It was the annual high school wrestling tournament that Lily Dorman Colby looked forward to most when she was a teen in foster care two decades ago.
At the time, she was an All-American wrestler at Berkeley High. More than the actual competition, Colby was excited about the opportunity the tournament gave her to see a younger brother, who was also in foster care, but had been placed in a separate home.
Though about 10 miles separated their two Northern California foster homes, Colby only saw her brother Ari during once-a-month visits that were never long enough. But at the tournament hosted by her brother’s high school, she could look out from the wrestling floor and find his face in the crowd, and afterward, catch up a bit. For Colby, who spent six years in foster care, those small snatches of shared time meant everything.
Now an attorney, she wants foster youth nationwide to have the chance she was never given to build better relationships with their siblings, who can provide critical support and stability for children affected by family disruption and trauma. This month she publicly launched a nonprofit, the National Network for Fostering Sibling Connections, which aims to strengthen legal protections for siblings to ensure they are placed in foster homes together, and when that isn’t possible, that they remain connected.
“I have really close relationships with my siblings now, but I don’t get to have those birthdays back; I don’t get to have those holiday meals back,” said Colby. She is also the founder of another organization, With Lived Experience, which provides training and technical assistance to agencies and courts regarding the needs of foster youth in the child welfare system.
Around the country, there are numerous nonprofits that work to nurture sibling bonds among children in foster care. In some states, like Colorado, Washington and California, siblings can spend time together at special summer camps where they can kayak, go horseback riding and celebrate missed birthdays.
But Colby said the California-based nonprofit is the only national organization that specifically focuses on legal issues of siblings in foster care, filling a current gap. The network is a coalition of advocates, judges, attorneys, caregivers and those with lived experience who aim to drive policy reform, improve legal representation, and raise public awareness of the issue.
In the months ahead, the organization’s members intend to analyze state policies involving sibling connection and develop tools — such as sample legal motions — to support attorneys, Colby said. The group, which has met monthly since the fall, hopes to offer training on the topic and support legislation, programs or litigation that further sibling rights.
Nationally, between 53% and 80% of foster youth live separated from siblings, according to a 2020 analysis by Casey Family Programs. A resource for attorneys from the American Bar Association suggests that a failure to nurture sibling relationships can deprive children of a crucial source of support while in foster care and leave some with unresolved grief.
“It is not typical for brothers and sisters not to be raised together under the same roof, and it is unacceptable that this is normalized in our child welfare systems.”
— Lily Dorman Colby, National Network for Fostering Sibling Connections
Meanwhile, foster children placed with siblings are more likely to avoid placement disruptions and have a greater chance of reunification, adoption or guardianship, according to research cited by the federal Administration on Children, Youth and Families’ Children’s Bureau. Children who enjoy positive relationships with their brothers and sisters are also less likely to suffer behavioral problems, such as anxiety and depression. The protection of sibling connections is consistently a top priority cited by foster youth-led advocacy groups across the country, Colby said.
What’s more, federal law calls for protections regarding sibling placements and visitations. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 requires states to make “reasonable efforts” to maintain sibling connections by placing the children in the same home and by ensuring frequent visitation or ongoing contact, unless either would endanger the siblings. The 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act allowed states to waive restrictions on the number of children who can be placed in a single foster home, as a way to keep larger siblings groups together in the same household. And many states have additional laws meant to help siblings in foster care stay together.
But there are many systemic barriers that prevent kids from seeing their siblings, Colby said. The attorneys who represent foster children in court may not always have the bandwidth or training to advocate for greater sibling contact. Bureaucratic hurdles for caregivers and timelines for the placement for foster youth can often result in sibling separation.
“It is not typical for brothers and sisters not to be raised together under the same roof,” Colby said, “and it is unacceptable that this is normalized in our child welfare systems.”
Jordan Bartlett, co-founder of the nonprofit Foster Greatness and a fiscal sponsor of the new network, said the group will have a big impact, by developing a set of national best practices for siblings in foster care. In his work as a court-appointed special advocate and with the young people he’s met through Foster Greatness, most youth tell him they weren’t able to see their brothers and sisters enough, or that they lost touch with them.
“This can really set the standard in all 50 states of what sibling practices should look like for everyone working with this population,” Bartlett said.
The issue has marked his life as well. Adopted out of foster care as an infant, Bartlett grew up in “a house full of love and support.” But after baseball practice during his freshman year at Rollins College, a woman came up to him and told him she was his sister. She had endured a painful stint in foster care, battled substance abuse and incarceration, and had only recently learned about him.
Despite some initial apprehension, Bartlett nurtured a relationship with her over Facebook messages and calls. But he sees how critical it is to establish sibling connections for young people at an earlier age, when they can soothe the trauma of being separated from home and as they move out into the world as independent adults.
“It’s so important in this space where many young people have so little connection to anybody,” Bartlett said. “If we’ve got the ability to make that connection with someone that is part of their family, we need to do everything we can to make that happen.”
