A Tech Hack Could Have Changed My Life In Foster Care #ReimagineFosterCare Pt.2
Entering the child welfare system as a Black preteen felt like a glitch. I was out of place from the start. The system was not prepared for me. I was not supposed to be there. It was as if a huge error message flashed across my forehead and no one thought to reboot.
Like most kids my age, I was very curious. I was a developing kid after all. But the child welfare space was not made for who I was at the time. Instead of making me feel connected, the child welfare system isolated me. I suffered from separation anxiety after being removed from my family and community. My siblings were my world, as was my identity as an older brother, and now I had neither. All the meaning in my life up until this point had been taken away and I was not given a positive replacement.
I had come up in poverty and in a stressful environment, to only be removed and brought up in the same environment now made worse. Not surprisingly, the only things my 13-year-old self could relate to were negative: violence, crime, drugs, and unhealthy habits. It didn’t feel comfortable to do otherwise, even though I knew some of the things I was doing weren’t right. But they were familiar, and I really needed what was recognizable.
It is clear to me now that while separation anxiety dominated my thoughts and emotions, my negative environmental options filled the void, jeopardizing my future. But what if the child welfare system had helped me with this? What if it had made me feel more connected? What if the system had expanded my world rather than retracting it? What if I had had access to technology? Looking back, the only technology I had access to I used. I played my CD walkman incessantly. I listened to music morning, noon, and night. I even slept with my headphones on. These were not pods, they were thick and clunky, and they swelled up my ears every night. But I didn’t care. This was my only escape. It was my lifeline.
We now know that technology is one way that a child who is disproportionately impacted can find a place of their own, a place where they feel comfortable, where they can learn and grow. When used for good, technology makes the world feel less isolating and easier to connect with. It serves as an outlet outside of our community and shows us the world is much bigger than the experiences we are having. And likewise that we can be bigger than those experiences. Technology would have allowed me, and kids like me, to see we didn’t need to succumb to the limitations of our environment. That we could be greater.
A digital toolbox rather than a bookbag full of loose paper would have gone a long way when I was in foster care. My nervous system could have really used a meditation app. My curiosity would have appreciated apps that could have answered all of my questions and took me places far from home and around the globe. My pre-teen self would have loved an app where I could have expressed myself, found my voice, and told my story. My big-brother self would have suffered much less if I had an app where I could have communicated with my siblings and my biological family as well as other foster kids going through the same separation and loss. Technology could have made all the difference when I was in foster care. While I can’t turn back time, I can help make a difference in the lives of kids in foster care now. There is no need for the suffering I endured. Sixto Cancel is right, we need to hack the child welfare system.
