This year, the Youth Voices Rising team at Fostering Media Connections was proud to work with dozens of current and former foster youth with child welfare, homelessness and juvenile justice experience to share their stories in writing and at online events.
As 2025 comes to an end, here is a collection of some of our top Youth Voices Rising pieces from the year.
America’s Favorite Pastime is Failing Native Foster Youth by Baz Hawk
Every time they were moved into foster care, Baz Hawk writes, it was to a non-Native home, despite all of the attention paid to the Indian Child Welfare Act in the state of Minnesota.
“My story is only one of the many failures of the system,” they write. “I wonder about the other Native fosters who had to experience the same or even worse for longer.”
Sealed Records and Sealed Truth by April Miller
Miller entered foster care after her father died in 2011 and was then adopted. She was left with only scattered memories of her dad, with no access to obtain her birth certificate or any other records.
“This lack of transparency removes the power of choice — the choice to connect, the choice to understand, and the choice to heal,” she writes. “No one else should have the right to decide if I get to know where I came from or why. Our past should not be hidden from us. It should be ours to own.”
Hustle for Healthcare: Survival of the Overlooked by Bianca Bennett-Scott
Bennett-Scott writes about how critical Medicaid coverage was in her early 20s as she dealt with aging out of foster care and losing her grandmother. Restrictions on Medicaid in the Big Beautiful Bill will hit young people like her hard, she argues.
“When hustle betrayed me, Medicaid helped me,” she writes. “It didn’t shame me for falling behind or ask me to prove I was worthy. It gave me support and dignity. When survival nearly took me out, Medicaid was the reason I made it through.”
The Kids Are Not Alright, Neither Is Their Grocery Bill by Loe Renee
Renee, a former foster youth living in Los Angeles, writes here with a flourish about the uncertainty and unfairness she sees as food insecurity has become a rising problem in her city, especially after changes to food stamp benefits passed as part of the Big Beautiful Bill.
“As I walk down the path to my local food bank — a different place yet the same situation I have experienced before — I enter into the sea of varied people neatly filed,” Renee writes. “I mentally take stock of the emptiness in my cabinet.”
Sibling Separation in Foster Care Makes Us Scared to Report Abuse at Home by Puppet Mills
Puppet Mills was removed from her home when she told people about abuse, but her siblings stayed behind. The lesson learned, once she went home: reporting meant losing the only connection she really cared about.
“Someone should’ve wanted better for us and made sure that if we were taken in, we wouldn’t be separated,” Mills writes. “Instead, I did what I had to do to keep us together.”
Remove the Barriers to Solving Youth Homelessness by Destiny Jackson
Jackson dealt with homelessness while striving to graduate high school, make it to college, and control her Type-1 Diabetes. She outlines concrete actions that her home state of Georgia must take to do better.
“To every young person navigating homelessness in Georgia: you are not alone. Your struggle is valid. Your health matters,” she writes. “Your voice matters. And your future is still yours.”
Overprescribed and Overlooked: Foster Care’s Drug Crisis by Silas Rosfield
“Foster youth are facing an epidemic of inadequate and inaccessible mental health care treatment,” Rosfield writes. A primary consequence of that epidemic, he argues, is the continued overprescribing of potent psychiatric drugs with significant side effects.
This will not change, he says, until the quality of mental health care provided through Medicaid improves.
Love Without Labels: Teaching Youth the Difference Between Healthy Love and Control by Timothy Evans
For many youth, writes former foster youth Timothy Evans, their romantic relationships “become the first classroom where they learn about power, respect, and self-worth.” He writes about the importance for youth workers and peer specialists like himself to help young people understand to not confuse control and care.
“I once worked with a young man who believed checking his girlfriend’s phone every day was proof of love. After we talked, he realized that what he called love was really controlling.”
Harry Potter’s Foster Story is Just Like Mine by Izzy Wagner
Wagner describes how their own experience in foster care mirrored the journey of the beloved literary character Harry Potter.
“My ‘Voldemort’ isn’t a dark wizard, but it is just as dangerous: the broken foster care system, the lack of support for youth, and the injustices faced by people with disabilities,” Wagner writes. “These systemic problems continue to hurt thousands of children and adults like me every day.”
California Guardian Scholars Programs Improve Foster Youth College Student Outcomes. So Why Aren’t They Utilized in High Schools? by Tyler Peters
Given that supportive groups on college campuses have been shown to improve the outcomes for current and former foster youth, Tyler Peters wonders: why have we not adapted this concept to high school?
“Access to counselors specializing in foster youth issues, events that build solidarity with other foster youth, and individual support for college enrollment all drastically improve the educational trajectories of foster youth, and better equip them for tertiary education,” he writes.
