#314 Jen Lilley - The Dark Truth About the American Foster Care System

Jen Lilley is an actress, singer, author, and foster care advocate best known for her roles on Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and numerous Hallmark Channel films. Alongside her husband, Jen has dedicated much of her life to serving vulnerable children through foster care and adoption, fostering multiple children and adopting through the foster system. Drawing from her firsthand experience, she has become a passionate advocate for foster care awareness, family support, and child welfare reform. In 2026, she co-authored Called to Foster?: An Honest Guide to Getting Started, a practical resource designed to help families navigate the foster care journey and better understand the needs of children in care. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: New customers can save 35% on your first month of Dose for Cholesterol by going to https://dosedaily.co/SRS or entering SRS at checkout. Go right now to https://sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50 and get 50% off your first order. Or, you can use code SRS50 at checkout. Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out at https://roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at https://shopify.com/srs Jen Lilley Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jen_lilley Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/jenlilleyofficial Website - https://www.jenlilley.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 0:36Shawn Ryan?

  Jen Lilly, welcome to the show.

• 0:38Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me on.

• 0:40Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure. It's gonna be an honor. I know it will be.

• 0:43Speaker 04

  That's very sweet.

• 0:43Shawn Ryan?

  You're doing good stuff.

• 0:44Speaker 04

  No, I need to tell you before we even like start the whole question situation. I want to honor you for talking about this subject because this is a topic that people do not like. Because this is a topic that people do not like to talk about. It's uncomfortable. It's something that's out of control. It's not a convenient topic. And, you know, to be honest, it's a conversation I don't like to have, even though I'm an advocate, because it is so uncomfortable. But it's something that desperately needs sunlight, and so I just want to thank you so much for talking about it and tackling this issue. And I really think that this episode's gonna change people's hearts, minds, and a lot of children's lives. So, thank you.

• 1:25Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 1:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26Shawn Ryan?

  I hope it does. This is kind of turned into my specialty for whatever reason, so.

• 1:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33Shawn Ryan?

  No, honestly, this is, kids is what I'm most passionate about. Was veterans, then it was polit-- then it was a bunch of other stuff, and then after sifting through the fucked up world and that we live in.

• 1:48Speaker 04

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:49Shawn Ryan?

  It's kids, man. It's kids. It's sex exploitation, trafficking. You know, and I was having a conversation with my wife, I don't know, maybe a year ago? Six months to a year ago? And this really is my passion. I mean, I kind of blew the doors off with this, who's now my best friend, Ryan Montgomery.

• 2:10Shawn Ryan?

  And ever since then, I've kind of been on a path and talked to Tim Tebow and a lot of people that are really involved in this, yourself. And um, my wife said, man, if you really want to get into the dark stuff, look at the foster care system.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:25Shawn Ryan?

  And uh, there are mutual friend Kathy, uh, actually randomly brought you up about

• 2:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:32Shawn Ryan?

  this. And I was like, holy shit, my wife was just talking about this. So I know it's dark. I don't know how dark I started looking into it a little bit, you know, and, and maybe the darkest thing that we'll cover, depending on how in depth you go. We're definitely gonna start a conversation here, though.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  Yep. It's really dark.

• 2:55Shawn Ryan?

  I'm pretty scared.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  Audience should uh, buckle up.

• 2:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, man, it's the kids that

• 3:06Shawn Ryan?

  it's the kids that nobody wanted, you know, and um,

• 3:13Shawn Ryan?

  and people

• 3:16Shawn Ryan?

  take advantage of that. And it's fucking sad.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 3:21Shawn Ryan?

  But anyways, before we get too dark, let me give you an introduction here. So Jen Lilly, you built a successful career as an actress and singer spanning more than two decades with roles on Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and numerous films on the Hallmark Channel. Behind the scenes, you and your husband open your home to children in foster care, eventually fostering multiple children and adopting through the foster system. Through that journey, you've witnessed the realities faced by vulnerable children, foster families, and the system meant to support them. What started as advocacy quickly

• 4:02Shawn Ryan?

  grew into a renewed calling to fight harder for those who often don't have a voice. You recently co-authored Called to Foster, An Honest Guide to Getting Started: Helping Perspective Foster Parents Better Understand the Realities of the Journey. That's awesome that you're doing that. And um, so before we get too far into this.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:25Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody gets a gift.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 4:28Shawn Ryan?

  They're John's Lee gummy bears, made in the USA.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 4:32Shawn Ryan?

  Legal in all 50 states. And, uh.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 4:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, just a little thing for the flight home.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 4:40Shawn Ryan?

  And then, um, we have a Patreon account.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:44Shawn Ryan?

  It's a subscription account. We've turned it into quite the community. So they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:51Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 4:55Shawn Ryan?

  So this is from Eric Auger.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 4:59Shawn Ryan?

  You've worked in Hollywood for decades and have also been deeply involved in foster care and adoption. Which institution do you think is doing more damage to America's children right now?

• 5:10Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 5:10Shawn Ryan?

  The entertainment industry, the education system, or the foster care system? And what is one hard truth Americans don't want to hear about it?

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Shoo. This guy's name is Eric.

• 5:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  Eric, you're awesome. Great question. Without a doubt. I mean, I don't even think Hollywood and the education system and the problems that they have. There's like, they're dipping their toe in the pool. Foster care is the deep end. It is so dark.

• 5:39Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  And the darkest issue of foster care that nobody wants to talk about is how it's a pipeline for human trafficking.

• 5:51Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you know, I was just, um.

• 5:55Shawn Ryan?

  What do you do? Like, I was just talking to my, um, editors in the editing room and we were checking the camera angles and I brought up an experience and, uh, but I mean, I think a lot of people have this experience. You can, you, you. What do you do if you have that gut feeling that foster kids are being fucking abused? But you, there's no evidence. It's just a gut feeling.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  Listen.

• 6:23Shawn Ryan?

  Because you know, you know what's happening.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Oh, you know.

• 6:26Shawn Ryan?

  See it and it's just like.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  You know.

• 6:28Shawn Ryan?

  What do you do?

• 6:29Speaker 04

  You get involved. I mean.

• 6:30Shawn Ryan?

  How do you get involved?

• 6:31Speaker 04

  You get involved. Well, the biggest way, obviously, to get involved is become a foster parent. And it's not as hard as people think it is. It's actually. There's a situation, not to go deep really fast, but there's a situation going on right now. It's like a big buzz that's going on in foster care. Alex Adams over at Health and Human Services, which is, he's the head of the child welfare, basically on the federal level. He has started a new campaign called A Home For Every Child. And, you know, here's the thing. It doesn't matter what your religion is, it doesn't matter what your socioeconomic background is, it doesn't matter what your politics are. Most people, the overwhelming majority of people, would agree that you don't mess with kids.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  Most people want the well-being of children. Most people believe that children deserve to have autonomy over their body and not be sexually violated. Most people agree that children should not be brutally abused, they should be fed, they should be bathed, they should be well-cared-for. I don't care what your politics are. That's true. So when Alex Adams comes up with a, you know, slogan, or a campaign called A Home For Every Child, the political optics is amazing. You know what I mean? Like, that sounds great. And I'm not accusing Alex Adams of anything. I've never talked to him, I don't know his intentions. I think that a lot of people have really good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  A Home For Every Child, what Alex Adams and the HHS is doing on a federal level right now with this campaign is they are lowering the standards of what it takes to become a licensed foster parent. And when you lower the standards and make it easier to become a foster parent, you're gonna recruit all the wrong people. I think the idea was, we are in a crisis like we've never seen before in this nation with a lack of foster homes. We've lost 36,000 foster homes since 2018, and I'm sure at some point we will get into all the whys behind that. But if you're basically hemorrhaging out foster homes, you know, and you're like, "We desperately need more people to foster." "How can we get more people to foster?"

• 8:44Speaker 04

  "Oh, I know, we'll just make it easier to foster." No.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  If people know anything about foster care, and there's a lot of myths and misconceptions surrounding foster care, but one thing that's not a myth is that foster care is a hellhole. Not every home is like my home. There are wonderful people that foster, yes. Some of my best friends, people that I think are rock stars, and I cry when I'm around them because their heart is so beautiful. They foster. You know, the co-author of my book, Dr. John DeGarmo, that man is a saint. There are many really good people that foster. But this is like in my mind, it's not a statistic that I've heard, but like I almost would wager that like half are good. Hmm.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  If actually I want to break it up statistically in my mind, what is like, what does John Lilly's mind think? I'd say thirty to forty percent is really good. Homes like my home, they really care. They got involved for the right reasons. Maybe thirty percent is good. Thirty is good. Thirty percent, kind of okay. They're not really abusing the kids, but they're just like okay people that like got involved and like they're jaded and they don't really care. They're not like sexually trafficking the kids. They're just okay. And then I would say maybe forty percent are awful. Hellholes. And so these people, if you lower the standards of what it takes to become a foster parent, you're just going to recruit more of the bad. Make it hard.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Make it hard to foster.

• 10:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I mean, that's one thing that I've been trying to get people to understand. When I do these interviews, like we did a, I think the last, I can't remember the last big one was Elizabeth Phillips with Canaan Cook, the big Christian camp.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 10:41Shawn Ryan?

  We, I don't know if you know about that.

• 10:43Speaker 04

  I don't. I don't know about it.

• 10:45Shawn Ryan?

  What atrocious. Lots and lots and lots and lots of sexual abuse. And um. And uh, and then they would NDA these kids so they can't ever talk about it. And um, so Elizabeth Phillips is going around, that's her new mission, her brother killed himself because of it. So she's, she's, she's uh, pushing legislation for this law, they're calling it Trey's Law where the kids can't be held accountable.

• 11:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:12Shawn Ryan?

  NDAs don't matter.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  How could an NDA even be possible if you're under eighteen?

• 11:17Shawn Ryan?

  It's fucking ridiculous.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  It's ridiculous, that's crazy.

• 11:20Shawn Ryan?

  And then.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:21Shawn Ryan?

  And then Kana Cook tried to get me for defamation and.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  No, it's not defamation if it's true.

• 11:26Shawn Ryan?

  But um, but eh, we've done that, we've done, I had um, my friend Schlep on and uncovered all the shit that's going on on Roblox and had Ryan Montgomery on about twice, about seven, six, four, cult, and then just in general sex exploitation and how they lure kids off the internet and Tim Tebow and, you know, and so every time I do one of these, the audience, they're infuriated with an institution.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:52Shawn Ryan?

  You know.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:53Shawn Ryan?

  Whether that's, you know, a church or a gaming conglomerate or whatever it is. But the, and they're right, you know, they should be, because a lot of these, they cover it up. You know, Kana Cook, they try to cover it up and they didn't even hold the people that were doing the abuse accountable. They, they, they covered for them, you know, they're like, oh, well, we reprimanded them and told them that it's inappropriate to be playing naked basketball with kids. And it's inappropriate. This is the biggest Christian camp in the country. Was, I'm pretty sure we destroyed it. But, but it does, but that's not the point, the point is, you know, that every, all the attention goes to the institution,

• 12:37Shawn Ryan?

  but just like what you're saying, if you make, if you ease the restrictions on fostering a kid, then that, it's, it's a, it's a fucking magnet for pedophiles. It's a magnet for pedophiles.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  We were gonna get into it so deep.

• 12:52Shawn Ryan?

  And. And so, you know, and these are.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:55Shawn Ryan?

  These are people that. Are of it's not it's not like a demographic like a lot of crime you can put on you know A demographic of people.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 13:06Shawn Ryan?

  This is everybody. It's the rich, it's the poor, it's black, it's white, it's every country. It's it's we're the we're the number one country of.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:16Shawn Ryan?

  It consumes.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Yes, this is how I became a child advocate.

• 13:19Shawn Ryan?

  And.

• 13:20Speaker 04

  Finding that out. Yeah.

• 13:21Shawn Ryan?

  And so when you like the United States is a cesspool for this shit.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  It's so bad.

• 13:26Shawn Ryan?

  It's a cesspool.

• 13:27Speaker 04

  So bad. Yes.

• 13:28Shawn Ryan?

  And so what I'm saying is is people they don't they don't look like scumbags.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 13:33Shawn Ryan?

  They don't even you know, you think you oh, that guy looks you don't know, man.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 13:38Shawn Ryan?

  You don't know. This is everybody.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 13:40Shawn Ryan?

  Of every color, every every race, every.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  Economic profile.

• 13:46Shawn Ryan?

  Situation. Yeah, economic profile. And they just flow to the next thing.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 13:51Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean? And so it's it's so great. Cool. We took Canuck down. Yeah, maybe we got a couple of pedophiles uncovered out of it. But the majority of them are just gonna flow to the next camp.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 14:02Shawn Ryan?

  And it's what the parents are gonna do. They're gonna just be like, oh, that institution's bad. Well, I'll put my kids in this one. Dude, these fuckers are everywhere. They are.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Just like, how did the other counselors not? How does everybody become complicit to that? You know what I mean? I guess because they their life is threatened, but I don't know. For me, I'm like,

• 14:27Speaker 04

  if there's one thing I'd be willing to get canceled, if that's even a thing over, you know, if there's one thing I'd be willing to like lay it all on the line, give my career up for outside of my faith, it's children who are being abused.

• 14:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I don't even give a shit anymore. They can pull my platform.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  That's what I'm saying. Like, like, literally, I'll go live off grid, you know, and great, thank you.

• 14:48Shawn Ryan?

  But um. But I, I, I think before we dive into it, people just need to get that, that you know, that this isn't just an institution that's covering, trying to protect itself. It's all the people inside of it that are going to flow into the next thing. And there's millions of these people in the US alone. And so, you know, I was even thinking, I was talking to my wife, because this is, this is the thing that I'm most passionate about. So me and Ryan Montgomery and I are going to develop an application for parents to help protect their kids from the shit that's going online, you know? And but then diving into this, I'm like, man, I was talking to my wife, I was like, maybe

• 15:31Shawn Ryan?

  we, we're not there yet, but maybe eventually, you know, if things continue to go the, the way they're going in my life, maybe we open a foster care home.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:44Shawn Ryan?

  But then I started thinking, I'm like, how the fuck do you staff it? How do you trust? You could have, you could have the most pure heart in the world and open one of these, but how do you find the right people to staff it?

• 15:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:55Shawn Ryan?

  What if, what if you hire a fucking abuser?

• 15:58Speaker 04

  I mean, I know, but yeah, I got people you can talk to that will tell you exactly how they do it. It's like, I don't have the answer for that question, but I know who does.

• 16:07Shawn Ryan?

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• 17:27Shawn Ryan?

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• 17:42Speaker 04

  Sort of, not exactly. So, it's like, sort of. My parents, so my dad was a judge and my mom was one of the directors. She worked at a crisis pregnancy center. So, there's a thing in foster care where you, it's hard to do, but you're supposed to as a foster parent, remain unbiased. Because one of the myths and misconceptions, so, one of the myths and misconceptions of foster care is that, you know, people are like, "Oh, so are you going to adopt?" And it's like, no, no, no. The goal of foster care is not adoption. The goal of foster care is to reunite the child with their biological caretaker. So, mom, dad, whoever, whoever they left, their family, you want to put the families back together.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  So, foster care is basically, let's take this child out of this abusive or neglectful situation. And by the way, it's a myth and misconception, I believe, that people are taking their kids out of, you know, abusive or neglectful homes willy-nilly, like, I don't think social workers are just trying to take kids out of homes. We have far too short, there's a huge shortage of foster homes. In fact, yeah, I'll just go into it right now. In fact, it's gotten so bad in foster care that in 13 states right now, children with no criminal record.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  Are being put into detention home centers because there's no room for them.

• 19:04Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  There's something in foster care called stopgap, which is basically, I don't know if it happens in other arenas, but it happens in foster care. It's called stopgap. That's a fancy way of saying, basically, we know that this situation is so terrible for this child. I really sympathize with social workers. Are there bad social workers? I'm sure there are, but I think that a lot of social workers are just overworked and underpaid. And I think that they have to make really hard decisions to remove the child from the situation. Because they know they don't have anywhere to put them, which is why my whole mission is like, I've just got to recruit better foster parents.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  So they, if, if a, if a social worker is going into a home where the abuse or neglect is so severe that that child needs to be removed from the home, that social worker, it has to be pretty bad for that social worker to be like, okay. I have nowhere for you to go, but here are your options. And this is going on across every state that I know of.

• 20:06Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  Stopgap placement. The child will either sleep in a shelter until they find a placement. The child will sleep, no joke, in the social worker's office until they find a placement. They will put them in hotels until they find a placement, which I don't know this for a fact, but I imagine trafficking could happen there. Or in 13 states, like I said, they will just put them in detention centers. And by the way, when the child with no criminal record is put in a detention center.

• 20:35Shawn Ryan?

  Now they have a record.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  They not only have a record, but they're treated as prisoners. There's not like a label on the kids that's like, hey, by the way, this is a child that's like being placed in foster care and they're just here as an emergency placement. We have no room for them. No, they're put in a jumpsuit and like backing up from it. And I'll get back to like my parents. We'll get back out of this hole, but.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  Imagine a child who, the biggest myth and misconception of foster care, and I don't blame people for thinking this, my husband used to think this, my husband's amazing, obviously. Listen, I'm a lot to wrangle, the man's a saint. But 51% of surveyed Americans wrongfully assume that children in foster care are bad kids. That's probably the biggest myth and misconception. Children who are in foster care were put into a system that's terribly broken. They never asked to be there. And they were removed because of someone else's choices. Because their caretaker, or their biological mom, dad, grandparent, whoever's taking care of them,

• 21:42Speaker 04

  abused them so severely, or neglected them so severely, the Child Protective Services had to step in. Now imagine being that child, this is what happens all across the nation in all 50 states. Child Protective Services gets called, and if the welfare worker decides that yes, the situation is so dire that the kid needs to be moved right here and right now. If the child is considered lucky, they are given a trash bag. This is real. They are given a trash bag, and they are basically said, you have five minutes to pick up, put anything you want to bring with you. Yes, there's a whole organization called Comfort Cases, I'm very close with them, that's their whole mission.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Rob Sheer, who's the founder of Comfort Cases, he's amazing. He grew up in foster care. And he always had trash bags. And so when he and his husband started fostering, a child showed up at their house with a trash bag, and he was like, I can't believe this is still happening, so he started this amazing organization called Comfort Cases. Where they basically give them a duffel bag, a journal, stuffy, clean pajamas, like all these toiletries, all the things a child would need. Imagine being a child who, all of a sudden, child welfare comes in. And what people don't understand is that if a child only knows abuse or neglect...

• 23:10Speaker 04

  As hard as it is to wrap our minds around this, that child still loves their mom or dad. They don't know many times this is not normal behavior. Even kids who are sexually abused. Many of them, they don't know. They don't know this isn't normal. They don't know.

• 23:27Shawn Ryan?

  It's normal to them.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  It's normal to them. So a social worker comes in. And then if they're lucky, they get a trash bag to collect their things. Their teddy bear, any piece of home. Nobody tells them why they're being removed. They get put in a car and driven to a stranger's house. And I think about this all the time, like,

• 23:51Speaker 04

  what must go through their mind? Like, am I a bad kid? They don't know if it's their mom's fault, their dad's fault. Like, they don't know if it's their fault.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  And then they're gonna go to a stranger's house and be told, like, these are your new parents. And it's like, you know,

• 24:09Speaker 04

  are they, do they like me? Like, a lot of them have shame automatically of like, what I have done. And then I'm thinking, you're telling me that right now in 13 states? And I don't know the states because the report is very elusive. I used a lot of AI to kind of, like, I looked up the entire report and like, reading the report. Uh, it is bipartisan. There's a govern- um, con- representative. I don't know whether it's congress or senator. There's a representative. I think it's Ossef out of Georgia. And a representative out of Virginia. I think it's Hagan or Hagan, something like that, that are working on this. But even in their bipartisan report, because they've uncovered that this is happening in 13 states, the report doesn't exactly say which 13 states this is happening in. This is something I'm like, currently researching.

• 24:54Speaker 04

  AI is like, we can probably tell you what four of the states are with a lot of certainty, but we don't know the other nine.

• 25:01Speaker 04

  Imagine being that child, you're in the social worker's car. Nobody's told you why you're being removed. If you even have a trash bag, maybe, you might not. And then you're dropped off at a detention home center? Of course you're gonna think, "This is my fault. I've done something." And no one explains to you why this is happening? Foster care is so jacked up. It is so jacked up. And I will tell you that it is proven time and time and time again that kids in foster care are two times more likely to suffer from PTSD than combat veterans.

• 25:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  So my parents, so going back up out of the rabbit hole. They, um, there's a thing in foster care, we have to remain unbiased, which means I can't basically get too attached to the kid and want to adopt them. I need to be unbiased and try to be pro reunification. Listen. Another myth and misconception that I hear all the time is that people will be like, "Oh, it's so sweet that you're a foster parent. Like, I could never do that. I would get too attached." That statement makes me wanna cuss. I won't, because my fans would be very upset. But, you can cuss for me. But it makes me wanna cuss, because it's like,

• 26:20Speaker 04

  listen, if you don't think you could foster because you would get too attached, then you are the perfect person to foster. Because these kids need your attachment more than you need to protect your heart. You know?

• 26:33Shawn Ryan?

  That's like the people, they won't, they can't watch, they can't watch the Tim Tebow interview, because

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Oh, it's too painful.

• 26:40Shawn Ryan?

  They can't see it.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  It's too painful.

• 26:42Shawn Ryan?

  It's like, well, you're not the one fucking living it.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Right. Like, oh, you can't even watch it? So, again, huge props to you for tackling this, and huge props to your audience for watching this interview. Because this is a seriously dark issue. But, basically, because my dad was a judge, my mom was a, worked at a crisis pregnancy center, they were kind of concerned that Things could be said where maybe they they had bias, maybe they used their influence in order to sway a certain case. And because my parents were like very by the books.

• 27:12Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean sway a case? What does that mean?

• 27:14Speaker 04

  Well, my dad's a judge.

• 27:15Shawn Ryan?

  Sway the kid to stay?

• 27:17Speaker 04

  No, so there's a case that's opened once a child enters foster care. Now there's a court case that will determine that child's permanency plan. Are they going back home? Are they staying with the foster parent? Are they going to be eligible for adoption? There's a case that's opened, a court case that's opened against the parent.

• 27:36Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  And so if my dad's a judge in particular, and the child who's in our house was adopted, technically, somebody could accuse my dad of pulling strings.

• 27:50Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  You know, swaying the case toward adoption. So my parents never became licensed foster parents. Um, but there were often people living in our house who weren't related to us. And so I was had many times, not it wasn't ongoing, but I had many times throughout my childhood where someone who was not biologically related to me was staying at our house. And so that for me planted a lot of seeds of empathy. It became, made me interested in foster care um from a young age. But my husband didn't want to do it, so.

• 28:24Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how would they integrate in?

• 28:26Speaker 04

  How would the child integrate in? Um, sometimes the parent was also staying with them. So it'd be like a family that just needed transition in life, so the parent would stay, right? And they're, you know, staying with us. But there was one, I mean, I called her my foster sister. That's kind of what my parents just set the expectation of. You know, this person's going to be living with us and we're going to treat them like our family. And, you know, as a teenager, one time we had a teenager living with us and I thought she was so cool. So it was like, I finally have an older sister, you know? So it was like, I was just raised to. You know, I'd be like, that's my sister. Like, I told everybody, you know, so I think it depends on like how your parents raise you. My kids know that my kids like desperately want to foster again, but I have four under 10 and I'm like,

• 29:10Speaker 04

  listen, the youngest just turned four last month, like Jackie's gotta get into kindergarten before I tackle this again. Like, I'm exhausted. I feel like I'm failing you guys at all times. Like, I don't know why you think I can handle more kids. My kids are set on having six. And I'm like, alright, listen, I told them the other day, I said, uh, once Jackie's in kindergarten, we'll talk about like fostering somebody who's in an elementary school. But by the way, I love to put the fear of God in my kids. I'm like, yes, I'm nice, but I'm also like militant. I was like, if that child happens to go to your elementary school, you will never tease them. You will stick up for them. Like, if I ever hear, if I ever hear that you tell the other kids that they're like, they're a foster kid,

• 29:56Speaker 04

  I will take every toy you have ever owned. Like, I will treat you like a criminal. Like, like, like, so I think it depends on like the person that raises them. You know, like, I don't know, my parents are just like normal. It's like, we're gonna help them because that's, that's part of my faith.

• 30:11Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what, what is it, what is it like for them coming in?

• 30:14Speaker 04

  For the child?

• 30:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, for your, growing up with that, you know, I mean, I've read that it was kind of revolving, kind of a revolving door at your house as, as a child.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  Sure. What was it like for the child who was basically in transition and living with us temporarily, or me, the child?

• 30:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, is it, I'm, I'm genuinely curious. Like, they show up, then what? Is it awkward? I mean, it's gotta be a little awkward.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  You know, I don't know, because I was so-

• 30:40Shawn Ryan?

  Especially if they're coming from a lot of abuse.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  I think it's-

• 30:43Shawn Ryan?

  Especially if they're coming from house to house to house to house. I mean, my wife was talking to a mutual friend of ours, uh, and, and he's really good friends with somebody that's made it out and is actually, is doing really well. Appears to be doing really well.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:59Shawn Ryan?

  And she had mentioned something that she went to a house.

• 31:05Shawn Ryan?

  And they were trying to rape her.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:07Shawn Ryan?

  Over and over.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 31:09Shawn Ryan?

  And I guess in the foster care system, you have um like a what would I call this, like a big sister, like a mentor.

• 31:19Speaker 04

  If you're lucky.

• 31:20Shawn Ryan?

  If you're lucky.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:22Shawn Ryan?

  And so she reached out and said, hey, this is happening. How do I deal with it? And the answer was just, yeah, it's just something you're gonna have to go through.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  It's like I lean forward and act like I'm surprised, but I'm not really surprised. I mean, that's so jacked up. It's not a unique story. I hear, we hear that all the time. It tells the girls, um, I mean, yeah, I could tell you stories that make your toes curl. Um.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  What was it like for that trial? You know, I can't say what it was like. I mean, but I can say

• 31:54Speaker 04

  from friends that I have who have fostered while they've had their own children. Um. Or who have fostered older children who might be co- might be cognizant of that whole process.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  I think it's hard for them. I think they don't have expectations. I mean, right before the pandemic, we didn't officially foster because she was aging out of the system, but there was a girl that was aging out of the system and she had a terrible foster mom. Um.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  Terrible, I would say she's in the second set of thirty percent. She's not like raping her, but she's a crappy foster parent. She's making her pay rent. She's like, the day your check dries up, you know, you're out of my house kind of situation. And uh my husband and I were at this luncheon. There's this amazing organization called Olive Crest and I don't know whether Olive Crest is national, but I know there's a lot in California. And they're a Christian organization. And in Los Angeles, every single year, they have a foster care luncheon. It's like a summit where they call the three hundred churches in LA, three hundred Christian churches in LA. And they're like, we want to talk to you about the state of foster care. It's awesome. Like call the church to the mat. Because by the way, foster care is a thing because the church closed her doors.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  And assumed that the government would make a good parent. The government makes a terrible parent.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  Anyway, this girl, she's on this panel and the panel is really awesome that they do this. There's this panel, it has a current foster parent, it had a parent who lost their child, who ended up reunifying with their child. So they talked about their experience, the foster parent talks about their experience, maybe a social worker, I don't remember who the third person was, and then this girl who was about to turn 18 and age out of foster care.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  And the question was asked,

• 33:52Speaker 04

  "How has the church played a role in your life?" And they passed this teenage girl the microphone first. And

• 34:04Speaker 04

  I think anyone could probably deduce what she was thinking about in her mind, but because I'm an actor, I was just like, it was almost like I could just read like thoughts going through her head. And she's just like, um, uh, and you can tell that she's like, be a good girl, don't say the wrong thing, don't insult these people, I'm at like a church summit, you know? And it was so awesome because I will tell you one thing, you want to meet a real Christian, go to Los Angeles. California Christians do not mess around. They are my favorite people in the whole wide world because it's like, oh, you actually like, you put

• 34:46Speaker 04

  your money where your mouth is, or put your mouth where your money is, or whatever, you know, however that saying works. Like they walk the walk. Why? Because it's not cool to be there. I grew up in the Bible Belt, I can say this, there's a lot of amazing Christians who live in the Bible Belt. There's a lot of also what I would call spiritually gluttonous people that say they believe this and they do not do anything about it. They're just taking it in, they're the bless me, bless me, bless me, because they don't want to be inconvenienced, they don't want to be out of control, and they don't want to do anything that's not comfortable. And to those people, I would say,

• 35:23Speaker 04

  Look at yourself very closely because, and I'm just speaking to Christians. And by the way, people can foster, there are wonderful people who are not Christians. But if I'm addressing the church who like needs to tackle foster care and needs to get involved and stop being so complacent, here's the thing. What did Jesus say? If you want to be my disciple, deny yourself. Take up your cross daily and follow me. That's the only way you'll be my disciple. So we don't deny ourself. We self-love, we comfort, we soothe, we want to look away, we want to have uncomfortable conversations, we don't want to look toward brokenness. But if you look at Jesus, he always ran towards brokenness. He didn't disqualify Mary Magdalene from being like his number one girl because what?

• 36:07Speaker 04

  Because she got prior, she was a prostitute? No, he set her free, he loved her. Like Jesus ran toward brokenness. So this girl's like stumbling on the stage and she, so it was so awesome because LA, different breed. All of a sudden, these like pastors, representatives, my husband and I representing our church, we're not pastors, but they were like, yeah, go ahead. You guys are like really passionate about this. They start standing up and they're yelling at the stage. They're like, come on, call us to the mat, tell us what we could do better. Like, don't, don't sugarcoat it for us. And I'm like, these are my people, you know what I mean? Like, yes, give it to me hard. Like, don't, don't, don't sugarcoat this for me. You tell me, how has the church played a role in your story?

• 36:50Speaker 04

  And so finally she bucks up the courage and she goes, "I don't actually think I've had a positive interaction with a Christian my entire life. And I am, if you can't already tell, in my relationship with my husband, I am like the gas pedal, but I am like mashing the accelerator. I'm like, let's go all the time. My husband is not just a brake, he's like the e-brake. He doesn't want to do anything, he's like a homebody. Like, we're totally different, we balance each other because I'm super crazy, I know. And I'm thinking, oh God, I want to help her so bad, but my husband's never going to go for it. And he, he just looks at me and he's got like tears in his eyes and he goes, we have to help her."

• 37:32Speaker 04

  I was like, great. So we talked to her social worker. We asked them questions. I went up to them and I was like, do not tell her that we are even considering this because I do not want to crush her. But I got to meet with you privately and I got to ask some questions. So I had to ask like, has she ever molested another child? Because these are things that like, again, it's not that the kid is bad. Like sometimes they're not taught this is an inappropriate behavior. It's so jacked up. And they're like, no, she doesn't. Cause I'm like, my husband worked night shift. I have three kids under three. Like, I can't do this if that's the case. And so she came to live with us and the pandemic happened. But I asked her when she moved in, I was like, look, she was 18. I was,

• 38:12Speaker 04

  however old I was, five, 35. She's taller than me. You know, like I'm like this short little white girl and she's this tall, beautiful black girl. And I was like, how do you want this to work? Like, and like, like, do you want like me to be like your foster mom or like your friend or like your mentor? Like what's our relationship here? She was like, I just need to know what rules you have. And I was like, okay. The only rules I have in my house for you, because like I know she's had sex, you know? And, and I don't know like all of her background, but I was just like, no sex in my house. You're gonna have sex, you go to your boyfriend's house. And you have to let me know, you don't have a curfew. Like you were 18 years old and I know you've lived a lot of life.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  I do need to know where you are because I will be worry myself sick. So like you don't have a curfew, but I need to know where you are. And I also need to make sure so like the door is locked and things for my other kids. And my only other rule is like, just be a good human. If the trash is full and you're leaving for work and like you have a second, take the trash out. Like when you're done with your dish, if you have a second and you're not like in a rush. If you're in a rush, put it in the sink. If you're not in a rush, like just load it into the dishwasher. Other than that, like I don't really have any rules. You have any questions for me? So I think it, it depends on like, they want to know the boundaries. Every child wants to know boundaries. But I really think it comes down to like who's fostering them and what's the expectation that they come up with? And a lot of kids who enter into foster homes,

• 39:41Speaker 04

  a phenomenon that happens that I don't blame these kids for is like they call it like the honeymoon period. So they get in there and they're on their best behavior because they're trying to measure you, they're trying to figure out like, are you gonna hurt me as well? You know, what's this placement gonna be like? They're on their best behavior while they're trying to take your temperature. And then many of them, if you're a stable home, they will act out really hard. And they teach you this if they're good, if you have a good training before foster parenting. You're supposed to, in order to get licensed, you have to take like, it varies state to state, it varies county to county. It's one of the things that's hardest about foster care, is that you have federal law, you have state law, all 50 states have different laws.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  You have agency policies, you have county law, and then you have judicial decisions that like weigh into how the law is interpreted and what they want for this particular child. So it's really complicated, no matter where you get, but um, so a child, and back to the point, a child will start acting out like crazy if you are a good foster home many times, because they call it being evicted, they want to be evicted on their own terms. They're kind of like, let me, let me just reject you before you reject me, because I cannot handle the pain of you rejecting me one more time. Damn. It's so bad.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  And so the good, I don't want to say the good foster parents, but the foster parents who have empathy and the endurance in that moment, will ride out that behavior, because inevitably the kid will restabilize if you ride it out with love. But that is something that they train you in when you do your foster care training, if you're with a good agency, they'll prep you for that. But again, I mean, if we're doing a home for every child and we're lowering the standards, who knows if you'll learn that? Because if you don't, if you don't learn that when you're getting licensed, then like, all of a sudden, your child starts acting like Satan, you're gonna be like, whoa, you know, like you're not gonna be prepared for that.

• 41:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. And maybe you'll rehouse the child. But every time a child gets rehoused, it's more trauma, and it's a personal rejection that they did something wrong.

• 42:05Shawn Ryan?

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• 42:49Shawn Ryan?

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• 43:33Shawn Ryan?

  or use code SRS50 at checkout.

• 43:38Shawn Ryan?

  Is there like a typical journey to a foster kid? From birth to 18-years-old to adulthood?

• 43:47Speaker 04

  Sure. It depends where... It depends on the home that they land in.

• 43:52Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  Right? But I would say for a typical child who's entering foster care, um...

• 44:01Speaker 04

  They'll probably enter as a child, meaning 10 or under. And they'll be taken from their mom or dad, right? Hand to trash bag if they're lucky. Which to me is like, an external representation of how they must be feeling internally, like you're trash. If they're lucky, I suppose, they end up at a foster home. And then,

• 44:24Speaker 04

  if that foster home just wants to foster and never wants to adopt.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  Which I should clarify that statement by saying, my husband and I set out just to foster. We had no intention of adopting, adopting, because that wasn't the point of foster care. That we were incredibly grateful that we got to adopt, but that wasn't like our goal. We didn't get into foster care to adopt. But there are foster parents, and I don't blame them, because they're still really good people, where their whole mission is just fostering, and I suppose that they, I can't

• 45:01Speaker 04

  I can't tell you what goes through their mental process, I can only speculate that part of it is like, if they adopt, then they won't have room to keep fostering. But a lot of kids will be fostered for a set of time, and

• 45:19Speaker 04

  again, every state, every county is going to have different rules on how this works. So it's almost like, can I tell you a typical journey? No, but I can tell you a journey, like in California, in Los Angeles, because that's the system I know.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  A child is given a timeline of 18 months. So the parent has 18 months to get their act together in order to get their child back.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  After that 18 months has expired, the child, it's, it's a jacked up term, it's so jacked up. It's, it's called emancipation, which makes me think of slavery. So the child is legally emancipated. Now they're eligible for adoption. If that foster family wants to adopt them, that's like what happened with our boys. Of course, we wanted to adopt them, we adopt them. But a lot of kids will just ride through foster care until they're 18. And if they're lucky, they'll stay with the same foster home, but usually they're going to be bounced to bounced to bounced, you know, home to home to home to home. I know that the average kid in foster care

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Goes by the time they've reached fifth grade, just elementary school. They've already had five, they've gone to five different schools.

• 46:30Speaker 04

  Which is part of the reason why in foster care, the out, the educational outcomes are so unstable. If the child is not adopted. And I always like to say this because it's really interesting. So I had like, my parents are awesome. I don't want to like act like my parents weren't awesome. I'm really grateful for my parents. No parent is perfect. God help me, my kids will probably need therapy from me. So I owe a lot of grace, you know, for, for my parents. Like, I think they did a fantastic job. But my parents, uh, you know, like I am an A-type perfectionist because of the structure and expectations my parents put on me. It was literally like, you're gonna go to the University of Virginia, like come hell or high water and graduate top of your class.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? Like, and I, I did, don't worry. Not top, top of my class, top 3%. I did okay, you know? When I told them I wanted to be an actor, they were like,

• 47:25Speaker 04

  like, what is wrong with you? You know, they're very supportive now, but they were like, get a degree. So I say this jokingly, but like truthfully, because I had two parents that like watched my GPA like a flipping hawk. It was like, oh, you studied, like, oh, you made note cards, like you will spell like nobody has ever spelled before. You know what I mean? Like, do it again, soldier. Like, my parents were militant on like how, in my opinion, maybe my parents would be like, that's unfair. And I'm like, listen, from my perspective, it was very intense. However, I changed elementary schools one time. I went from a private school in third grade to a very good public school in fourth grade.

• 48:08Speaker 04

  And because of that, I never learned, to my mother's ongoing horror, I never learned my 50 state capitals. Okay? Because this school, private school teaches it in fourth grade. Public school taught it in third grade. So I fell into that gap. I said this in a speech, like a couple of years ago. My mom found out I said it in a speech. And she literally printed the 50 state capitals for me and was like, study this. And I was like, mom, I've made it 40 years without knowing my state capitals. Like, I'm doing fine. But I always kind of say that because it's like, imagine changing elementary schools five times.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  All the education these kids missed.

• 48:54Speaker 04

  So you have a lot of kids that are illiterate. That's why the outcomes are so bad. I mean, kids who aged out of foster care, only 3% go on to get a college degree. Only 50%, only 3%. This is of kids who aged out. Kids who were adopted have much better outcomes, but kids who aged out of foster care, 3% go on to get a full, um, degree by the age of 26. And only about 50% graduate high school or get a GED.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  Man. But they fall in the gap and then they don't have a consistent parent who is making sure that, you know, they're getting these test scores. Let's get a little dark for a second.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  So.

• 49:41Speaker 04

  Here's how bad it can get in foster care, just from an educational perspective.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  When I was adopting my boys, I was invited to speak at, um, the National Foster Parents Association. It's this great, it's a great organization. I love it. It's basically like, let's get a bunch of foster parents together, give them support, give them ongoing classes and like be each other's support system. Because, you know, I have military in my family. I'm not a military wife, but I always say like, if you're a military spouse, I would hope you have other friends who are military spouses because only they can relate to you. Foster care is the same way. These kids have a lot of problems. They are not bad kids. They have experienced severe trauma. So

• 50:32Speaker 04

  other people who are normal parents who have biological children who know their entire medical history and didn't do drugs while they were pregnant or drink alcohol while they were pregnant, like their parenting advice for you as a foster parent is like, that is so nice that you think that will work for this kid? It will not. So you have to know other foster parents if you're going to like survive this game because it is so jacked. So I'm at the National Foster Parents Association. I'm like speaking, you know, they were like, could you come speak? And I was like, sure, I guess. And then they're like, hey, you have however many hours before we need you to come speak again.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  So here's our itinerary. You can basically like, here's your little badge. You can go into any class that you want to learn, anything else you want to like, you're curious, the subject. Like, one time I went, there was like an FBI profiler and it was really cool. And they talk about like, all these kind of things about how they do interviews. And as an actress, I'm like, I want to learn everything about that. Like, tell me about how you know if this person's a psychopath. That's so fascinating to me. So they have really cool like courses that you can take. Well, I'm getting ready to adopt my son, Kaden. And I was like, oh my gosh, they have a class on adoption and the Adoption Assistance Program. I had no idea that when you adopted out of foster care, you still get health insurance for that child,

• 52:00Speaker 04

  you still get therapy for that child, and you get your monthly stipend for that child. Okay? I was like, oh, I always figured that people didn't adopt the child out of foster care because they couldn't afford to. That was kind of always my myth and misconception. I didn't know.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  So when I learned about there's an Adoption Assistance Program, I was like, oh, cool. Like, well, teach me how to navigate that red tape because foster care is like,

• 52:28Speaker 04

  I don't know, I'm biased, but I would wager it might be the most bureaucratic red tape system in the entire United States. So I'm like, cool, I want to go to that class.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  People sometimes assume that you would foster for the money. Once I became a foster parent, I was like, what money? Like, what are you talking about? This monthly stipend like doesn't cover the formula and diapers. Like, what are you talking about? There's no money in foster care. Like, you have two kids. Kids are expensive. I don't care if you don't even spoil them. Like, you feed them, you buy them clothes, you do anything kind of nice for them. It's a lot of money. Like, kids are expensive. So I was always like, what money are people talking about? So I go to this as option assisted program like wow I had no idea that like you got all these services like how do I sign up I had no idea they still come with insurance like

• 53:21Speaker 04

  this is fantastic so I finished the class and I'm like I want to meet every parent in this class this is so cool like I'm gonna meet my new tribe of people that are adopting kids out of foster care these people are awesome I meet a couple new people and then I meet this one woman and she's like oh yeah what you want to do is you want to get a D rate kid and I was like that's yeah that's what I said I was like what's it what's a D rate kid what does that mean and they she goes oh honey I make twenty eight thousand dollars a month off foster care and I was like what and she was like yeah because I have this many kids and she goes here's the thing you want to get a D rate kid I was like what is a D rate kid she goes okay here's how it works you want to make sure

• 54:04Speaker 04

  they fail in school if they fail in school and you can get them on medication your rate goes up every time they don't pass a grade your rate goes up because they're a more difficult kid every time they need a medication your rate goes up

• 54:16Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit dude

• 54:18Speaker 04

  And I I I was shocked like I was like

• 54:25Speaker 04

  oh my god that's how people that's how bad people are making money out of foster care and that's one of the reasons the statistics are so bad because again I think the intentions were good one of my kids

• 54:44Speaker 04

  I love him so much and he's a really sweet kid but I'm finally to the point where I'm like we gotta get you medication I've tried every therapy under the sun and I love you and I know that you know I love you but like I desperately need medication for you because I need your brain to slow down because when you make decisions that are not rash because he's very reactive if he slows down he's not aggressive sweetest kid you've ever met everybody's favorite student at home it's a totally different situation because he's comfortable with us

• 55:23Speaker 04

  Our rate will go up because now he needs medication.

• 55:29Speaker 04

  And he's really a good kid, but it's a lot to parent him. It's a lot harder than my other kids. Um, and not, and one of my other kids is adopted. I just say this to say that I think the intentions of increasing the rate

• 55:44Speaker 04

  was to incentivize good people to stick with it. But again, what it did is incentivize all the wrong people. People who are in it for the money instead of for the love of a child.

• 55:59Shawn Ryan?

  That's the, that's just making money off the government.

• 56:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:03Shawn Ryan?

  That's not even the real dark shit.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  We haven't even gotten dark yet. I'm just saying.

• 56:08Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I'm, I mean, I'm just, it's

• 56:10Speaker 04

  It's, yeah.

• 56:11Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking horrific.

• 56:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:12Shawn Ryan?

  Like,

• 56:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:13Shawn Ryan?

  People are fostering kids just for the money from the government.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:19Shawn Ryan?

  So they're gonna encourage them, encourage the doctors to put them on medications. They're gonna create scenarios to trick doctors to put them on medications. They're gonna encourage the kid to act out at school, to not study, not, I mean,

• 56:34Speaker 04

  It's like incentivize the other way.

• 56:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  What if they get an honor roll, give them a bonus?

• 56:40Shawn Ryan?

  It's like a demonic.

• 56:42Speaker 04

  It's, listen, this is a nail on the head. This is a demonic situation that exists because the church closed her doors. And to be fair with that, I know I could sit here for the rest of the interview and tell you, organization after organization after organization that is Christian that is doing the work. There are so many wonderful churches. There are so many wonderful Christian programs. There are so many wonderful Christians who are in this for the right reason, but there are still far too few.

• 57:13Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh. I wrote a stat.

• 57:17Shawn Ryan?

  I think it was in this outline. I think you said it. If every church in the country fostered one child, there would be none left to foster. Is that correct?

• 57:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, and the statistics even better than that. That's an accurate statistic.

• 57:31Shawn Ryan?

  Child per church.

• 57:33Speaker 04

  Okay, that's an accurate statistic. Okay, so currently in foster care, there are 344,000 children in foster care. That's according to Health and Human Services, Health and Human Services survey that came out in May of 2026 this year. If you look at something called the AFGARs report, which is what everybody talks about in foster care, AFGARs is awesome. I have nothing against it. It's just a term you'll say. AFGAR stands for, and I might mess this up, Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System. AFGARs. Everybody just calls it AFGARs, so I'm just gonna call it AFGARs. AFGARs runs the survey of how many kids in, how many kids out, how many kids got into foster care because of substance abuse, how many kids got into foster care because of abuse abuse,

• 58:17Speaker 04

  how many foster care, you know, kids got into foster care because of poverty-related issues, which is a big thing. They want to measure all the metrics, and thank God for AFGARs. AFGARs right now will say 330,000 children are in foster care, but Health and Human Services says that 344,000 are in foster care. Okay, so I'm gonna go with Health and Human Services, because it's a little bit more accurate.

• 58:39Speaker 04

  You have 344,000 children in foster care right now. You have, on average, 350,000 churches in the United States. To my knowledge, that's just Protestant churches. So we're just talking Christian churches. We're not talking about Jewish churches. I don't think that includes Catholic churches. This is Christian churches alone. On average, on any given day, you have 350,000 active, open, Christian churches.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  So yeah, if one family out of every church fostered, you'd have the whole problem solved. But the statistics are even more encouraging than that. We have homes for about 75% of the kids in foster care. So honestly, if one family out of every four churches in the United States were to foster, we would also not only eradicate the problem of children going to hotels, hospitals, social worker offices, or God forbid detention centers in 13 states. You would not only house every single child that's waiting for a home, you would have more than enough homes, ready, willing, open, and licensed for when the next kid popped up into the system.

• 59:54Speaker 04

  But the reason I think that people don't do it, outside of it being uncomfortable, you have no control, that's the hardest thing about foster care. As a foster parent, you have no control over these kids' cases. You don't get an opinion.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  However...

• 1:00:12Shawn Ryan?

  Does the kid get an opinion?

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  Not always. If their guardian ad litem, which is their lawyer,

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  interviews them and asks them for their opinion, but many times the kid does not get an opinion. It depends on who the social worker is, if the social worker cares. And I don't mean that to say social workers don't care. Social workers are seriously overworked. For example, I had a girl, she was the whole reason my husband and I got into foster care, and her social worker was so overworked that I asked her, I said, "How many kids do you have on your docket, like on your caseload?" She said, "86." "How do you have 86? How do you have 86?" And this is back in 2016. Shaun, the stats have gotten

• 1:01:05Speaker 04

  so, so bad. I thought foster care was a bad and in crisis mode when I was doing it in 2016. The current numbers are horrifying.

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  I will continue with that in a second. I will say, okay, so as a foster parent, you do not have control. However, if you're a good foster parent, like I was a good foster parent.

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  I took copious notes. I took notes of every... It's like, oh my gosh. It's like when we're having this interview, I'm like, there's so much I want to unpack here. I was like, I gotta get all the worms out and almost like try to tell you this in order.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Don't let me forget to get back to these numbers. I will finish the thought of, I think the reason the church doesn't get involved is because of the bystander effect. I'm sure you've heard of the bystander effect, but for anybody else that's like, what is that again? The bystander effect is this really interesting psychological premise that if if someone's screaming for help in a grocery store, for example, most people will not get involved and help that person because they think that somebody else will do it. You are much more likely, apparently, statistically, to get help if you're like out in the middle of nowhere and somebody hears you. They're usually gonna run and help you. But the bystander effect is just kind of assuming that like somebody else will do it. And I think that's what's going on with the Church of Foster Care.

• 1:02:32Speaker 04

  Is not only is it uncomfortable and it's something we don't want to like deal with because we're worried about our heart getting broken. Which makes me want to cuss, but I won't. You know, I think it's also the assumption that like, oh, that's nice, somebody else will do it. Or, that's nice, I could never do it, I'd get too attached. Oh, you have to be a special person to foster. It's like, I'm not the likely candidate to foster. I'm an actress, I'm out of town all the time. I'm traveling all the time, like I have a thousand children, you know. I'm not the candidate, but if I can do it, they can do it. Okay. So,

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  when it comes to control and you don't have control as a foster parent,

• 1:03:14Speaker 04

  usually, and again, this is a kind of typical overview of foster care, but anybody that's listening that's a foster parent could be like, that's not true. Well, maybe they had a different experience because they have different laws or county agency rules. You know, like everything in foster care, like there's almost like no... No holistic through line. But in general, here's how foster care works. Child's removed from their home, they're put into a foster home. And the 18, at least in California, 18 months is on the clock for that parent to get their act together in order to get their kid back. During that 18 month period, the child will have visitation with their parents. In California, and this is not what happens in all 50 states, and I actually went to Congress

• 1:03:58Speaker 04

  to like rally and get this done, and everybody was into it.

• 1:04:02Shawn Ryan?

  It worked.

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  I didn't end up, I didn't end up going forward into the law of creating this, so we'll like pause that and get into that. But this is how California does it. And as much as you want to say about California and like, listen, guys, I am so apolitical, it's not even funny. I like, I got no preferences, man. I think both sides are so jacked up. I'm like, I'm just here existing, trying to love people. California does foster care pretty well, in my opinion, especially LA County. And that's because almost 10% of the kids in foster care are in LA County.

• 1:04:40Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  Yes. Why? Because LA is where no one, everybody goes to chase their dreams, right? I don't want to be a parent, I'm chasing the, like, I'm climbing the ladder, I'm climbing my status, like, get out of my way, I'm the next big thing. So LA is like ground zero for foster care. And so with that said, I think LA does a really stand up job. That's not to say there's not bad players, like, you know that. I don't believe everybody in government is bad. I think there's a lot of bad people in government. I think there's bad-

• 1:05:15Shawn Ryan?

  Me too.

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know, I know, we have that in common, but I think there's bad players everywhere. I think you can't just say like, broad strokes, every single person who works for the government is bad. You can't. There are people that are like in there just dying, trying to fight a system that they're never gonna win. Foster care is the same way. You have a lot of bad people in foster care. You have a lot of bad players in foster care. You also have good people in foster care. So California, here's how it works.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  18-month timeline, kid is going to have monitored visits with their parent. They're going to have visitation with their parents where they're monitored, which means they're supervised visits. Somebody's basically at the visit. This is something that I had to do. Not all foster parents have to supervise the visit. The agency that I went through, ChildHelp, highly recommended that the parent, the foster parent, be the one that's supervising the visit. And we have to take notes if we're good foster parents.

• 1:06:09Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on. The biological parent monitors. Did I get that right?

• 1:06:18Speaker 04

  The biological parent has a visit with their kid so that they don't lose connection and so that they see their kid, because the goal is to put them back together. It starts out because that child was removed from their home. Sorry, I swallowed my water wrong. They can't just trust the parent with that child alone. So the parent is monitored. The parent is supervised. That visit is supervised. So you have a third party, and in my personal case, it was me, who would monitor the visit. And that monitor is supposed to, if they're doing their job right, they're not supposed to basically intervene in the visit unless the child is in danger. So, for example,

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  there was one time with my son, Kayden. I love their biological mom. I love her. She was not a willful child abuser. Most children who end up in foster care end up in foster care because of neglect, not because of child abuse. Not that the neglect is not abusive, but foster care is a cycle. It's a very broken cycle. So usually, a child who ends up in foster care, chances are extremely likely that their parent also grew up in foster care.

• 1:07:37Shawn Ryan?

  I knew you were going to say that. It's a generational curse.

• 1:07:40Speaker 04

  It's a generational curse. The grandparent probably was in foster care. And that's why, again, if good people get involved in foster care and stop the cycle, break the cycle,

• 1:07:57Speaker 04

  God knows how many generations of kids after them that they're saving. My kids will never have kids that end up in foster care. So I had a lot of love, I have a lot of love still in my heart for my boy's biological mom, because she wasn't a willful child abuse abuser. And I would tell her that, I would talk to her very frankly, I'm like, "Listen sweetheart, if you were a willful child abuse abuser, my relationship with you would probably look a lot different." I don't know how I would navigate that,

• 1:08:27Speaker 04

  but I don't, I had to write reports about the meeting after they happened. And these reports were read in court. And I told her, I was like, "I don't go home and write these gleefully. Like, it brings me no joy to write these reports. But my primary job is to protect the child in my care. Sometimes I have to protect him from your bad decisions. I'm so sorry. And I know it's because nobody taught you what real love looks like." And I would tell her over and over and over again, and I,

• 1:09:06Speaker 04

  I think she knows it, but I, I don't know that she knows it, you know, like in her gut, I'm like, "I don't know that anyone in your entire life has loved you like I've loved you. I don't know that anyone's ever shown you real love."

• 1:09:21Speaker 04

  Because one of the

• 1:09:24Speaker 04

  biggest things that happens in foster care, especially with the moms, is like, I've heard, I, I, listen, I didn't read up on the statistics before I came here, but this is what I've heard repeated over and over. So if somebody could fact check me on this, and I will admit, maybe I'm wrong.

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  But I have heard that domestic violence and foster care are run parallel. There is a parallel relationship between domestic violence and foster care.

• 1:09:52Speaker 04

  She had a domestic violence situation, but there was one, there were many visits. We met, we met three times a week for hours on end. It was exhausting. Um, and that's not required of all foster parents. I don't want that to deter people, but I write about it all in my book. But there was one time where it was like, literally, Kayden had scissors, which he shouldn't have had anyway. And I was like, okay, like his scissors. And he went to, like, the scissors were by an outlet and he took the scissors and was about to put them in the outlet. And I just had to sprint across the room and just grab him. And I had to write about it in my report.

• 1:10:31Speaker 04

  Like, this parent is not ready to have their kid back because they don't understand like the science of, don't stick sharp objects in a socket. Also, kids shouldn't have scissors. You know what I'm saying? She's not a willful child abuser. She just doesn't know how to be a mom because nobody ever taught her how. So in California, you have monitored visits. These go on until the parent shows some sort of progress that like they're doing well enough. They're doing well enough in this visit that they can go to unmonitored visits where basically, hey, we're going to trust you to babysit your own kid for two hours. Right? After that goes on for a period of months, whatever the court decides the timeline is, that parent in the state of California will go to overnight visits. So you're going to get your kid back for maybe one night.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  You're going to get your kid back for, for a weekend. And then after that goes well for a period of time, they're going to face, like, final reunification where that child's case is closed. And now the child goes back with that parent. That's an amazing way to do reunification. I was shocked beyond belief when I found out that that was not the system in all other, in the 49 other states. I was like, why not? Because you're a parent, I'm a parent. Parenting is freaking hard. Parenting is so stressful. I thought I was like a kind, sweet girl with the fruit of the Holy Spirit until I had kids. I was like, woo, I did not know, I did not have patience, like, until you asked me for the 10th time, a question I have answered 10 times, like, I'm going to make you a peanut butter and jelly. Would you shut up?

• 1:12:00Speaker 04

  Like, you know what I mean? Like, parenting is so stressful. Now imagine being an addict.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  You're an addict? I had an eating disorder for 15 years. I wasn't a drug addict, but in my head, that's a dopamine addiction. Addiction is something that people fall into because they're stressed and it's a coping mechanism. So you want to tell me you have an addiction problem to like hard drugs? You've gotten yourself clean and then I'm just gonna throw a child back at you full time without like first having gone through like dipping your toe back into parenting? When I don't have my finances in order, I've just gotten sober. I'm not required to necessarily take parenting classes, depends on which system I landed in as a parent. Now you're gonna throw my obnoxious kid like back at me? Who's been severely traumatized because they've been through my trauma, they've been removed from my home.

• 1:12:51Speaker 04

  They've bounced home to home to home, told that they're worthless, nobody cares about them. Now I've got them back, so they're like super more traumatized than they were when I got them. You're gonna expect me to stay like sober and clean and not mess up? Premature reunification is a terrible idea. It's to the point where 36% of infants re-enter foster care. I think it's within 12 months, definitely within 18 months. 12 months? Yeah, and then all other age groups, um, so infants is 36% re-entry rate. All other age groups, it's between 25 and 29% re-entry rate. And so I went to Congress in 2020 with Dr. John DeGarmo, my co-author,

• 1:13:32Speaker 04

  who is like the leading expert in this nation about foster care. I can't believe he wanted to write a book with me. I was like, "Bro, you don't want to write a book with me." I'm a hot mess. You don't want to write a book with me.

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  We go to Congress because he's in Georgia, I'm in California, and I'm like, "I had no idea that this was not like the way that all reunification works. Let's talk to Congress about this." Bipartisan support, every single person we met with was like, "This is awesome. Let's do it. Let's craft a bill." "By the way, have you ever considered running?" And I'm like, "There's not a situation where I work for the government. I'm sorry." "That's not gonna happen, but I will craft a bill." Then, this person will remain nameless for safety reasons. We met with somebody, this is 2020, we met with somebody who was very high up in Health and Human Services. So they're on the federal level of handling child warfare, uh, welfare, child warfare. Freudian slip or something, yeah.

• 1:14:27Speaker 04

  And, um, this person literally says like, "Leave your phones outside this room. They are definitely listening. I need to talk to you before you get into this." I'm like, "Okay, cool." She brings me in a room, the Dr. DeGarmo, because we're, we're there on Capitol Hill advocating for reunifica- premature reunification reform in all 50 states, and that should happen. She's like, "Look,

• 1:14:53Speaker 04

  you can spend your time creating a law, making sure it gets passed. That's how you want to spend your time advocating for kids? Go ahead. But let me tell you what's gonna happen. They're gonna make your bill all of a sudden is gonna be 300 pages long, and they're gonna do something that's called a Christmas tree. That's what we call it in politics, where all of a sudden, something that like you would completely oppose and disagree with gets slipped into your bill because most representatives, and I, I, I can't blame them. I want to blame them. Most representatives, they're so busy, they don't have time to read 300-page bill.

• 1:15:32Speaker 04

  They're gonna read the broad strokes, or they're gonna get their assistants or their interns to basically be like, "Give me the summary, give me the Cliff Notes of what this bill is."

• 1:15:39Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of these people don't even know what the hell they're voting for.

• 1:15:41Speaker 04

  They don't even know, like, the good ones at least get their assistance.

• 1:15:45Shawn Ryan?

  What is my stance on this? I've had their aides tell me this shit.

• 1:15:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. 100%. They want the Cliff Notes, "Tell me how to vote for this." So they don't even know what they're passing into law. And they also want to know, I mean, now this is why I don't like politics, they also want to know like, "Well, what's gonna get me re-elected?" It's all a game, right? So this woman from HHS was higher up, she was like, "They're gonna stick something in your bill that like you never intended to go into law, and it's gonna jack up kids." And there are many laws, like, we will hopefully discuss, that have happened in the last

• 1:16:21Speaker 04

  eight years to foster care that have taken it from bad to worse.

• 1:16:26Speaker 04

  And so it was in that moment that I was like, no, you know what? I don't, I care about premature reunification. But she's right. It's gonna suck up my entire time and then God knows what I'm putting into a bill and I have to like face God with that. Just stand before like God who I fear in a, in a healthy way. I have a healthy fear of the Lord. I love him so much. And I'm gonna have to be held accountable for some like Christmas tree, like some clown put into my bill, like something that I disagree with? No. So I quickly decided like the only way to help solve this problem is I gotta recruit better foster parents. I gotta multiply myself. I gotta get good people in this fight. So that's what I pivoted and that's what I've been doing ever since.

• 1:17:09Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:18:28Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:18:46Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome to Hollywood vs. Reality. Did I do it right?

• 1:18:54Shawn Ryan?

  What does he do in the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this wrong, because I don't watch any of this [BLEEP]. A little flick like that, right? Seems pretty cool. It is pretty [BLEEP] cool.

• 1:19:05Shawn Ryan?

  Gotta silence it.

• 1:19:11Shawn Ryan?

  In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. Proprietary [BLEEP] magazines, supposedly the best engineering in the [BLEEP] world. When that breaks, you're [BLEEP].

• 1:19:22Shawn Ryan?

  And now we're bringing him back.

• 1:19:29Shawn Ryan?

  It does look pretty [BLEEP] cool. I gotta, I gotta admit that.

• 1:19:35Shawn Ryan?

  Alright Jim, we're back from the break.

• 1:19:37Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:19:38Shawn Ryan?

  The numbers.

• 1:19:38Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:19:40Shawn Ryan?

  What numbers?

• 1:19:41Speaker 04

  There are so many numbers in foster care. I'll just start with the statistics, so we don't get so far down this rabbit hole that we forget to go back.

• 1:19:47Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:19:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:19:50Speaker 04

  The first thing I'll say is that statistics are tricky, because it depends, I have found, who funds the study? When was the study? What was the sample? Like, how many people were surveyed? How was the study conducted, right? So like, these numbers can be all... They can fluctuate. There are different statistics in my book than the ones that I'm about to say. But when I was preparing for the show, and I was looking at the current numbers... These are the current numbers, and I have all the data to back them up. Okay. Kids who age out of foster care, which means they never got adopted, they never got guardianship, they had no permanency placement, and they turned 18, and that's it. They're out of the system. They're on their own.

• 1:20:33Speaker 04

  Of those kids, that's called aging out of foster care, okay? Of those kids, here are the statistics. Forty-six percent will end up homeless by the time they're 26.

• 1:20:45Shawn Ryan?

  Forty-six percent?

• 1:20:46Speaker 04

  Forty-six percent is a way lower number. To me, that number smells bad. That number smells like a lie. However, I'll stick to the number. At least forty-six percent end up homeless by the time they're 26. Like I mentioned earlier with educational outcomes, only 3% will go to college, only about half will graduate. High schooler get a GED. Boys who age out of foster care, five times more likely than their peers to be arrested. Girls who age out of foster care, 14 times more likely to be arrested than their peers. Boys who age out of foster care, six times more likely to be convicted of a crime than their peers.

• 1:21:31Speaker 04

  And a lot of that is because

• 1:21:34Speaker 04

  kids in foster care are easily criminalized because a lot of situations that would normally be handled within a family situation where you as a parent would straighten your kid out, or do something, or intervene, or hire an attorney, or do something if your kid was acting out. That doesn't exist for these kids, because they don't have anybody stable correcting them. That leads to having a rap sheet, having a record, which makes employment harder. It makes all things harder, you know, getting jobs, job security, all these things. Okay. About half will have a substance abuse problem. Uh, girls in foster care who age out are two times more likely, actually, it might not even be who age out, but girls in foster care, definitely who age out, are two times more likely

• 1:22:18Speaker 04

  to get pregnant, um, before the age of 21 than their peers. Again, it's a cycle that repeats itself. And, uh, yeah, and then here's, and I think I said it earlier, maybe, there's like a prison pipeline, and that's very interesting, because I think I said it earlier, but like, kids in foster care only make up 1% of the kids, or less than 1% of the kids in the United States. Yet currently, in all of our prisons and jails, 17 to 20% of the people in jail came from foster care.

• 1:22:48Shawn Ryan?

  Seventeen to 20%?

• 1:22:50Speaker 04

  That's a way lower statistic than is in my book, which I also have like the the stats for where I found that. All of it's really crazy. Trafficking is crazy. We'll get into trafficking. Trafficking, I'm like, I could just talk about the trafficking statistics right now.

• 1:23:09Speaker 04

  There's a thing, I'm sure you're very, very, very familiar with it, and probably your audience is too, called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They estimate that 63 children out of foster care disappear every single day. And those are just the ones that are reported. So HHS, Health and Human Services, which again, that's the government office for like handling child welfare and lots of things in our country. They actually estimate that it's tens of thousands more of children go missing. But we know the ones that are reported, that's just the ones that are reported, 63 kids disappear out of foster care every day. Now, a lot of them go unreported in foster care for a lot of reasons. It is very common, very common.

• 1:23:53Speaker 04

  I have dealt with this many times, we've dealt with this many times at Tulsa Girls Home, Child Help, all the organizations that I work with. It's very common for children in foster care to run away. That is for a lot of reasons. Many times, it's because they've gone from abuse and neglect by their biological parent into an abusive, neglected foster home, and they want to run away. They've been bounced, placement, placement, placement. And then again, maybe they get into a good placement, and it's too good to be true, and they want to evict you on their own terms, they want to run away. A lot of times, those are not reported because it's become normalized. Running away has become normalized. A lot of times, the social worker or the person who's caring for them is like, I know they're

• 1:24:38Speaker 04

  at their boyfriend's house, I know they're at, you know, their friend's house. They just kind of assume they know where that kid is. Meanwhile, that kid is very vulnerable to traffickers. Because they'll meet a trafficker, and you know, you guys talked about this, like Roblox, social media, that's probably the majority of the way it's happening, is social media. These disgusting perverts, these traffickers will lure the child in, thinking that they're going to give them everything foster care didn't. Stability, food, housing, love and affection. I mean, these kids are so primed to be trafficked. And then they go missing, it's unreported, and they get trafficked. So there's a huge trafficking pipeline that goes on in foster care.

• 1:25:25Shawn Ryan?

  Now, do you think that they are targeted because they're in foster care? Or is they just falling victim more than the normal child because of the circumstances?

• 1:25:35Speaker 04

  I think it's both. I think traffickers know that children in foster care, many of them are not, nobody's looking for them.

• 1:25:42Shawn Ryan?

  How would they know who's in the foster care program and who isn't?

• 1:25:45Speaker 04

  I have no idea. I do not know how traffickers know that. I don't know. I don't know how it works, you know, I don't know how long they stalk them. I have no idea how a trafficker's mind works. But here's something I learned about human trafficking the other day that I will say to your audience, who is so wonderful to be watching in this hard conversation, that I'm gonna spread some hope, I'm gonna spread some love and some light at the end of the tunnel, but this is not that moment. So if this conversation's already been hard for them, now is the time to go get a water.

• 1:26:23Shawn Ryan?

  They're used to it.

• 1:26:24Speaker 04

  Uh huh. So anybody else? Here we go, because I learned this the other day and I was literally on a flight and I thought things from foster care could not shock me. And I almost, I almost barfed like on the plane. I was like, I don't think I can handle this. Alright.

• 1:26:51Speaker 04

  I have fact-checked this seven ways to Sunday. So I am 100% confident about what I am about to say. There is no federal law, nor is there any state law in any of the 50 states that makes it a crime to adopt a child out of foster care for the explicit intent of sexually exploiting that child. It's not illegal.

• 1:27:21Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean it's not illegal?

• 1:27:23Speaker 04

  There is no law. So like, let's say trafficker A knows this. And this is already going on. Because I was like, should I say that on the show? Is this educating people how to traffic? No. Traffickers already know all this crap. That's why I'm like, you're like, how do they know if they're in foster care? I'm like, I don't know. I just know that these people have a insatiable demonic hunger for children. And I don't know how they figure it out. Okay.

• 1:27:51Speaker 04

  Right now in all 50 states, if a trafficker adopts a child out of foster care for the intent of selling them for sex, there is nothing the government can do. It is not prosecutable. There is a loophole in the system, but it gets so much worse than that. When a person adopts somebody out of foster care,

• 1:28:13Speaker 04

  they're given all the parental rights that a normal biological parent would have. Okay? So I have the same rights over my adopted children as I do my biological children. Samezies.

• 1:28:26Speaker 04

  Trafficker A knows this. Trafficker A adopts a child out of foster care with the intent of sexually exploiting them. It's not prosecutable.

• 1:28:35Shawn Ryan?

  How is it not prosecutable?

• 1:28:36Speaker 04

  It is not a law. And by the way, it has been brought up. Congress is aware of this gap. Congress is aware of this gap. This situation apparently has been discussed in Congress. Nobody's doing anything about it.

• 1:28:48Shawn Ryan?

  Congress doesn't give a fuck about kids.

• 1:28:50Speaker 04

  Like, I don't even know.

• 1:28:51Shawn Ryan?

  Look at the Epstein shit. Look at the entire fucking administration.

• 1:28:54Speaker 04

  That's a whole different episode you and I could talk about.

• 1:28:57Shawn Ryan?

  They don't care.

• 1:28:58Speaker 04

  They don't, I guess.

• 1:28:59Shawn Ryan?

  They don't give a fuck about anything but padding their own pockets. Everybody knows, almost everybody knows it. Maybe the extreme right and extreme left don't realize it yet. But that's who the fuck they are. That's what our government is.

• 1:29:11Speaker 04

  Speaking of that, before we continue with trafficker A and the adoption, let me tell you how I got into, like, this whole situation. So I found out when I booked General Hospital. It's 2011. I booked General Hospital. I booked this movie called The Artist. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won five, including Best Picture. Amazing. Like, I'm on the map. And my publicist at the time...

• 1:29:35Speaker 04

  She promptly got fired. She's like, you need to, you know, I'm thinking about like, what is gonna be the subject that I talk about, right? I'm all into the world water crisis. I'm a school tour speaker. It's true. There's a water crisis going on. The facts are, there's more people that die in the world every day than war malaria and AIDS combined. Horrible. Clean drinking water, such an easy solution. It was a great thing to talk about. I talked about it for like years. There's a lot of celebrities talking about that. This is a really cool issue. It's very clean. It's very easy. There's a solution. It's very easy to talk about. So I start praying, because I'm a person of faith. And I literally feel like the Lord's like, you need to look into what's going on in your own backyard. And I was like, what's going on? Like, what, what issue?

• 1:30:19Speaker 04

  He was like, this is all great, but there's people already talking about this. There's an issue that needs sunlight that nobody's talking about. So I'm in my office. Start looking on charity navigator.org, because there, I'm sure you know, are a lot of horrible charities that like, don't do at all what they say they're gonna do. I always tell people, I'm like, listen, if charity wants you to support them, ask them for their 990. That's their tax return sheet. You better look at their 990 and know exactly where those dollars are going, because anybody will ask you for a dollar, but you better know where it's freaking going, because there's a lot of bad nonprofits that are totally profiting off of your, you know, generosity of heart. This is 2011.

• 1:31:00Speaker 04

  I come across what is now called, and you're well versed in it, child sexually explicit material. Okay, 2011, it's just called child pornography. We don't call it child pornography anymore, because of course, that implies consent, and the kids, of course, do not have any consent. And I find out that the United States, like you said, is the number one producer and consumer of child pornography in the entire world. It's not Thailand, and it's not, you know, Russia and all these countries. We wanna like, point our fingers at them and be like, ew, child brides, whatever. No, we're the number one producers. We're the number one exporters. The average victim is under the age of five.

• 1:31:38Speaker 04

  So back in 2011, before Snapchat, which was like, one of the worst things that ever happened to children. Snapchat is like, the devil. And the dark net wasn't like, fully a dark... It wasn't as dark and deep as it is now, right? 2011 was still a time when, basically, and I'm oversimplifying this, but like, whatever. The broad strokes is true.

• 1:32:00Speaker 04

  Basically, you could monitor from cellphone reception towers, and you could figure out like, which IP address is... Like, where is the house that's making these child pornography files? I'm just gonna call it "child porn", because it's easier to say, okay? If I'm in California, you're in Tennessee, and I create child pornography, and I toss it over to you via email, however they were doing it.

• 1:32:29Speaker 04

  It now kind of becomes... It falls under federal jurisdiction, because it's crossed state lines. So that sort of lifts a lot of the parameters, or at least at the time, that maybe things have changed. But at least in 2011, it lifted a lot of parameters for warrants, and like, how you could kind of get these guys. So there was... I was part of this organization called the Innocent Justice Foundation, which at the time, was getting money, and they were training like, SWAT teams and police officers, saying like, "Here's how you basically figure out where the perp is." And in one in five of those cases, you would find a child like, actually on sight. That was the victim, okay? It was 98% success, or higher, maybe it was 99. It's at least 98% success conviction rate, because you would find, like, on the guy's, you know, computer, like, "Here's all the files.

• 1:33:14Speaker 04

  We know you did it, it had high conviction rates." So I start talking about that. I'm like, "Dude, I need to talk about that." My publicist at the time is like, "You cannot talk about that in Hollywood." I didn't understand why. I was like, "Why? Like, why? Somebody needs to talk about this. This is an issue that desperately needs sunlight. Like, I'm gonna not talk about it." She, promptly fired, again, is like, "Why don't you talk about like, the ASPCA, or like, abused animals?" I'm like, "'Cause Betty White's doing a fine job talking about that." Like, lots of people talk about these issues. Are you kidding me? If people knew this was going on, like, people would be up in arms about it.

• 1:33:48Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think they want to hide it? Why do you think the publicists wanted to hide it?

• 1:33:52Speaker 04

  Probably because Hollywood's complicit to it. Now, I don't know that from a personal standpoint. I... But I... Well, I sort of do, but I... Like, I'm... Like, I think not all Hollywood is bad, but they're totally part of it. Totally part of it. Like, are you kidding me? So she knows, and she's like, "You cannot talk about this in Hollywood." Because I think like, not all of Hollywood, again, I know so many good people, I hope that I'm one of them, you know? But there are bad players in every industry, and there are definitely bad players in media. Definitely. I mean, the whole Epstein thing, please. P. Diddy, like, come on, there's so many rings that's going on. Child abuse, child actor abuse, there's like a documentary called Quiet on Set, I mean, you know,

• 1:34:36Speaker 04

  this is a real thing that's going on in Hollywood, whether people want to face it or not. So I think that she's like, "You can't talk about this in Hollywood because you're gonna make a lot of enemies." And I'm like, "Screw that." Again, like, if there's one hill I would get canceled on, like, you can't silence me, you can't buy me out when it comes to, like, advocating for children. So that's how I got involved, and, um, this is really important, but I'll get back to Traffic Array. So, the organization, Innocent Justice Foundation, I was not with them, but they went to Sacramento, and they asked Sacramento, it was at least $200,000. It was either $200,000 or $250,000. Let's just be conservative and say we asked for $200,000 in order to get more equipment to train law enforcement.

• 1:35:20Speaker 04

  Like, here's how you figure out which cell town towers these are bouncing off of. It was like, very ironclad. It was a formula, the dark web didn't really exist so much, human trafficking was like not even a phrase to my knowledge. Like, people were not calling it that. So we had a super high success rate. "Go and make the case in Sacramento. We need $200,000 in order to buy this equipment, in order to train law enforcement how to find these perverts and get them locked up forever." We have a 98% conviction rate. Meanwhile, true story, another group, advocacy group, comes and asks for at least $200,000 worth of white paint in order to cover up graffiti. Guess who got funding?

• 1:35:58Shawn Ryan?

  The graffiti.

• 1:35:59Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. So when we went back and said, "Well, how could you pay $200,000 for white paint? Wouldn't you agree this is a more serious subject?" And this was the answer we got from Sacramento. Now, I don't know who said this, I just know somebody from Sacramento in power. "We don't get calls about kids being trafficked." You know what we get calls about all the time? Graffiti.

• 1:36:28Shawn Ryan?

  What the fuck, man?

• 1:36:30Speaker 04

  So this is the same thing when you're saying politicians don't care. I'm like, look, I think some politicians would care. But it's not a pressing issue. And it's like, that's why we gotta make it a pressing issue.

• 1:36:41Shawn Ryan?

  Because they're addicted to this fucking power that they think they have. They really have no power.

• 1:36:46Speaker 04

  The love of power or the love of money?

• 1:36:48Shawn Ryan?

  Because, I don't, I just, all of them, all of them. You see it right now, like, all these, all these people, it's fucking crazy, man. It's like,

• 1:36:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:36:58Shawn Ryan?

  You have no fucking power, dude.

• 1:37:00Speaker 04

  You're a representative is how it's supposed to be set up.

• 1:37:03Shawn Ryan?

  You have no power. You're fucking scared to talk about kids being trafficked.

• 1:37:07Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:08Shawn Ryan?

  You're powerless. You are completely fucking consumed by this.

• 1:37:13Speaker 04

  Fear of being canceled, fear of being not elected.

• 1:37:15Shawn Ryan?

  You're, you're consumed by a power that doesn't even fucking exist.

• 1:37:18Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:19Shawn Ryan?

  You're completely controlled. You can't even stand up for fucking kids.

• 1:37:22Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 1:37:24Shawn Ryan?

  Because you're addicted to a power that you don't fucking have.

• 1:37:27Speaker 04

  Your position.

• 1:37:28Shawn Ryan?

  We know you don't have it because you can't talk about fucking kids.

• 1:37:31Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, fear is such a controller.

• 1:37:34Shawn Ryan?

  It's all of them. It's fucking all of them. It's all of them.

• 1:37:38Speaker 04

  Okay, so back to trafficker A. Trafficker A knows he or she cannot be prosecuted. So they adopt a kid out of foster care. They now have all the parental rights. Currently, right now, these are the current stats, because again, this is Friday night, I'm on a plane. Gagging. As I go down the rabbit hole. I fact-checked this. Because I just did not want it to be true. Currently, right now, in the United States, in 33 states. A parent, trafficker A, can sign away their child to get married before the age of 18. They give parental consent.

• 1:38:19Speaker 04

  Child does not have to have their opinion. Child's not asked. I can sign away this child that's now legally mine, trafficker A, to trafficker B.

• 1:38:31Speaker 04

  Trafficker B can legally pay trafficker A a bridal fee or a dowry. It's not prosecutable. Because we can call it a bridal fee when what it really is is I'm purchasing a human for sex. Now, in these 33 states, 19 of them, if you have a marriage license, you are legally shielded from statutory rape. Because it's not considered rape inside of marriage. You're not raping a child. You're raping... You're having sex with your spouse. Your husband, your wife.

• 1:39:11Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, dude.

• 1:39:13Speaker 04

  And in the other 14,

• 1:39:17Speaker 04

  law is tricky, right? That's why you always like, if you ever need to be in a lawsuit, you need to get a good attorney. Because law is subjective to how someone interprets the law. So in those other, so it's 33 states where you can, trafficker A can sign away their child to trafficker B. In the other remaining 14 states, maybe that person would be prosecuted, but there's a case, right? Because there's a marriage license. It's not a get out of jail free card. But maybe.

• 1:39:46Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:39:47Speaker 04

  And they know this. There's also something called being rehomed. Which is as a parent, as a parent, you know, if I'm having an issue with my child, like, I can go send my kid to live with their grandparent or whoever I want. I have that right as a parent. You're gonna go live with your aunt, you're gonna go live with your neighbor because I can't handle you right now? That's the excuse or whatever it is? Whatever reason. It's called rehoming. And they just get trafficked, trafficked, trafficked, trafficked.

• 1:40:15Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:40:16Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:40:20Speaker 04

  Pretty freaking bleak.

• 1:40:23Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:40:26Speaker 04

  So that's, that's one thing that's happening in foster care. And again, that's why I hope it upsets people. But it's like, what's it gonna take for us to get upset enough to, to become a foster parent? What's it gonna take for people to be upset enough to like mentor a child in foster care? Or become a child-appointed special advocate, a CASA? You know what I mean? Like, not, I, I get it. Not everyone can foster. There's a lot of reasons why people couldn't foster. Maybe, you know, they have a medical diagnosis or something they're not able to. No one's, no one's ever gonna like put a gun to your head and be like, "Be a better foster." You know, I get it. Not everyone's called to foster. But everyone is called to foster care.

• 1:41:10Speaker 04

  Because if you care about homelessness, if you care about human trafficking victims, if you care about domestic violence, if you care about substance abuse, if you care about child abuse neglect, this is ground zero. And the statistics I told you earlier, like, that's the outcomes that happen if we don't step in. But if you step into a child's trauma, young, when they're young,

• 1:41:37Speaker 04

  and, and even as a teenager, I mean, we have girls that come through Tulsa Girls Home, which is a qualified residential treatment program, which we can get into. It's like a whole thing.

• 1:41:47Speaker 04

  Group homes are not designed for kids. Like, group homes is like one of the last places you put a child. Because it's not, it's not good. They've been bounced around. They have so many behavioral issues that they need to end up in a qualified residential treatment program. That's the fancy term for it, a therapeutic group home.

• 1:42:05Speaker 04

  They're jacked. Like, they land here, they land in, like, the group home, they are jacked up. Still, with the right therapy, the right love, the right encouragement, the right, you don't have to be a statistic, the right person saying, you know what? You are more than a statistic, you are more than a number. Statistics are so numbing. These are children. Those stats, they're children. And when people realize that this is a person who has never been told that they matter, when you tell them they matter, even if they're a teenager, those statistics go down. So it's like, we've gotta get involved. All right, back to the numbers. This is so crazy. It's all crazy. It's like, not like I haven't said a thousand crazy things. Alright.

• 1:42:49Speaker 04

  So currently, like I said, Health and Human Services says there are 344,000 children in foster care. Afgar says about 330. When I got the call to do this interview, I was like, they're like, do you know stats? And I was like, yeah, sure. I went to Congress. I used to be able to rattle them off. So I'm like, let me just quickly look at the Afgar's report. I can tell you the current numbers. And I see that there's 330,000 in foster care on the Afgar's report. And I'm like, what? That can't be right. Because when I was like, super active in this, on any given day, it was safe to say there are 430,000 children in foster care. So I call it Dr. John Degarmo, who's the leading expert in foster care in our nation,

• 1:43:34Speaker 04

  who does this, eat, breathe, sleeps, like he is an expert witness all across the country. That's what he does. He's an expert on child abuse neglect in our country. And I'm like, John,

• 1:43:44Speaker 04

  can you explain to me what happened? Like, why are the numbers, like, why have they dropped by 100,000 children? Because as long as I was an advocate, and as long as everybody I know who has been an advocate, who is blue in the face, we have been like, trying to put a dent in this system.

• 1:44:03Speaker 04

  How are the numbers this low? What happened? Like, did we really, like, are we fixing this? And he's like, no, no.

• 1:44:13Speaker 04

  It's like, the worst thing that's ever happened to foster care. Hidden foster care. I was like, what? Okay.

• 1:44:21Speaker 04

  If you look at the... So there's 344. There used to be 437 kids in foster care at the peak. And in and around 2018, 2019, there was 437. It was like, the worst numbers in foster care. I looked at the Afghans report because again, that's the report that everybody uses, Adoption and Foster Care Reporting Analysis Reporting System. In 2018, there were 675 children who had any sort of interaction with foster care. They, they might get a stipend, they're somehow, they're involved with child welfare. They might not be in foster care, 437,000 were in foster care, but 675,000 are being served in some capacity by the child welfare system.

• 1:45:03Speaker 04

  In 2024, there's only 505,000 being served by foster care. And I'm like, where did all these kids go? Right? All right. They go into, to explain this properly, that's 170,000 children gone, cleared off the books. And you can imagine, this looks great for all the politicians. Ooh, we're solving foster care, look at the numbers, they've never been so low. The press release writes itself. But the truth is so much worse. So to understand where these 170 go, I gotta, gotta put them into two buckets.

• 1:45:43Speaker 04

  The first bucket is 55,000 children, this is according to the 2025 report. There's 55,000 children who are in foster care right now, who are in what's called kinship care. Kinship is their place with grandma, their place with a relative, kin, okay? They're with some sort of relative, that's called kinship care. 55,000 of them are placed with an unlicensed relative, which is fine. You know, they go with grandma. The problem is, when they go to an unlicensed kinship, because that relative is unlicensed,

• 1:46:25Speaker 04

  he or she either gets very little assistance financially to pay for all the needs of that child, or they get none. The child often doesn't come with Medicaid. The child doesn't come with therapy and what we call wraparound services where you're trying to like rehabilitate them. Grandma, let's just call it grandma. Grandma gets no assistance. She's not getting any help. She's doing it out of the goodness of her heart because like maybe her child was an addict and maybe it's not generational. Maybe grandma was a good person and her child just became an addict. You know, that happens. It's horrible. And so her grandkid is going to end up in foster care. Of course grandma's going to be like, no, no, no, put the baby with me.

• 1:47:07Speaker 04

  But grandma's not licensed, so grandma's just stuck out here with no services, like doing her best. If grandma's a good person, and a lot of them are, I know many cases where they are. So like, I want to like kudos to the grandmas. I'm pro kinship care when it's, when it's a good fit. But if you're not also like giving them assistance, you're not giving them parenting classes they need, if you're not educating grandma on the fact that like there is a huge thing going on right now with like child traffickers, like targeting them online, if she doesn't know, she's not like, she doesn't have to keep a license, so she doesn't have to have parenting classes, she doesn't have to have like ongoing kind of state of the union that a normal foster parent has to know.

• 1:47:49Speaker 04

  Hey, guys, you know what's going on is like traffickers are targeting these children online? We take online predator classes. We take like, here's what's going on in child welfare. That's another reason why you can't lower the bar with a home for every child. Like, tell me what's going on, tell me how to protect these kids. Grandma's not getting any of that. And who's, who's pocketing the money? I guess the government. So there's 55,000 that are over here. Now, there is 100,000 to 300,000. That's the current number. Current estimates are between 100,000 and 300,000 children who are in what's called hidden foster care.

• 1:48:32Speaker 04

  This is based on the 2024 or 2025 Child Analysis Trend Report put on by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. They're great, to my knowledge. They put out great studies. I assume they're great.

• 1:48:48Speaker 04

  These are children who child welfare knows that they need to be removed from the home, but they just re-home them and put them with a relative or somebody else, but there's no court case that's ever opened. There's no record, which means there's no social worker checking up on their welfare. There's nobody looking at them. There's no case. So they've just taken the crisis and moved it off the books. And look at us, we're solving foster care.

• 1:49:23Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:49:24Speaker 04

  And you want to know why they're doing that? Of course you do. In 2018, in my opinion, at least in my lifetime, to my knowledge, the worst thing that could have ever happened to foster care, happened. It was called, or it is called, the Family First Prevention and Services Act. Let me tell you what that is. That is, uh, it was a bipartisan act. They had a lot of advocacy groups that were part of crafting the law. The law had great intentions on paper. Okay, so I don't know any of these people. I'm

• 1:50:07Speaker 04

  going to assume they had great intentions. Here's what the broad basis idea was. You know what? We have something in the government, I gotta like break this down step by step. The, the broad strokes idea was, what if we, instead of putting children in foster care, focused our energy on prevention, so they never enter the system in, in the first place? That's a great idea. Prevention, great idea. Okay? Family First Services Law passes. And there's something in the government called Title IV-E. I'm only going to say it once because I don't want to lose people on like the nitty gritty of it. Title IV-E is 9.6

• 1:50:51Speaker 04

  billion dollars a year is spent on children in foster care. So it's basically like a federal open checkbook, but the problem with Title IV-E and that 9.6 billion with a B dollars is, is that this money only comes into play after the child has entered foster care. So, again, it's bipartisan. This law passed with flying colors. Advocacy groups were part of crafting it. Though, I remember Dr. John Degarmo specifically, and a lot of my friends were like, "This is gonna be a disaster," and it has been. When the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act came along, they were like, "Hey,

• 1:51:34Speaker 04

  why don't we take some of the Title IV-E, $9.6 billion, and put it toward prevention?" Great. This is a great idea on paper. On paper, I could be a huge supporter of this. Here's why. The majority of kids who end up in foster care end up in foster care because of neglect. And many of that neglect is poverty-related neglect. Okay, so, again, not to oversimplify it, because a social worker really is not, to my knowledge, in any case I've really heard, just like yanking a kid out of foster care, or out of their home, because they don't have anywhere to put them. But there are a lot of times where the kid enters foster care because of poverty-related neglect, which means

• 1:52:16Speaker 04

  they don't have a bed, mom doesn't have groceries, mom's a single mom. There are amazing organizations. One is called Care Portal. I'm obsessed with Care Portal. Care Portal is a Christian organization that's basically like the Christian Craigslist of foster care. So the whole premise of it, it is prevention. The whole premise is like, "Hey, let's apply common sense to this crappy system. Maybe if mom is single, and she doesn't have food in her pantry, and she can't afford a bed for the child, maybe instead of traumatizing all parties involved, we should just get the mom a bed, fill her pantry. And by the way, as the church, wrap around that mom and be like, "Hey sweetheart,

• 1:52:58Speaker 04

  being a single mom is gotta be tough. What can we do as a church to help you?" Right? So there are amazing organizations that are helping with prevention. So, Family First Prevention Services Act passes, and the idea is like, "Let's prevent children from entering care." Great.

• 1:53:20Speaker 04

  What it ended up creating was more bureaucracy and red tape on a system that already had enough bureaucracy and red tape. So it's caused a lot of problems. Very first problem that it's created is, um, it's like, oh my gosh, I like so many things swimming in my head. I'm like, I want to tell you all the things about Family First Prevention Services Act.

• 1:53:44Speaker 04

  I would say the first problem that advocates talk about with Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 is that Congress decided in order to make sure prevention is actually working, we're only going to give the money allocated for prevention to programs that have at least 50% of the money that we're allocating for this whole prevention thing. At least 50% of the budget has to go toward programs that have like the most high scientific data behind them. Also, sounds great, sounds like common sense.

• 1:54:23Speaker 04

  However, there are many wonderful programs that common sense would say, get the mom groceries, get the mom a bed. That is preventing that child from entering foster care. But because they're in a rural community or they're serving minority and maybe they're in a lower income area, they can't afford the research. They're not like tied to some like fancy college running data analysis. So even so, social workers found themselves being like, okay, even though we know this service prevents children from entering care, we can't do anything about it because they don't have research. So that was one problem. Sure. Yeah. The next, and so like the solution to that, the common sense solution to that would be like, all right, look,

• 1:55:08Speaker 04

  you can do several things. You can, instead of creating like this government federal clearinghouse list, that's what it is. Like these people have to be on a list, their program like definitely has scientific research, you know, showing that their program works. You could just get an expert panel to be like, you know what? This program's working, we see it, you know? Put an expert panel on it is like one of the many solutions you could do for that. But that's one of the problems that Family First Prevention Services Act caused, more bureaucracy. Second, it funds the entirely wrong thing. And it's like, Sean, I don't even know, like, I don't even know of all the, there's seven problems that this whole system has created. I don't know which one makes my blood boil the most.

• 1:55:53Speaker 04

  Maybe this one, I don't know, until I get to the next one. It funds the totally wrong thing, okay? So you have social workers. Social workers, again, like I said, some of them have 86 kids on their case. They are doing their best. The one thing that Child Welfare Services does that no other government office does is called case management. Case management looks like coordinating the visitations, the monitored visits, making sure that parent is getting, the biological parent is getting the parenting classes he or she needs, making sure that they get the drug and substance abuse program, you know, that they need, making sure that the social worker is like air traffic control for, you know, talking to the court, talking to the guardian ad litem, talking to the therapist,

• 1:56:38Speaker 04

  talking to the foster parent, and making sure that there's a holistic view of what is going on. That's called case management. That's what you would think that you would fund with prevention services, but they didn't fund that. Instead, the prevention services, whoever was in charge of it, decided that what they would fund is like, let's fund the drug substance abuse program, let's fund the therapy for the child, let's fund, you know, whatever the hell they're funding. And again, that sounds great until you realize that Medicaid already covers that. So now, what happened is these social workers who just want to do case management, their

• 1:57:18Speaker 04

  entire day is now taken up pointing fingers, trying to decide how to exhaust Medicaid before they can get any Title IV E money put into their case. So it's like, who's funding what? Now who's on first? And so critics of the Family First Prevention Services Act would say, let Medicaid fund what Medicaid funds, and let us fund case management. You want to hear something else that's crazy, another problem? This is mind-boggling to me.

• 1:57:48Speaker 04

  Family First Prevention and Services Active 2018 does not require any data attached to it. There are no analytics. So they say prevention works, but they have no way to measure

• 1:58:04Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 1:58:05Speaker 04

  the outcomes. Correct.

• 1:58:07Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 1:58:07Speaker 04

  Correct. So they can't, they don't, states don't, states are not required by this law. This law does not require states to measure the outcomes. So they can track how much they're spending, but they can't track whether it's working. There is no data system that shows how many programs did your, how many people did your program help? How many kids actually were successfully prevented from entering foster care? Nobody knows because the law does not require the data to be measured.

• 1:58:43Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:58:49Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:00:20Speaker 04

  Next problem. Residential treatment programs got way harder. So, again, I think this law had great intentions. A lot of experts, like Dr. Dharma, was like, "This is gonna be a train wreck." There were a lot of people that saw the red flags, but for whatever reason, nobody listened to them. And by the way, there's been a lot of advocates advocating for things to change, and I'm not 100% sure why, but they don't even make it to the floor. And I think it's because, if I'm just speculating, I think everybody kinda wants to get credit for passing a bill,

• 2:01:02Speaker 04

  but nobody wants the... to own up to the unintended consequences of the bill. Right? Everybody wants to point their fingers. So residential treatment programs. There was an old 1965 Medicaid law called the IMD, the Institutions for Mental Disease Law of 1965. This law was a Medicaid law that was passed in order to, basically, it blocked Medicaid federal funding for mental health institutions for adults. Right? Because the federal government's like, "We don't wanna pay forever for an adult who's just gonna end up in a mental institution for the rest of their life." And I have a lot of compassion on people that live in mental institutions.

• 2:01:48Speaker 04

  I could talk about that for days. I have a lot of empathy there. But there was a law, whatever, 1965 IMD, Institutions for Mental Disease, passed in 1965. It was meant for adults. It was never meant to touch children in foster care. But when the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 passed, what an unintended consequence of that was that group homes, if they had more than 16 beds, or residential therapeutic treatment programs had more than 16 beds, now they were like, "Ooh, are they falling under the old 1965 IMD law? We can't fund this anymore." So you have these great programs, and I believe Child Help, actually, which is

• 2:02:31Speaker 04

  an organization I love, I think that this law, I think this is one of the ways it backfired on them. They used to have a village in California, and in that village, it was like a bunch of cottages, there were little like group homes that were like in a neighborhood structure, there was a, there's a school on the property, there was therapy, and these are kids that have been so severely abused, that the federal government's like, there is no hope for this, there's no hope for this child, like just send them to jail, or send them to the mental institution, there is no going back with this child. And the founders of Child Help, over 60 years ago, were like, not on our watch, let's just give

• 2:03:12Speaker 04

  it a go, I think love can heal a child. So they opened up this village, for example, in Beaumont, California, I used to be, I used to be one of their mentors, but the program's been shut down, and it shut down as one of the consequences of Family First Prevention Services Act, it complicated it. Children who end up at Child Help are, literally, I know this case, children that like, some of them were raised as dogs, for example, they've been raised their entire life in a cage, they made it to nine years old, they don't know they're not a dog, no one's ever taught them how to speak English, no one, they don't know how to eat food, they don't know how to speak, they don't know they're

• 2:03:51Speaker 04

  not a dog. You can't put that child in a foster home, you can't. That's why there's levels to foster care, there's normal foster homes, there's trauma-informed therapeutic foster homes, there's group homes, there's qualified residential treatment programs, and then there's jail and mental institutions, and then there was Child Help. So of course they have more than 16 beds, and the outcomes for the children who went through Child Help are incredible. Some of them went to go on to be like politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers. These are the most severely abused cases that the federal government literally ships them in from all 50 states, and they're like, if you don't help them, nobody else

• 2:04:32Speaker 04

  will. Child Help, their village in California, doesn't exist anymore, because you lose all your funding, because somehow...

• 2:04:44Speaker 04

  You know, nobody wants to pay for that anymore.

• 2:04:48Speaker 04

  So that was one of the problems, and I don't know if that's specifically why a child hub got shut down. It was like a compounding of a lot of issues, it's kind of a complicated issue, but like, that was one of the compoundings.

• 2:04:59Speaker 04

  You have something that, that this law of 2018 created, and it's called Qualified Residential Treatment Program. People in social, you know, in foster care, they call it a QRTP. I'm not going to do abbreviations for you. That is a group home that provides a lot of therapy. That's what Tulsa Girls Home is. So you get the cases where like the kid's been bounced around, bounced around, bounced around, adopted to be raped, that's extremely common. That happened with the girl that we took in at 18. We asked her, we said, "Do you, do you want us to adopt you?" And she was like, "No." And we were like, "Whoa," and she was like, "Sorry.

• 2:05:37Speaker 04

  Sorry, when I hear the, when I, when I hear adoption, to me that means rape. And I know you guys don't want to rape me, but that's what I hear."

• 2:05:44Shawn Ryan?

  Geez.

• 2:05:45Speaker 04

  That's not uncommon. Yes, and it's not the first time I've heard it, Sean. I can't tell you, I can tell you at least five kids that I've talked to that have said the same thing. "I'm sorry, adoption means rape to me."

• 2:05:59Speaker 04

  And then, once they're caught in that adoptive home for being raped, if they're caught, they just get put back in the system.

• 2:06:09Speaker 04

  It's so jacked. So,

• 2:06:14Speaker 04

  Family First Prevention Services Act created something called a QRTP, which is a Qualified Residential Treatment Program, and they basically said,

• 2:06:23Speaker 04

  you know, "We're going to put these kids into this program, but we want to eliminate all these programs." Because the whole idea is, if the statistics are so bleak, the statistics we went over, they age out, you know, they become homeless, substance abuse problems, arrest pipeline, all of that. Well, they look at the data and it says that if they lived in a group home, their statistical, you know, outcomes, likelihood of having these outcomes is 2.5 times more likely if they end up in a group home. It's not the therapeutic group home that's causing those statistics. It's that by the time you've worked your way up from family to family to family where you need a group home, it's the trauma. It's the unresolved trauma that nobody wanted to deal with.

• 2:07:07Speaker 04

  It's not the qualified residential, like, therapeutic treatment program that's causing that outcome. Nobody's looking at it right. Yeah. And the other thing that this law created for people that are actually doing it right is the assessment to get into the residential treatment program that was put into place, more bureaucracy because of this law, is maddening. It's called the CAN system. I do not know what CAN stands for. It's in all 50 states. Before a child can receive the therapeutic level of treatment that they need, like at Tulsa Girls Home, there has to be some sort of analysis that's run on them to determine whether they're eligible for those services.

• 2:07:50Speaker 04

  But it's like a online portal that has some sort of strange algorithm that nobody can figure out. And like, we've seen this at Tulsa Girls Home. "Hey, this girl is suicidal. She is cutting and she says she's gonna kill herself and this, this, and that." "Hey, this girl is suicidal. She's cutting herself and this, this, and that." Same case on paper. She qualifies, she doesn't. Why? I don't know. Thank you, Family First Prevention Services Act, for trying to prevent these kids from ending up in group homes. It's bizarre. And then, another problem that's complicated because of it is that...

• 2:08:36Speaker 04

  There was this thing, it's a fancy term is revenue neutrality trap. All that means is that instead of creating an entirely new revenue stream to say, you know what, we believe in prevention, but we know that we're going to have to pump money into preventative services, we want to like stop the kid from ever entering foster care. Instead of creating a revenue stream and like building this up and like working toward prevention, let's get those families, especially if they're poverty related neglect, let's get them taken care of, which is not what Family First Prevention Services Act is budgeted for. Instead of doing all of that, um, sorry, I lost my place because it's like, it's like

• 2:09:16Speaker 04

  so, it's literally just like, it's the messiest thing in the world, but it's like, okay. Oh, I lost my place. Let me look it up. Where is it? Where is the bullet point? Revenue neutrality. Okay. Yeah. So instead of, instead of just creating a new revenue stream, they, they, whoever, whoever they is, Congress thought, if we want to stop group home placements, we'll just defund the group homes and assume that we can put these kids back with normal families. But again, if the kid qualifies for a group home, they're so jacked up that they need this level of care. You can't put them with a foster parent.

• 2:09:59Speaker 04

  And most foster parents won't take them because they're like, I, I am not qualified for that level of trauma. I'm, I'm not, I'm not a therapist. I don't, I don't have, it's a totally different set of qualification that would qualify you to take a child that, that has been through that much trauma. So there's nowhere to put them. So all these kids like fall into the gap. Now they're being put into detention home centers because like, oh crap, we shut down your therapeutic residential treatment program, you didn't qualify to get in, now we have nowhere to place you. I guess we'll just put you into a hotel until you age out.

• 2:10:34Shawn Ryan?

  Geez, or jail.

• 2:10:37Speaker 04

  Or jail. So they, they, they basically like burned the bridge before they, you know, it was like, let them get the therapy they need. You assumed that these kids, if you took the therapy away, that they wouldn't need it. But they need it. And then they did not do the math on, there's nowhere to put them.

• 2:10:58Shawn Ryan?

  Who comes up with this?

• 2:11:00Speaker 04

  Dude, I don't even know. It's, it's again, there were advocacy groups, it was bipartisan. I don't know why people didn't see the red flags. But regardless, if you didn't see the red flags,

• 2:11:16Speaker 04

  but now you do. By the way, 2025 study, eight years in, seven years in was the data. We're eight years in now. Data showed from 2025, this is

• 2:11:29Speaker 04

  that of that 9.6 billion dollars, only two cents of every dollar actually went toward prevention. And of that two cents, 60% went to administrative drag. Because there's so much paperwork now that all the kids are falling into the gap. Nobody can keep up with the paperwork because you gotta have research and you gotta have Medicaid billing first. And you gotta have all the paperwork and you gotta have the cans assessment. You gotta prove that this kid is jacked up enough to need this therapy. And so all of these social workers who were already bogged down are bogged down with even more paperwork. And here's the stats, here's the current stats as the result.

• 2:12:14Speaker 04

  36% turnover rate in social workers within 18 months. That's just the national average. It's 57% in Florida. Annual, well, 18 month turnover rate, it might be annual in Florida. Foster parents, depending upon where you're surveying them, 30 to 50% of foster parents burn out within 12 months because you feel like you're in the system. The good players are quitting because they're like, I can't win.

• 2:12:44Speaker 04

  It's the worst thing that ever happened to foster care. And nobody wants to take blame for it. So, nobody's really addressing the issue. And so, again, it sounds so bleak, but my answer is, then, good people have to foster. Because you're never gonna solve all of this, but if you advocate for a kid, and you actually

• 2:13:07Speaker 04

  champion your social worker, who might seem like a total jerk, but maybe they're just overworked, underpaid, and feel like they're not making any difference, so they're depressed.

• 2:13:20Speaker 04

  Social workers don't feel like they have any say. Guardians at Lydum, the lawyers, sometimes they feel like they have no say. And it's because foster care is so complicated that every single person has a piece, and nobody has total control.

• 2:13:33Speaker 04

  But you gotta get the good people to stay in the fight. You gotta fund the social workers, fund the case management. Let Medicaid pay for what Medicaid pays for already. This is such a mess.

• 2:13:45Shawn Ryan?

  How do you fix it?

• 2:13:49Speaker 04

  I think, I genuinely think that the number one way to fix it is you get better people in the fight. You recruit better foster parents. You give them community. You support your social workers. You know? You petition Congress or your representatives. Make the phone calls. "Hey, it's not about graffiti this time. It's about children." Make them care, put the pressure on them. And get involved. I mean,

• 2:14:21Speaker 04

  it's like if you care about homelessness, all these things, like if you care about all these things, and ground zero is foster care, you have to get involved. If you don't wanna be a foster parent, there are so many ways people can get involved. If you're a hairdresser.

• 2:14:34Speaker 04

  These girls in foster care, they've never had their hair done. On prom night, on homecoming night. Just open up your salon. Do like free.

• 2:14:44Shawn Ryan?

  Just make them feel good.

• 2:14:46Speaker 04

  Just make them feel pretty. It seems so simple, but they will remember that for the rest of their life. They've never felt pretty, they've never felt worthy. Open up your salon and let them come. You might not feel like you're doing heavy lifting, but for that kid, it was like the first time they were told that they like deserved to feel like everybody else. Give them school supplies. Don't give them trash bags, like donate your suitcases. Get involved in Care Portal. Tell your church to get involved. Like get involved, like people have to get involved.

• 2:15:25Speaker 04

  The Christians have no excuse, we have no excuse.

• 2:15:29Speaker 04

  We were not called to a life of convenience.

• 2:15:34Shawn Ryan?

  It's true.

• 2:15:39Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man.

• 2:15:40Speaker 04

  I know.

• 2:15:43Shawn Ryan?

  Want to take another break?

• 2:15:44Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:15:53Speaker 04

  I could also say, before we take a break, so don't forget it. Are we still rolling, or did we cut?

• 2:15:59Shawn Ryan?

  We're rolling.

• 2:16:00Speaker 04

  Okay. The other thing people can do is that twenty nine, twenty nine percent of the kids that are in foster care are currently eligible for adoption. They've been emancipated.

• 2:16:12Speaker 04

  And they've been told nobody wants them. And by the way, it's free to adopt from foster care, actually, they pay you. There's an adoption assistance program, like I said, I discovered.

• 2:16:22Speaker 04

  Consider adoption. There's organizations like the Dave Thomas Center, uh, Foundation for Adoption. There's Adopt U S Kids. There's many organizations where you can adopt a child out of foster care. Some of them are aging out and they just need. A place to come home to. You know, for the holidays, help them transition into being an adult. If you're a financial planner, like maybe once a month, give financial planning to these kids.

• 2:16:50Speaker 04

  The outcomes for children who are adopted into foster care are far better than children who age out of the system. Kids who have guardianship, their outcomes are pretty parallel with with adoption. Same for mentoring. Children who are mentored, like you don't even have to adopt. Children who are mentored.

• 2:17:09Speaker 04

  The statistics go way down favorable.

• 2:17:11Shawn Ryan?

  There's a mentoring program?

• 2:17:13Speaker 04

  There's tons of mentoring programs.

• 2:17:17Speaker 04

  Big brothers, big sisters, child help has a program called special friends. That's how I got involved in it. There are so many ways you can mentor kids in foster care. I promise across the United States right now, you could call up your local Department of Children and Family Services and Child Welfare Services, you know, and say like, hey, are there any programs in our area that do mentorships for teens in foster care or kids in foster care? And they'd be like, yes, we are so grateful to have your call and they will put you in touch. I mean, I talk about it in my book. We have a whole chapter on like, here's all the resources. Here's all the ways you can get involved without actually becoming a foster parent. But we also need foster parents and we need social workers. Or you can like go to a social worker.

• 2:18:00Speaker 04

  Like, what does it look like if you give them a even $5? That'll buy a small latte at Starbucks, you know, give them a $5 Starbucks gift card. You don't know the straw that you take off the camel's back. Like, maybe they were just about to quit and you walked in their office and said, you know what? I see you and know you're burnt out and frustrated.

• 2:18:23Speaker 04

  Do something.

• 2:18:26Shawn Ryan?

  So this this village in California you're talking about?

• 2:18:30Speaker 04

  Shut down. I think it's now a detention home.

• 2:18:34Shawn Ryan?

  Does that mean all of these have shut down?

• 2:18:39Speaker 04

  Not all of them.

• 2:18:42Speaker 04

  There are many still qualified residential treatment programs. Oh, and by the way, here's what's also crazy about this. The data, since Family First Prevention Services Act passed in 2018, the data on the rate of group homes, because there are also group homes that are hell holes.

• 2:19:02Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure there are.

• 2:19:03Speaker 04

  Where trafficking is happening out of the group home.

• 2:19:06Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure.

• 2:19:07Speaker 04

  Page, you know, back page there. I mean, it's bad. Because nobody pays attention to those kids.

• 2:19:12Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you're talking about these statistics.

• 2:19:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:15Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and it's 50 to 80% of trafficking victims have have child welfare involvement. 60% of likely victims missing to NCMEC were in foster care. I mean, 15,000 to 16,000

• 2:19:32Speaker 04

  And by the way, the statistic-

• 2:19:33Shawn Ryan?

  with no family.

• 2:19:34Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 2:19:35Shawn Ryan?

  About 40 a day, up to 40, 46% homeless.

• 2:19:38Speaker 04

  40 kids age out of foster care every single day.

• 2:19:40Shawn Ryan?

  These, these

• 2:19:43Speaker 04

  Five children die in the United States every day due to child abuse and neglect. Five children every day.

• 2:19:58Shawn Ryan?

  So what I'm saying is with these statistics, it just kind of, it kind of, it paints the, it just paints the story. I mean, everywhere they go.

• 2:20:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:09Shawn Ryan?

  They're abused, they're raped.

• 2:20:10Speaker 04

  They're targets.

• 2:20:11Shawn Ryan?

  Sexually exploited. And that becomes their normal, because it is their

• 2:20:16Speaker 04

  It is their normal. Yeah.

• 2:20:17Shawn Ryan?

  And then they do the same thing.

• 2:20:20Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:20:21Shawn Ryan?

  Over and over.

• 2:20:22Speaker 04

  And a lot of them-

• 2:20:22Shawn Ryan?

  Generation after generation after generation.

• 2:20:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, and a lot of them, especially the girls that I I can't get into a boy's brain, but the girls, a lot of them will commit a crime just to go to jail.

• 2:20:34Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's the other thing. I mean, if that's all they know is, I mean, if they're gonna put them in detention centers, then that's, that's home.

• 2:20:42Speaker 04

  It's literally like, I'm aging out, I better commit a crime so that I can get like a hot in a cot.

• 2:20:49Shawn Ryan?

  That's kind of what I'm getting at.

• 2:20:51Speaker 04

  Yep. Nobody tells them they matter.

• 2:20:54Shawn Ryan?

  So are any facilities opening? Or are they all just?

• 2:20:59Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean.

• 2:21:00Shawn Ryan?

  Are there any good facilities open? Let me say that. Are there any good? I'm sure there's facilities opening.

• 2:21:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, there are a lot of really good programs. I mean Tulsa Girls Home is exceptional. Tulsa Boys Home, I can't comment on.

• 2:21:12Shawn Ryan?

  How many people do they care for?

• 2:21:14Speaker 04

  We only care for eight girls.

• 2:21:17Shawn Ryan?

  Tulsa Women to Tulsa Girls?

• 2:21:18Speaker 04

  Tulsa Girls Home, yeah, we have enough beds for eight. But because the CANS assessment is so jacked up, we can't even fill the beds.

• 2:21:28Shawn Ryan?

  You can't fill eight beds?

• 2:21:30Speaker 04

  Nope. Because of the bureaucratic system that says, no, they don't qualify.

• 2:21:34Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:21:36Speaker 04

  Yep. But we also created transitional homes and these homes are gorgeous. Like Sean, I'm a celebrity. I would love to live in these houses. They are bougie as all get out. And that's what we hear. It's so heartbreaking. The girls walk into Tulsa Girls Home and they're like, wow, it's so clean. Like it's so clean and it's so nice. And then we created these beautiful like row home transition homes where when they age out of foster care, they can go into our transitional program where we give them like financial classes, make sure they have a job. Like we don't just leave them. You know?

• 2:22:13Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's something I wanted to ask. I mean, just a kid in the regular foster program who doesn't have a good family.

• 2:22:21Speaker 04

  They age out, there's nobody's problem.

• 2:22:24Shawn Ryan?

  What is it? Is it like getting out of jail? Like here you go. You're 18 now. Figure it out. That's what it is?

• 2:22:31Speaker 04

  You're done. Get out of my house.

• 2:22:34Speaker 04

  That's why we took in that one girl. She had a week left before she knew she was gonna get kicked out. She didn't know where to go. And my husband was like, we have to help her. And I was like, great, yeah, I would love to help her. We have an extra room. Let's help her.

• 2:22:49Speaker 04

  I mean, the church has to get involved. There's also an amazing organization called Olive Crest.

• 2:22:55Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think most churches don't get involved? I mean, you, you, look, we're in Tennessee here.

• 2:23:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:23:03Shawn Ryan?

  There's a church on every fucking corner.

• 2:23:04Speaker 04

  You are the buckle of the Bible Belt.

• 2:23:08Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, I'll go to these churches. You know where they all go? They all go out of country. They're all free and slaves. They're all, but nobody's doing anything here in the community.

• 2:23:20Speaker 04

  I wanna-

• 2:23:21Shawn Ryan?

  Why is, why is that? Is it, is it the red tape? Is it all bullshit?

• 2:23:25Speaker 04

  I wanna believe-

• 2:23:26Shawn Ryan?

  Are they really freeing the slaves?

• 2:23:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. I wanna believe that most don't know.

• 2:23:31Shawn Ryan?

  Cause I've been to a lot of these places where they go free the slaves as a SEAL and as a CIA guy. I didn't see any fucking slaves being freed.

• 2:23:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:23:42Speaker 04

  That's a whole different discussion.

• 2:23:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, um, I, I, I wanna say the overwhelming majority is not aware. You know, they're like me. I even had a leg up on foster care because I was some exposure to it as a child.

• 2:24:03Speaker 04

  I didn't know the statistics. I didn't know what was going on in my backyard. I didn't know there was like a epidemic of child abuse in the United States. I had no idea. So I wanna say the majority of people just don't know. Then there's the bystander effect. Somebody else will do it. I mean, we've been saying there's a church on every corner of one person out of every four churches fostered. We've been saying that for over 10 years. Numbers haven't gone down. Oh, numbers have gone down, by the way. People will be like, aren't you excited? These numbers are amazing. I'm like, these numbers are BS. These numbers are not real. These numbers are hidden foster care. Take the crisis off the books. And where's that money going, by the way? Because it's not going with grandma.

• 2:24:45Speaker 04

  Grandma's not getting the monthly stipend. Kinship care is not getting the monthly stipend.

• 2:24:49Shawn Ryan?

  Well, they came out a couple of months ago and said that there's an estimated $600 billion in fraud every year in the United States.

• 2:24:58Speaker 04

  So much for the GAO, Government Accountability Office.

• 2:25:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Was that, was that a real thing?

• 2:25:07Speaker 04

  Well, that's what I'm saying. It's just like, you're never, I think people get overwhelmed. Myself included. You know? Statistics are numbing. It's numbing. You get numb. You want to turn away because it's so uncomfortable. Or you assume that you can't do it. And it's like... Or we just get fed this prosperity gospel. That like, the Lord wants to bless you. It's like, yeah, he wants to bless you, but what's the definition of blessing? Foster care has stretched me in ways that I would not trade for the world.

• 2:25:40Speaker 04

  I am so grateful for every single thing that I have learned through foster care, as painful as it has been. There was not a day I didn't cry.

• 2:25:50Speaker 04

  But foster care made me so tender-hearted. I see people differently now. When I look at people, I look at them with so much empathy, empathy I would never would have received. And that is an overwhelming thing that I hear from parents who have children

• 2:26:06Speaker 04

  in their own home that are their biological children. When they become foster parents, they make their children part of the discussion because that's healthy. Like, hey, we're thinking about fostering as a family. What do you think? And a lot of people say, oh, I'll foster, I'll foster once my kids are out of the house. No.

• 2:26:24Speaker 04

  Listen. Not no. That's between you and your family. Have a freaking discussion. But at the same time, every parent I have ever talked to that has fostered while they have their own kids, they have told me, and this is the people I've talked to, I acknowledge stuff can happen in foster care. Children that have been molested can molest other children. You go through all of that in training. By the way, nobody forces you to say no when you get the phone call. My son, Kayden, I said no at first. No, because they say in training, don't worry about saying no to this child. Do not let it break your heart because there will be another phone call in five minutes. You're not forced to take any case.

• 2:27:07Speaker 04

  You can pick the case that you feel is the best fit for your family. I don't recommend that someone takes a child... When they have other young children, if that child has been molested, it's not a good idea to put them in your house with younger children.

• 2:27:23Shawn Ryan?

  How would you even know?

• 2:27:24Speaker 04

  Because the caseworkers know. And you can, yeah, not always. Not always, not all the thing doesn't come all the way. You are trained in foster care training to ask them. That's what I had to ask like the girl who lived with us. I took her social workers aside and I was like, look, it's not necessarily a no, but I need to know. Like just be straight with me because I'm an advocate. I will find a home for that girl. There is no way that girl is aging out of foster care homeless next week. I will figure it flipping out. I just need you to be straight with me. Has she molested other children? Because I have three young children and I have an infant and I have a newborn. My husband works night shift. Like I am not cognizantly. I have three children under three. Like I can't also be managing that.

• 2:28:07Speaker 04

  So they train you in foster care training, like the questions to ask. If that child's been molested, it's really great. If you put them in your home and you don't have other kids because there's nobody else for them to accuse. All of this, you go through foster care training. All of this is covered in my book, like how do you navigate this mess? But you don't have to say yes. And there is going to be a child that is right for your family. And these families that have other children that foster,

• 2:28:35Speaker 04

  their kids learn that same empathy. They are wiser than many adults I've talked to. Their children have been exposed to a world with empathy, compassion, action. I mean, these are kids that are gonna conquer the world. I cannot wait to expose my children fully to foster care. They're aware of it. But like, people shouldn't not foster because they have other kids.

• 2:29:00Shawn Ryan?

  How old are your kids now?

• 2:29:02Speaker 04

  They are four, six, eight and 10. About to be four, seven, eight and 10. And also, single people can foster. You don't have to be married to foster.

• 2:29:17Shawn Ryan?

  How do your kids handle it? I mean, I'm being serious. You know, for somebody that doesn't know this, here's some fears that will go through my head.

• 2:29:24Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:29:25Shawn Ryan?

  How do I treat my kids? How do I treat these kids in comparison to my kids? How do I treat my biological kids?

• 2:29:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:29:32Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it's, how do we keep it fair?

• 2:29:35Speaker 04

  Um, a lot of that they go through in, in training that you would have. So like, one of the things is like, you know, I'm obviously a huge advocate against child abuse. I would say you are too. Spanking? I personally think there, there is a time and a place to spank, as long as you're not doing it in anger. I don't, I'm not a big proponent of spanking, but I don't think that if somebody spanks their children, they're automatic child abusers.

• 2:30:03Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:30:04Speaker 04

  I know people that are excellent parents that spank their kids on occasion, but they don't do it in anger, or they do it in the right way. Like, I'm not, I, I would not call that child abuse.

• 2:30:15Shawn Ryan?

  I wouldn't either.

• 2:30:16Speaker 04

  Right. However, a child that's in foster care, obviously, if you spank your own children, you cannot spank that child. You cannot. It's against the law. You cannot. So you're gonna have to discipline them, like, we have a whole chapter on discipline, like, timeouts, you know, take toys, or incentivize the other way. Same things you would do with, like, other, you know, other kids in your care, when you're a parent, you know, like, it's like, you feel like you have all these tools in your parenting belt, and there are days that you're like, "I don't even know, like, where do I, how do I even, I have exhausted every form of discipline, and now I don't know what to do with you." You know, but there, you are gonna have to maybe discipline them different, but hopefully, if a child is in your care, you are going to give them the boundaries from the get-go, so they feel secure.

• 2:31:00Speaker 04

  "These are the rules in our house, Cole, we don't hit, we don't whatever." But hopefully, if you're a foster parent, you're also gonna not be spanking your kid either, because that's traumatizing for that child. So you kinda have to, like, have the same rules, lay them out for the child. Um, but my children, I have not fostered while I've had my own children, because it wasn't until my boy's cases were going to adoption, that literally I just turned to my husband, and, uh, I was like, "Hey," like, looking at my ovulation calendar, because we used to be, like, on five forms of birth control, because I'm an actress. Never wanted to be a parent, like, I was like, "Oh, foster." I was so naive, I talk about it in the book. I'm like... I'll foster and I'll save the world and I'll help these kids. And then when they leave, I'll just be destroyed and I'll grieve and we'll go to Europe and we'll

• 2:31:45Speaker 04

  have some pasta and when we're ready, we'll like take the next kid. So once I decided we were gonna adopt and the case went toward adoption, which was so great because my son Kayden would not be alive. There is no way that kid would have made it to his third birthday if he had not been adopted. My son Jeffrey, maybe would, he had a really crappy childhood if he had not been adopted.

• 2:32:05Speaker 04

  Once we realized Kayden's case was going to adoption, I was literally looking at my ovulation calendar on my app. And I'm looking at my filming schedule, I'm like doing Hallmark movies and all this stuff. And I was like, out of town, out of town, out of town. There's this thing called the Shuttles method, a love science. Basically, you can probably predict whether you're gonna have a boy or girl based on when you have sex. I looked at my husband and I'm like, yeah. So like, so it's, and I'm totally, it works, okay. For everybody that's listening that's like, tell me how the Shuttles method works. Okay, here's how the Shuttles method works.

• 2:32:35Shawn Ryan?

  Two times it worked.

• 2:32:36Speaker 04

  Totally. Well, Jackie was a surprise that we didn't know we needed. She knows that. Anyway. Shuttles method, because you're gonna be curious, it's awesome. Shuttles method is, girl, okay, so obviously, we know the little lesson in biology, men are the, it's their sperm that determines the sex of the baby, the gender of their baby. And girl sperm swim slower than boy sperm. But the boys swim fast and die quickly and the girls swim slow and they camp out for up to five days. So if you have sex before your, your egg drops, and then you don't have sex, you're more likely to have a girl because the girl sperm is just hanging out, like waiting to, you know, get that egg.

• 2:33:19Speaker 04

  So we looked at the calendar and I'm like, I don't wanna have a boy. Of course, I would have accepted a boy if that's what I got pregnant with, but I was like, I, if I'm gonna have, if I know these boys are going to adoption, and if Kayden's going to adoption, Jeff's definitely going to adoption too. The odds are like in my favor that Jeff's gonna be adopted too. Guess that means we're gonna be like in for a lot of sleepless nights and college tuition anyway, so, um, I think I'd like to have a girl because I don't wanna have a boy that like my adopted kids would have like a genetic boy to compare themselves to. So I look at my husband, I'm like, hey, if we have sex right now, we'll be in the girl window and, uh, you know, otherwise, we're five months out. And he was just like, a man, he's like, let's go. So we got pregnant with my daughter Julie.

• 2:34:03Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 2:34:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:34:06Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 2:34:07Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:34:08Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:34:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, so how how do you, I mean,

• 2:34:16Shawn Ryan?

  how about your, how about like the biological kids? I mean, do they, do they?

• 2:34:22Speaker 04

  They know. I mean, my kids are very, my my boys know they're adopted out of foster care. I explain their mom by saying like, she really loved you. She just did not know how to be a mommy. Because nobody ever taught her how. And it was not safe for you to be with her. And God knew that you were going to be placed in my home. When I was pregnant with my daughter Julie, a lot of people would ask me, like, are you worried that you're gonna love your biological child more than your adopted child? And I'm like, well, I I wasn't. But now that you're saying it, God, I hope not. I don't love her any more than I love my boys. And when I was pregnant with Jackie, who's my fourth, and she was a big surprise. It was like a very painful pregnancy. I did not want to be pregnant. I was like,

• 2:35:03Speaker 04

  this is like hard. And I'm like, I have no torso. And like, I'm like, losing acting jobs. Like, this is not on my bingo card. I'm really grateful that I'm pregnant. But like, also, my God, I wanted to foster, you know, I wanted a fourth kid by foster care.

• 2:35:18Speaker 04

  I said to my boys one day, I was home with Kayden, and my husband was like at band practice for church. And I had I had to get something. And I was way too pregnant to like, get whatever it was that I needed. I was in so much pain. And I said to Kayden, I said, just in case you or your brother ever wonder whether I love you the same as these girls, let me tell you something. I might love you and Jeff a little bit more because you never did this to me. Like, I can, like, if I only fostered, I could jump on a trampoline.

• 2:35:45Speaker 04

  You know? Like, there is no easy way to have a baby.

• 2:35:49Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of questions do they have for you?

• 2:35:51Speaker 04

  The boys? Uh, Jeff wants to know everything there is to know about everything, and Kayden doesn't want to talk about it.

• 2:35:58Shawn Ryan?

  Do they know about the trauma that they experienced? Or do you tell them? Or it's a secret?

• 2:36:04Speaker 04

  They they they know a little bit. They don't know about their dads yet. I haven't, um, they know they have a dad. They know they know, listen, because of Roblox, because of all this sexual exploitation of children that's happening. Kids unfortunately in our nation are exposed to pornography by the age of seven. That's the average age. It is so bad. So I always tell parents, I'm like, look, it's really uncomfortable. You don't have to have like the nitty gritty conversation with them about sex, but like you better be the first person that talks to them about sex and present yourself as an expert. Cause otherwise they're gonna learn it from kids or disgusting people who tell them this is normal. So they know biologically, they have a, you know, sperm donor.

• 2:36:45Speaker 04

  They don't know about their dads. They haven't asked me about their dads. Kayden's dad is way more complicated than Jeffrey's. Uh, I'm dying. I do not want to have that conversation with him. I still don't know whether I will talk to him about all the nitty gritty of his dad.

• 2:37:02Speaker 04

  Until he's like in his twenties and the only reason I say twenties is because your cerebral frontal cortex is not developed as a male until about the age of 26. And so the, I think, I personally think that one of the worst things you could do to a child who's adopted out of foster care is like, try to talk to them about all the questions they have.

• 2:37:24Speaker 04

  Or introduce them to their biological parent as a teenager. Because they've got all these hormones and they don't know, like, that's just a hard time in your life where you're trying to sort through like who you are and what are you gonna do? And if you're not stable when you're introducing all these new problems, like, it can definitely backfire.

• 2:37:39Shawn Ryan?

  How do you deflect?

• 2:37:42Speaker 04

  Well, Kayden doesn't ask me. Kayden doesn't want to know anything. Jeffrey, I always tell them, like, look, you're, this is your story and you're allowed to ask me any question and I will do my very best to explain it to you. So they just haven't asked me. Um, Kayden, you know, their biological mom was on drugs. He was a meth baby. And so there's a lot of aftermath that comes from that. There's a lot of trauma that comes from that. We've, we were the only homes that both of our boys have ever, well, Jeffrey had one placement before us, but it was a really good home. Um, but they were placed with us at four months old. But regardless, the trauma that Kaden endured even in utero and in those first

• 2:38:26Speaker 04

  four months of life, he's still paying for it. So, I mean, you navigate it the best that you can, you know? I always tell them, like, if you have any questions, you can ask me. And I assure them that, like, I love them so much, I'm doing the best I can. And I know that, like, God loves you and you were created on purpose and for a purpose. Kaden struggles with that. I mean, he's literally like, I should be dead. I should never have come to live with you. I should just be dead.

• 2:38:55Shawn Ryan?

  Geez, how old is he?

• 2:38:56Speaker 04

  Ten.

• 2:38:57Shawn Ryan?

  Ten years old? Did he say that?

• 2:38:59Speaker 04

  Uh huh. He's been through every form of therapy. But I always think, I'm like, well, if he didn't end up in my home, what would your story be? You know what I mean? Because like, at least he got a mom that, like, I might not have all the answers, but I'll find him. I'll do everything I can, you know? And then Jeff wants to know everything. He wants to know all the details about everything. So, I try to, like, talk to them about it separately, because what will inevitably happen is they share a room. They don't have to share a room, they just want to share a room. Jeff gets really chatty at night. It's like he's tired and he's like, "Let me ask you why? What is the purpose of life?" Like, he's a very introspective child. And Kaden's like, across the way, and he's like, "Shut up, Jeff!" And he's like, "I don't want to talk about this!" So, it's like, Jeff,

• 2:39:42Speaker 04

  hey, you have really deep philosophical questions, you know? He's like, "Well, what happened to my... what happened to Sheila? You know, what happened to my mom? Like, why doesn't she... what's her deal?" And I'm like, "Well, honey, nobody ever loved her." "Well, why did nobody ever love her?" "Well, I don't know. I guess because they... somebody never loved their parent. And their parent, like, well, what hap...?" You know, like, he wants to know all of it. Kaden doesn't want to know a thing.

• 2:40:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:40:08Speaker 04

  So... And I told the mom that. I told the bio mom that. We have a closed adoption case, but I... which means that she can't have any contact with the kids, and I'm not supposed to have any contact with her. But I'm like, I have contact with her.

• 2:40:25Speaker 04

  I don't update her on everything on their life. I don't because she doesn't need that. And it's probably confusing for her. But she knows she can talk to me at any point. But she also knows that I'm like, look, I don't really talk to the boys about you. I've told them a little bit about you, like they know that you exist. And I, and I told her, I said, I'm telling you this right now, just so you can brace yourself.

• 2:40:48Speaker 04

  I think Jeff is going to want a relationship with you when he's older. And I don't think that Kayden will. And

• 2:40:54Shawn Ryan?

  They had the same parents?

• 2:40:55Speaker 04

  They had the same mom.

• 2:40:57Shawn Ryan?

  They had the same mom?

• 2:40:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, they had the same mom, different dads.

• 2:41:01Shawn Ryan?

  Did you get them at the same time?

• 2:41:04Speaker 04

  Well, we got Kayden first because he's older. But then I knew that she was pregnant with Jeff the whole time. And I mean, I was literally like her, her staple diet was like Mountain Dew and Cheetos. And I, I knew like, that's my baby in there. Because I, uh, this is not something that you should do. I write about it in my book. It's totally shady and it's not something you should do. And I'm like, whatever. I created catfish accounts. Uh, which is like a social media profile that's not real. And I I like knew what was going on with the bio parents. Actual life. To keep my kids safe. Kayden's case was bleak.

• 2:41:48Speaker 04

  Like it was like, I'm going to do this because if I don't, like he's dead. He's not making it to his third birthday.

• 2:41:55Speaker 04

  So I knew she was pregnant. She put it on Facebook, like for a sonogram. And I was like,

• 2:42:02Speaker 04

  all right. So when I got pregnant, I sat her down because we already had Jeffrey's case. And I was like,

• 2:42:08Speaker 04

  just so you know, I'm pregnant. So like my turn. Do not give me twins. I'm close enough with Jeff and Julie are like 14 months apart. Like it's my turn. Just hold off. Please, please, please. I'll get you on birth control. Please, please don't have any more kids just for a second. So that I can like manage this because I don't know how I would not take a sibling. If he or she ended up in the system, you know?

• 2:42:30Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 2:42:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's

• 2:42:32Shawn Ryan?

  How often do you talk to her?

• 2:42:33Speaker 04

  Not. She's, she's not doing well. She was doing well for a long time. She was doing so well for so long and Now she's kind of like back in old patterns. So, I mean, I'll talk to her on her birthday. I'll wish her happy birthday. I text her on Mother's Day. I, she normally texts me on the boy's birthday or like the day after to be like, oh yeah, it was her birthday. Please tell them I love them. And I'm like, I'm gonna pass on a message, but I, I will let you know they're doing great. And I might tell her like Jeffrey lost his first tooth or you know, whatever. Hey, Kayden's on the honor roll. You know? People say you shouldn't do that, but I'm like, why? To me, that's compassion, you know? It wasn't easy for her.

• 2:43:17Speaker 04

  She wasn't a willful child abuser. She just, she didn't know what healthy love looks like. To her, love looks like getting beat up or being taken advantage of, being raped and you know, like that's love.

• 2:43:34Speaker 05

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• 2:45:05Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:46:02Shawn Ryan?

  All right, we're back from the break.

• 2:46:04Speaker 04

  All right.

• 2:46:05Shawn Ryan?

  Questions, questions? What's that thing that Melania was talking about a couple of months ago?

• 2:46:10Speaker 04

  Okay, so...

• 2:46:11Shawn Ryan?

  Some new fostering program or something?

• 2:46:13Speaker 04

  Yes, it's called the Fostering the Futures Act, and it was bipartisan as well, passed with flying colors. Basically, there's something called the John, I think it's F, John F. Chafee. People know it's called the Chafee Program. And basically, she, her big focus is on kids who are aging out of foster care. So it deals with an entirely different stream of kids than Family First Prevention Services Act, which is trying to prevent kids from ever entering the system. Hers is dealing with the kids that are about to exit. You know, what do we do with kids that are aging out? How do we help them? So what that law did is it lowered the Chafee age from 16 to 14. So like, they are eligible for services from 16 to 14. What that means is, and they extended it from 18 to 21.

• 2:46:57Speaker 04

  I don't know if aging out of foster care will now be 21 in all 50 states. I'm not 100% sure how that's going to be implemented in states if this is like a... Federal new law where 21 is the new age of aging out of foster care. I think 21 would be a better age just because, I mean, 18 to 21 is a pivotal time in your life where you're, you know, becoming an adult. But I know that they basically expanded the age from 16 to 18 to 14 to 21. And what that means is now if a child is still in foster care at the age of 14, that child is now eligible for stipends to go to college. So we're trying to like raise the statistical outcomes for high school graduation, college

• 2:47:42Speaker 04

  graduation, like getting a degree of some sort. It also opens up, um, whatever budgetary allocation is given for affordable housing. So now kids who have been in foster care from the ages of 14 to 21 are now also eligible for, I mean, I guess HUD, whatever it is that provides housing or reasonable housing rates. It also, I think incentivizes businesses to, um, hire or have interns come out of foster care. Like there's a lot of incentives for businesses to work with children who have experienced, um, foster care. I'm really glad it passed. I don't know the ins and outs of it, but I know it focuses on kids who age out of foster care.

• 2:48:24Speaker 04

  I think one of my concerns about it is that because it was in the news and it was so big, what I don't want to have happen is for legislative branch to, in, in our government to be like, oh, good, checked it off the list. Like we handled foster care. Next, because like there's still this gaping problem that's much more dire, which I would say is fixing the Family First Prevention Services Act.

• 2:48:49Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:48:51Speaker 04

  But these are totally different age bracket. So, you know, it's great, but it deals with like a totally different demographic of children in care.

• 2:48:59Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:49:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:49:03Shawn Ryan?

  What is the road to fostering a child?

• 2:49:05Speaker 04

  Like if you want to become licensed?

• 2:49:07Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:49:09Speaker 04

  Well, now, thanks to Home for Every Child, apparently it's gonna get real easy, but um, it's so much easier than people think that it is. I mean, the first thing people can do is they can go down to their local child welfare office. It's called different things in different states and different counties. Some call it DCFS, which is Department of Children and Family Services. Some call it HHS, which is Health and Human Services. Some call it CPS, which is Child Protective Services. Whatever. Just Google, "What's my local child welfare service, you know, in my area?" And they can go and just take an orientation class. Um, this is something my, my husband and I talked about because I wanted to foster and he, like I said, he was like 51% of surveyed Americans that were like, "There's no way

• 2:49:52Speaker 04

  we could foster, aren't kids in foster care bad kids?" And I'm like, "No, they're not bad kids. They're like put into a broken system against their will." And uh, once he got on board with fostering, well, when we were having that argument, I talk about it, like, we were having that argument, you're seven of our marriage. I said, "I don't have a problem with you saying no to being a foster parent. I will advocate for these kids till I die. I will use my platform for this until I die. However, I do have a major problem with you saying no to something that you don't know what you're saying no to. Get the information. Like, just go down to your office and be like, 'Hey, um, when's the next time you're doing a foster care orientation class? I'd like to learn more about it.'" No one's gonna force you to become a foster parent. So that's one way that you can do

• 2:50:36Speaker 04

  it. There's also private agencies that uh, license foster parents. So that's what I did. I went through Child Help. Child Help is the original reason in our country we even know about child abuse. They've been around for over 60 years. They've rescued 13 million US kids. They're the ones that are responsible for 1-800-4-A-CHILD, which is the child abuse hotline that any kid can call or now text. If they're being abused at home, 1-800-4-A-CHILD. They can text, they can call, it's anonymous. There are therapists who are trained, I think in 170 languages, to take that call and get that child help. I got licensed through their program because they're the ones again that had the village

• 2:51:18Speaker 04

  in California, they have a village in Virginia, the Alice C. Tyler Village, I think they have a village in Tennessee, but I'm not sure, I know they're like major in Tennessee as well. But I'm like, listen, if I'm gonna get licensed as a foster parent, I wanna go to like the highest echelon. I wanna go like see how hard could it be. So I went the hard route, just to see like, how, how like much is like an abuser sustaining in order to get licensed. Next time I do it, I would go low bar, which would be through the Department of Children and Family Services, it's much easier. So there are private agencies, one reason to go through a private agency is because they have their own caseworkers. And so those children that go through the agencies are probably going to get a bit

• 2:52:01Speaker 04

  more attention because you have a whole other caseworker who's not bogged down with 86 kids, who is gonna maybe help coordinate services a little bit better with you. You have like another advocate on your team. And also, for whatever reason, and I don't know why, your stipend, your monthly stipend's a little bit higher. Or you can go through your local Department of Children and Family Services, and it's a lot easier. You have to get CPR certified, you know, you have to take parenting classes, basically, you have to do a water safety class, um, and that, and then you have to do what's called a home study. They wanna make sure that you have your medica, and they tell you all of this, like, none of this is a surprise. They wanna make sure that you have food in your pantry, they wanna make sure, you know, you have a bed for the trial, they wanna make sure, like, if you have pills or prescriptions, they have to

• 2:52:45Speaker 04

  be behind a lock, so that that child doesn't just-

• 2:52:48Shawn Ryan?

  They just wanna know you're a responsible-

• 2:52:49Speaker 04

  They wanna, yeah, like, if you have guns, they have to be locked up. If you have knives, they have to be locked up. Kind of common sense stuff, and then, um, that's it, like, you're licensed. But I tell people, listen, if you're-

• 2:53:01Shawn Ryan?

  What about-

• 2:53:02Speaker 04

  Go ahead.

• 2:53:03Shawn Ryan?

  How does the child get presented to you? Do you pick?

• 2:53:06Speaker 04

  No, uh, no, I'll tell you how that works. Also, there's a thing in foster care called respite care, which there are far too respite homes. So respite, um, is what it sounds like. It is, if you are literally, if you're a foster parent, and you're like, I'm losing my mind, I can't do this anymore, I ju, I just need one night off, I just need one night off.

• 2:53:30Speaker 04

  You can access something called respite care. However, respite care is barely ever available because there's not enough respite homes. This is a home that is licensed, fully licensed, so they could become foster parents if they fell in love with a child. They're basically like the vacation home. Sometimes a foster parent, like they have a death in their family. You know, I can't just fly to my parents' funeral because I can't just take my child who's in foster care with me. I have to get the judge to sign off that that kid can cross county lines, right? So I might need respite care because I can't get the court order in fast enough to like take that child with me. That child has to go somewhere because I'm definitely going to like go to my parents' funeral. That would fall into respite care. I always tell people, I'm like, if you're considering fostering, consider respite care because you will save another foster parent.

• 2:54:13Speaker 04

  And also, you're going to get that child on his or her best behavior. Because you get to be like the fun aunt or the fun uncle. I used to do respite care for my mentor through Child Help and it was awesome. We would have her for all the holidays because her foster mom didn't really want her during the holidays. And I was like, I will take her for all the things. I wanted to adopt her so bad. Many reasons why we weren't allowed. It's ridiculous. So ridiculous. Bureaucratic, red tape, awful, whatever. She was allowed to do respite with us and it was like she was on her best behavior. We'd take her to like Six Flags, take her to Disneyland, you know, take her to go get frozen yogurt. Because like my home's the vacation home. And then when she leaves, I'm like, okay, now I'm going to go take a five hour nap because I'm exhausted. But I didn't have to take on like the full burden of being a foster parent.

• 2:54:55Speaker 04

  And yet at the same time, if I'm a respite home and I love that child and I, and that child tells me, hey, my foster home is a piece of crap. I can now say, I actually volunteer as tribute. I want to, I want to be this kid's foster parent now. And their case might likely get transferred to you. So you're already fully licensed. You can foster at any time. So it's a great way to get involved in foster care. Like you're like one night, a week, a weekend, easy. How do you get the call? I mean, the social worker calls you up and is like, look, I got a child, I got a baby, they're in NICU. Uh, you know, mom, mom was on drugs and left him at the hospital. Can you take displacement? And if you can't, you just say no. Because again, in my training, they always said, please don't feel bad.

• 2:55:40Speaker 04

  You're going to feel bad when you say no. But if it's not the right fit, it's actually in the benefit, it's to the benefit of the child to not take them. Don't take them if it's not a good fit for you right now because what's more traumatizing is bouncing home to home. You know, or you'll get an emergency placement. I mean, my husband and I did that where we get a call and it's like, look, I got an eight month old boy. And he's been separated from a sibling and can you take him? And I'm like, yeah, I got a crib, like drop him off. We're just trying to find a placement. And so we just need you to be the emergency placement. So this kiddo doesn't have to, this infant, this was the, literally, I got a call 11pm at night one time. And the social worker was just like, I think I was still on Days of Our Lives at our time, at the time, which is like,

• 2:56:25Speaker 04

  banana schedule, like soap operas are bananas. We shoot 150 to 220 pages a day, like,

• 2:56:31Shawn Ryan?

  Whoa.

• 2:56:31Speaker 04

  It's crazy. Like, everything's one take. It's crazy. But it was an 11 o'clock at night call and the social worker was like,

• 2:56:42Speaker 04

  you know, I would not be calling you if this was not an emergency. But this case just came across my desk and I know that like the buck stops with you. There's no way you're gonna say no. I got an eight month old boy. It's an emergency placement, but like if you don't take him, he's going to a homeless shelter alone. Alone.

• 2:57:00Shawn Ryan?

  Alone?

• 2:57:00Speaker 04

  Alone at eight months old, alone. Nobody's going with him. They just dropped the baby off at the shelter. This is happening.

• 2:57:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wha- what?

• 2:57:09Speaker 04

  So of course we took him and it ended up being like two weeks. But I mean, you know, I was, I started calling up with the caseworker. I'm calling every foster parent I know. I'm calling churches like, hey, he's got a sibling he's been separated from. And I could not take that sibling because I took him at a time when I knew Jeffrey, like, the mom was pregnant with my son Jeffrey and I was like, if I say yes to this kid's, if I say yes to Dylan's brother, I'm not going to be able to say yes to Kayden's brother. It was a very hard decision. But I was like, I cannot look my son in the eyes when he's older and be like, yeah, you have a sibling. We couldn't take him. Because I would have been at capacity because I lived like in a 750 square foot townhome with two bedrooms. Legally, I could not take four kids.

• 2:57:56Speaker 04

  So I had to find a placement for Dylan and his brother. And I did, but I'm telling the social worker, I'm like, give me the list, like, give me the list. I know you have 86 people on your caseload. I will call. I will make calls. And here's what I learned when I was making those calls, dude. I would make calls and the agencies or the other foster parents would be like, "No, we only take girls from the ages of three to five." And I'm like, "Why?"

• 2:58:25Shawn Ryan?

  You know why?

• 2:58:26Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:58:33Speaker 04

  Why are we lowering the bar for foster parents, thinking that's going to be the solution to recruit more homes? Yeah, they'll have a bed that they're getting raped in. I mean, people have to get involved.

• 2:58:45Speaker 04

  So like, take a class, get licensed. You can get your license and keep it valid and not have a placement. You don't have to take your first placement. You could just get licensed, and that's what I would encourage people to do. Get licensed, so when you get the call and it is the right time, you can be like, "That kid's coming to me. I'm keeping that kid." And if you can keep siblings together, please keep siblings together.

• 2:59:10Speaker 04

  My kids are so excited to foster again. They're begging me. I'm like, "We wait till Jackie's in kindergarten, then we will take the kid." Don't ask me to foster again, unless I do respite care.

• 2:59:23Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 2:59:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:59:26Shawn Ryan?

  Man, what a sad subject.

• 2:59:27Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:59:31Speaker 04

  When I went to Congress, one of the things that I said to different congressional members is I said, "Look, if you can't care about these kids from like a heart standpoint, can I appeal to your tax, your tax dollar standpoint? If you want overcrowding in jails to go down, you want homelessness to go down, you want the opioid crisis and substance abuse to go down,

• 2:59:57Speaker 04

  take a kid from foster care. Tell them they matter. Tell them they matter. It's not that hard. You do not have to be the perfect foster parent. If you're not abusing them, you're already going to be probably better than, you know, 40%. Again, that's generally conjecture. That's not a study that I've done. But I know way too many personal stories of kids being, telling me.

• 3:00:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:25Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you want to end this with a prayer?

• 3:00:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, man.

• 3:00:28Shawn Ryan?

  You leading it?

• 3:00:29Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:00:29Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 3:00:30Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:00:34Speaker 04

  Father, I thank you so much for this interview. And I ask in the name of Jesus that it would go forth, Lord, into the hearts of the viewers. That you would open all of our eyes to see like we see God. To see like you see Jesus, that you would open our ears to hear. That you would bring to our minds, Holy Spirit, ways we could help, or families we could support. Somehow, how we could get involved, show us how we can get involved. Father, I ask for every single child that is saying a prayer right now to get out of the situations there. And I ask in Jesus' name that you would send ministering angels to them, Lord, that you would protect that child and let them be placed into the right home.

• 3:01:17Speaker 04

  I ask for social workers, Father, who feel like they're gonna burn out, the good ones, Lord. Give them the energy to stay in the fight. Give the social workers and the foster parents the energy to stay in the fight. And Father, for your bride, for your church, Lord. Would we be cut to the heart that you said through James?

• 3:01:37Speaker 04

  That faith without works is dead. You cannot go up to someone and say, "Be warm and be filled if they are hungry and naked," without first having given them clothes and a meal. Let us not just be hearers of your word, but doers of your word, Father God. Give us ways, open our eyes, open our hearts to this subject, Lord. And I just ask for every single legislator, every single person that's considering running for government, Lord, the ones that got in it for the right reasons, would you give them courage, Father, to stand up for the right things, no matter the cost? Would you, would you just? I just come against a spirit of fear that might be controlling them, in Jesus' name. And I ask that it would just be bound, Lord.

• 3:02:21Speaker 04

  That we would just become people who would not be afraid anymore, to open our mouths and to look into the things that need to be looked into, God. Maybe run toward brokenness and not look away from it any longer. And I just thank you for that, in Jesus' name.

• 3:02:43Shawn Ryan?

  I just hope this episode reaches who it needs to reach. We put a dent in this thing, save some kids. Amen.

• 3:02:55Shawn Ryan?

  Well Jen, super thankful we met.

• 3:02:58Speaker 04

  I'm so grateful we met.

• 3:03:00Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for coming and educating me and everybody else about what's going on and how to get involved and

• 3:03:09Shawn Ryan?

  I'll be hitting the subject again.

• 3:03:12Speaker 04

  I got tons of people I can recommend.

• 3:03:14Shawn Ryan?

  I'll take them.

• 3:03:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, great.

• 3:03:16Shawn Ryan?

  You got any off the top of your head?

• 3:03:17Speaker 04

  Oh absolutely. Brittany Stokes from Tulsa Girls Home. The girl is a licensed therapist. She runs Tulsa Girls Home. She's now a part of legislation. She got legislation passed by the way in Oklahoma so that you can prosecute people.

• 3:03:28Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 3:03:29Speaker 04

  Cause we had that active. She is a beast. She is a foster parent herself. She's an adoptive parent herself. She is like I am the appetizer to her steak. Like she is ridiculous. Dr. John Degarmo is amazing. Michael Madoro from Child Help. Lynn Johnson from All In For Kids. I mean I got, I got people for days.

• 3:03:49Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 3:03:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:03:50Shawn Ryan?

  Be a touch.

• 3:03:51Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 3:03:52Shawn Ryan?

  God bless. Thank you.

• 3:03:53Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 3:04:06Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.