not a lot of money. And I really can only speak to New York City's systems. There are a number of systems that are put in place to give extra support to young people who've been in foster care. People in foster care aging out of the system have priority access to public housing, to our New York City Housing Authority apartments. There are some supportive housing programs available, but not enough. Young people we work with are typically on wait lists for years often. 

And then when they do get into the housing, it's not good, it's not healthy, it's not safe. One of the young people we work with actually authored a report, and I just saw it, you read it yesterday, about supportive housing for foster youth in New York City and the state of that housing. And sometimes young people would rather, you know, take their chances living on the streets or in the open market or, you know, couch surfing than living in the conditions that they're expected to live in in some of the city-supplied housing.

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Carol Jenkins:
Well, I see on your website you're looking for volunteers. Talk to us about the relationship between your volunteers and your kids.

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Kerry Moles:
So CASA volunteers are an incredibly special group of people. We have about 350 volunteers right now, this year, and they are anyone from age 21 up, come from all walks of life. They do not have to have any particular training. They don't need to be social workers. They don't need to be attorneys. They just need to really be committed. to showing up for young people. They go through an intensive screening process, a lot of background checks, interviews, reference checks, and then if they're accepted to a training class, they go through about 40 hours of pre-service training, and then they get assigned to a supervisor who is a staff member who is typically a social worker or an attorney who's a professional who guides them every step of the way. And they get appointed to the case of, it could be a case of a young child, it could be a case of a 12-year-old, it could be a young person aging out of the system. And the expectation is that they spend at least three to five hours a week working on that case. 

And it is an incredible commitment that they make and what I always tell them in the pre-service class, my job is to go in there before they finish the class and say, okay, you've been through all this training, you've committed all this time, but now it's time to decide if you're really going to be able to show up. Because the worst thing you can do is let us assign you to a case of a child and then say, ah, you know, I made a mistake. I don't really have the time that I thought I was going to have. So it's really about having the time and the energy and the compassion to show up. And they do whatever it takes. You know, they fill the plugs that exist in the child welfare system. I can give you an example of a case that I was just talking to one of our staff members about.

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Carol Jenkins:
You definitely want to hear it. Go ahead.

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Kerry Moles:
So, this case of a child who is an eight-year-old boy who is in foster care. His parents' rights were terminated. All of his siblings were adopted, but he wasn't adopted. And he is in a group home, which is not a place that an eight-year-old should be, but because of, you know, whatever logistical issues in the system, he's in a group home. CASA was assigned to this boy, and she reached out to his school. And he has some developmental disabilities, so she went to school. She talked to his teacher. She talked to the therapist. She talked to everybody at his school. This boy comes to school every day. We send home notices in the backpack and nobody takes the notices out of the backpack and checks them. He always comes back to school with the notices still in the backpack. 

And he's the only kid who comes to school without a snack every day. He's the only kid who, during summer school, once a week we go swimming. But nobody puts a bathing suit in his backpack, so he doesn't get to go swimming. And when we have teen spirit day and everybody has to wear a red t-shirt, he doesn't wear a red t-shirt. So he doesn't participate in these things. So the advocates said, this is ridiculous. Send those notices to me. And every Wednesday, I'm going to call the group home and I'm going to make sure that they put those swim trunks in his backpack. And if they don't, I'm going to go out and buy a bathing suit and I'll bring it to the school. That's the kind of one-on-one attention. 

So it's a small example. And there's a whole other story involved with this particular child. This advocate actually found a placement for him because he'd been languishing in this group home And turns out one of the staff members at the school was interested in adopting him and had reached out to the agency, but the agency just never got back to her about it. So, now the child is being able to participate in the regular activities and not being left out of the activities that all his peers are participating in. He got to do those things. He's actually in the process of doing weekend visits with this educator who decided they wanted to adopt this child. And hopefully that adoption is going to take place and this child is going to, you know, be able to go on and be in a much different place. And that is all because we had a volunteer. This is not to knock any of the people working in the agency, but the people who work in the child welfare system, they have many cases. 

Their job is to get kids into placements and to make sure that they're physically safe and to deal with the court case, right? But not necessarily to make sure the child has a bathing suit. I mean, they should, right? But for many reasons, that often doesn't happen. So, those are the things that fall through the cracks. So, a CASA volunteer who has one case, they're paying attention to one child, they're trying to give that child the attention that they would give their own children, is able to make sure that the child is able to live a normal and healthy life and hopefully be adopted and have a safe and permanent home going forward.

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Carol Jenkins:
Oh my goodness, what a story. What a story.

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Kerry Moles:
And that's one example. Every single case is different, so it's always hard to describe what a CASA volunteer does because it's really never needs to be done in that individual case.

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Carol Jenkins:
And you've been doing this work for many years in many capacities. And what's your prognosis on how we ever, I don't know, solve this problem? How do you not have an eight-year-old like that that has to be rescued in the miraculous way that you do?

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Kerry Moles:
The issues often feel like they're intractable. We have a youth advisory board that we work really closely with. When we ask them what they think needs to happen to improve the system, nine times out of ten, the response is you need to blow the system up and start it over again, because there have been so many efforts at reform in the child welfare system. There are definitely places where I've seen improvements. I think one of the most important things is that we need to shrink the system. There are so many kids in foster care who don't need to be in foster care, wouldn't need to be in foster care if we could solve the problems in our communities, right? If we could give families the support they needed, if they had access to mental health care, if they had access to affordable housing. if they had access to health care and to employment and all those things, then 90% of the kids who are in foster care wouldn't need to be in foster care. 

And then that small percentage of kids who have parents who really are truly abusive or whose parents are not alive and who don't have family members to take care of them, we could put a lot more resources into taking care of them. You know, there's a big shortage of foster parents in this country. Nobody's quite been able to figure out how to recruit more foster parents. There are a lot of foster parents that do incredible work out there, but the young people I talk to, the young adults who I talk to, often feel like the foster homes they were in were not nurturing, were not caring. They often think that foster parents were in it for the money. 

And again, I'm not saying that's all foster parents. I think there are some incredibly good foster parents out there, but that's the experience of the people that I hear from, unfortunately. I think there are a lot of people who'd like to be foster parents. But the number of hoops you have to jump through and the lack of support that you get as a foster parent really deters a lot of people. I think that there are many things that we could do to make the system better, but most importantly, prevent the need for foster care.

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Carol Jenkins:
Wow. Wow. And for those who want to volunteer, give us your website.

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Kerry Moles:
casa-nyc.org. We have information sessions twice a month, so you can go to our website and you can just sign up for an information session to learn more about it. And in New York City particularly, and I should say that there are 950 CASA programs nationally, so no matter where you live, there's probably a CASA program that you can go to. We're particularly looking to recruit more black and brown volunteers to better reflect the young people we serve, because black people in particular are extremely disproportionately represented in foster care. We are looking for more men to volunteer, and we are really trying to expand our services on Staten Island. So, we welcome everyone who's interested and willing to volunteer. We definitely need your support. But if you fit into those categories, please tell your friends and please come visit our website. We'd love to meet you.

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Carol Jenkins:
Kerry, thank you so much again for the tremendous work and for this conversation. And give our best to that eight-year-old.

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Kerry Moles:
I absolutely will. Thank you for the work that you do to make people aware of the issues that we're having with this population.

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Carol Jenkins:
Thanks so much for joining us on the Invisible Americans podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. But we urge you to visit our website for transcripts, show notes, research, and additional information about our guests and their work. That's www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Please follow us on social media and our new YouTube channel. And our blog posts are up on Medium as well as our website. That's www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Jeff and I will see you the next time.

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