Why Just As Special?

Most foster families close their homes within just 2 years.

Every time a kid has to move homes, it makes it harder for them to stay engaged in school, build healthy relationships, and successfully prepare for adulthood.

Each year in the U.S., more than 25,000 kids age out of foster care without any family to call home.

Most of these youth end up surviving on less than $8,000 a year. Without support systems or life skills to help navigate the world on their own, many of these youth experience homelessness, spend time in jail or even lose their lives within a few years of leaving foster care.

We believe there’s a lot of room for these statistics to improve — and we want to be part of the solution. That’s why we nurture foster parents through our podcast, online training, and resource database so we can give kids in care a better tomorrow.

Our Goals

We work toward giving kids in care a better tomorrow by:

• Better supporting current foster families and volunteers

• Recruiting more diverse foster families and volunteers

• Mobilizing communities across the nation in addressing the foster care crisis

How We Help

• Podcast: We share diverse perspectives of foster care through powerful and raw interviews of people with lived foster care experience, including former foster youth, non-traditional foster families, and foster care professionals.

  We are the only active foster care podcast centering BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), LGBTQ+, and multi- and non-religious foster care perspectives.

• Foster Parent Training: To help combat foster family burnout, we partner with foster care agencies to provide online training for foster parents focused on diversity and featuring people who have lived foster care experience.

  Unlike other online foster training, completions are sent to foster care agencies in real-time — rather than agencies having to rely on foster parents to track their own training hours.

• Resource Database: We catalog foster care resources so foster parents, kids in care, and former kids in care can more easily access support to thrive and for others to more easily get plugged into volunteering or donating opportunities in their community. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child!

What Makes Us Different

Just As Special is creating a safe space for diversity within the foster care community and is also actively recruiting more diverse individuals because we believe every kid in care should be able to look up to people who share their same identities (ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc.).

We are currently the only foster care organization centering BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), LGBTQ+, and multi- and non-religious foster care perspectives.

And we are the only foster care organization actively calling out the destructive savior complex that runs rampant in the system in order to teach people how to avoid its harm.

We welcome all people dedicated to giving kids in care a better tomorrow. And we believe our work is most effective when multiple ethnicities, sexual orientations, and religions are represented.

Looking to easily share information about our work? Download a pamphlet and flyer.

Statistic sources: nfyi.org, ifstudies.org, fostercare2.org