As we have written in other areas, a person or a Country should be judged by how we treat and take care of the people who need us the most.

One of the groups of people who need us the most are our foster children.

Therefore, if we are going to be a Great Country, then we need to take care of and show our Tremendous Respect for our Wonderful foster children by treating them with Great Dignity, by helping them to overcome their hardships, and by working with them to create opportunities so they can Succeed Tremendously in Their Lives.

As we design and formulate a Plan to accomplish this for them, it is very important that we realize the huge emotional challenges that our foster children face, as well as the far greater danger that a foster child will become homeless, abused, and trafficked.

Even after our foster children make it through a foster care system where they have often been moved from home to home, there is still a huge danger that they will become homeless and living on the streets because they are rarely fully prepared to take care of themselves.  

In our current foster care system, when our foster children get to the ages of between 18 and 21 years old they age out of the foster care system, forcing our foster children to be completely on their own.  

Since most of our foster children are not ready to be completely on their own, then many of our foster children become homeless after they age out of the current foster care system.

Just like most of our own biological children are not fully prepared to take care of themselves at only 18 years of age, our foster children are at even more of a disadvantage than our own biological children because they do not have a family to fall back on as a safety net to save them if they get into any financial difficulties.

In research studies, there are five primary factors that contribute to our foster care youth ending up homeless as they transition out of foster care into fully taking care of themselves on their own.  

These factors are:

1. A lack of support after they transition to being on their own.
2. Moving around to many different homes and different case workers while they were in foster care results in the children losing contact with people who they developed relationships with, and who cared personally about them.
3. Our foster children often have personal feelings of low self-esteem that cause them to feel like they are not worthy of being happy.
4. The lack of career preparation and personal lifetime skills that our foster children develop while they are in care, which results in them becoming very dependent upon the foster care system providing for them.  For all the years they were in care, the foster care system provided our foster children with their basic needs without our foster children learning how to obtain what they need on their own.
5. Our younger foster children often lose contact with their older brothers and sisters because of all the moving around between different homes that foster children are forced to do, and because their older brothers and sisters will have aged out of the foster care system before our younger children do.  This aging-out process causes their older siblings to be sent away from their younger brothers and sisters, which splits apart the only biological family most of them have left.

Looking at these five main factors, our foster children are faced with huge challenges when they transition out of foster care between ages 18 and 21, and this removal of care services before they are ready can result in homelessness, unemployment, poverty, a lack of medical care, and often drug addiction.

A huge mistake that our government has been making is that they have been treating foster children, homelessness, poverty, mental health issues, drug addiction problems, veteran homelessness, LGBTQ+ homelessness, domestic violence, child abuse, and child trafficking as entirely separate and unrelated issues.  

As a result of treating them as separate and unrelated issues, our government has been trying to design aid programs for each of these groups separately.

However, many people fit into more than one of these categories, and so we really want to create an overall holistic approach that will protect and help every person who is in any of these categories.

Our current government makes the mistake of treating each of these categories with a separate program, and this causes our government’s finances to be stretched too far to be effective.

By our government treating these categories as separate and unrelated issues, then there is a huge amount of government money being wasted on all the duplication of services.

These separate programs also stretch our government’s manpower too far because in the current system the government manpower must cover every geographical inch of our Country because people in these categories can be anywhere in America.

As a result of this manpower shortage, the government has been subcontracting many of the necessary services, such as medical care and drug addiction care.  

Therefore, the government has been paying hundreds of thousands of outside people and companies to provide these medical and addiction services across America.

It is also far more expensive for our government to pay outside contractors than it costs our government to pay our own personnel.

In addition, we do not have as much quality control over outside contractors, which negatively affects the quality we are providing to Our American People who need us.

The facts are that within the first four years of transitioning out of foster care, 20% of our foster care youth nationwide are homeless.  

Similarly, 29% of all our homeless youth nationwide between ages 13 and 25 have previously been in foster care.

California government leaders do even worse because 31% of California foster children become homeless within the first four years of aging out of care, and so the California government does an even worse job preparing foster children for being able to take care of themselves than the rest of America does.

It is not logical that the state of California, who claims they care about people, and who charges extremely high tax rates to California residents, is the worst state in America for actually taking care of people.    

In San Francisco, 75% of their unhoused youth are either in foster care or in the juvenile justice system.  

In Sacramento, California, 34% of unsheltered homeless had been in foster care.

Regarding overall homelessness, the California government has done a far worse job than anywhere else in America taking care of their homeless and foster children because 50% of all the unsheltered homeless people in the entire United States are in California.

The fact that California charges and collects the highest amount of taxes, but still does the worst job in America taking care of its residents, proves that the policies that the California politicians have implemented cannot be the correct policies to solve America’s problems and challenges. 

When our foster children become homeless, then it is far more difficult for them to get or keep a job because, among other disadvantages, they do not have access to internet employment sites to locate available jobs, they do not have a place to shower, dress, and look nice for work, and they often do not have transportation to get to work.

Unemployment rates for homeless people range from 52% to 90%, depending upon the state and city they are in, with the state of California, Los Angeles specifically, and Washington DC having the highest rates of both homelessness and unemployment.

When our homeless people lose their jobs, then most of them also lose their medical insurance because their insurance is a benefit they were receiving from their jobs.

Without medical insurance, they are not able to take care of themselves if they develop a medical problem or a mental health issue.

The facts are that 30% of homeless people have mental health issues, and 50% of homeless people have substance addiction problems.

In addition, 40% of our homeless youth identify themselves as LGBTQ+, which shows the discrimination they suffer from, discrimination and a lack of kindness that contributes to the difficulties some of our homeless youth have with mental health and substance abuse.

Therefore, any Plan we put into place to protect and house our foster children must be very focused on protecting our LGBTQ+ children, and must also be very focused on protecting our children who are abused and trafficked.  

Statistically, 57% of homeless people who were previously in foster care are more than 35 years old, which shows that people who have been foster children often become homeless when they are adults, and then they often stay homeless throughout their entire adult lives.

Very sadly, the life expectancy of a homeless person is between 20 and 38 years less than people who have homes. 

It is a disgrace that our Country has allowed our medical industry to charge the ridiculous amounts of money they currently charge for medical services.

It is completely unfair when people cannot afford to pay these vastly inflated medical bills, and because of these medical bills they often become bankrupt, unemployed, in complete poverty, and homeless.

The ideal solution to all these problems is for us to create our Village communities that combine housing, foster care, self-development, nutritional care, schools, counseling, a fitness center, career skill development, daycare for young foster children and for children of our older foster children, business ownership development, career guidance, personal financial skill development, employment, medical care, and drug addiction care.

Within our Village communities we will provide housing for our foster care children, for our homeless people, for our military veterans who need our help, for our unemployed people who have become homeless, for our LGBTQ+ homeless Americans, for our children and adults who have suffered abuse, domestic abuse, and trafficking, for our people with medical and mental health issues, for our people with drug addictions, and for our homeless families with children.

We will also partner with large corporations so that they place corporate office locations within our Villages we have created, offices that will provide employment for every resident in our Village.

We will also provide medical care and drug addiction solutions right within our Village communities.

We will also provide the teaching of independent living skills to all our Village residents so they can increase and improve their personal self-development skills, which will allow them to become even more successful.

We will also teach our Business Development Program to all our Village residents so they will know how to start a business, and we will teach them our Financial Management Course to prepare them for handling their own personal and business finances.

We will provide career skill development and career advice.

The Village community model we will emulate is similar to the excellent work communities that grew up in America in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, some of which are still going today.

For example, in locations like Hershey, Pennsylvania with the Hershey Chocolate Company, and in Corning, New York with the Corning Ware Company.

These work communities became wonderful neighborhoods for individuals and families, and they grew to include excellent housing, athletic fields, boating, bowling alleys, recreational facilities, tennis courts, libraries, museums, and sometimes even an amusement park.

In America, the time period between 1894 to 1915 was very similar in many ways to the period we are living in now.  There was unrest, economic uncertainty among workers, unemployment, and unprecedented immigration.

By combining all our services for our foster children and for our other groups of people in each of our Village community locations, then we will provide far better personal services for every one of our Village residents.

In addition, we will reduce our costs tremendously because by centralizing our services into our Villages, then we will not need to provide services to every inch of the United States like our government is unsuccessfully trying to do now.

We will also save government costs because we will provide all these services ourselves in our own Village locations, instead of needing to pay higher prices to outside subcontracting companies who are spread out across the United States. 

One of the Keys to Success in Life is to be able to take on a difficult challenge that is causing a negative situation for you, and figure out a way to turn this challenge around into a Positive situation for You.  

It is Always Possible For You and For Us to do this because it is Always Possible For You and For Us To Find A Way To Win.  

We just need to keep persevering and sticking to our task while we look for the Silver-Lining Advantage that every disadvantage holds within it if we look closely enough.

A Silver-Lining Advantage that gives us the Opportunity to Find A Way To Win and then work hard toward Achieving This Win.

“Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem.  The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity.” – Joseph Sugarman

With our Village communities, we will take the disadvantage of being a foster child, and turn this disadvantage around so that our foster children feel like they have an Advantage over everyone else.

This will give our foster children Great Pride and Rebuild Their Personal Belief In Themselves. 

Can you imagine how fantastic a Village Community like this will be for a boy or a girl who is in our foster care system?

Our Villages will solve every challenge that our foster care child is faced with.  

1. Our foster children will be able to have complete stability because they will be developing lifelong connections in their Village community that will provide them with support.  
2. Our foster children will not have different case workers changing all the time.  Every foster child will be provided with a specific case worker at their Village that stays with them forever, providing them with the relationship continuity that has been shown to be very beneficial for all foster children.
3. Our foster children will not have the instability of being moved from home to home like they are in our current system.
4. Our foster children will be able to stay together with their older brothers and sisters even after their older siblings would have aged out of the old foster care system.
5. Our foster children will be able to develop greater pride in themselves because case workers and teachers will be right there on site in the Village helping them to develop their personal career and lifetime skills that will make them very successful in their Lives.
6. Our foster children will be given personal identification cards that are so important for them in many ways as they progress through Life, identification cards that many homeless people do not have.
7. Our foster children will be protected from domestic abuse and child trafficking.
8. Our Village Communities will create a foster care plan where the services that Villages provide to our foster youth are gradually taken away one service at a time as our youth get closer to the age of being on their own. This gradual weaning off from the care system will allow the opportunity for our Village teachers and case workers to work with our foster youth in the months and years before they move out of the Village, developing within our foster youth these necessary lifetime skills one skill at a time. Until our foster youth are ultimately able to provide for themselves all the services they will need when they are on their own. This is what parents do with their own children, and so this is also what we will do for our foster children so that we will get them fully prepared like they need to be. By our Villages providing this personal lifetime skill development, then this will make certain that our foster children do not end up in a homeless situation like they currently are ending up in.
9. A huge additional advantage of our Villages will be that our foster children will grow up in our Villages when they are young, and then they will be able to stay right there in the same Village they grew up in when they become a young adult.
10. Instead of aging out of the system like our current foster care system has them do, our foster children will be employed by the corporation that partners with us at that Village location, and so our foster children will have continued Village support as they progress in their personal development, and as they progress in their work career at the same pace that our youngsters who grow up in family homes do.
11. By our foster children not aging out of foster care at age 18 or 21 like they do in our current system, then this will allow us to keep biological brothers and sisters together.  Therefore, our foster children will not lose contact with their brothers and sisters, which will allow us to maintain and hold together this crucially important family unit for them. Their older brothers and sisters will be able to continue to stay with them in our Villages even after they have reached the age of 21. This will be a huge advantage for our foster children because their brothers and sisters are very often the only family they still know and feel like they have left.

When these older brothers and sisters are employed in our Villages, then they will pay rent to the Village from their salaries because this develops financial skills and prepares them for being able to take care of themselves in the outside world.

These rental payments will also result in saving government revenue that can be used to build more Villages for All of Our American People who need them.

At some point, our foster care youth will feel ready to take a job opportunity outside of the Village, which will result in them moving away from our Village.

This will be a moment of Celebration because developing Every Child into a very successful and fully functioning adult is Always our Long-Term Goal for Every Youngster in our Villages.

In addition, just like our Villages will be perfect for our foster children, our Villages will also be perfect for our homeless individuals and homeless families, for our unemployed homeless, for our homeless with medical and mental health issues, for our children and adults who have been abused and trafficked, for our LGBTQ+ homeless, for our military veterans who are homeless and who have medical problems, and for our homeless who have drug addictions.

We will save all of Our Wonderful People, and we will get all of them back on track to Living Very Successful Lives of Happiness and Purpose.

While we are saving Lives and providing these tremendous services, we will also be saving hundreds of billions of dollars for America because we will be providing centralized services in Village locations with fewer workers, instead of trying to provide services across every geographical inch of our Country.

We will also not be paying outside subcontractor workers like our current government is doing because we will have our own medical personnel and service personnel on site at every Village to provide services for Everyone.  

This will save a huge amount of government money for Our Country.

In addition, we will be providing a well-paid and valuable job for every resident in our Villages, which will result in our residents gradually being able to contribute toward the cost of the housing that we have provided, thereby reducing and eliminating one of our largest costs.

We will be providing housing and a job for Our People who were previously homeless and in poverty, and we will be developing Our People by improving their personal skills and their career skills so they will have Great Success in Their Lives. 

By implementing Our Villages Plan, we will drastically reduce and eventually eliminate America’s homelessness problem.  

As an additional economic advantage for Our Country, by us making certain that our foster youth are safe, stable, and strong, then our government costs will gradually decrease because our foster care children will become able to take care of themselves as they Live a Happy and Very Successful Life of Purpose.

Studies show that in the current homeless environment it costs our government $32,000 per person, per year, for every homeless person who is living on the street.

However, it currently costs our government only $18,000 per person if our homeless person is living in government housing.

Therefore, in the broken homeless system we have now, it is already far more expensive for our government if Our People are homeless than if we provide housing for Our People.

With Our Villages Plan, then we will reduce this $18,000 per person even further, and so our government will save hundreds of billions of dollars every year compared to what we are currently spending on our inefficient, ineffective, and broken homeless system.

In addition, there are many American Corporations who are led by outstanding men and women, and so just like how Hershey and Corning Ware stepped up more than 100 years ago, many of our exceptional leaders and corporations will step up again now to Partner with us on our Village Communities by providing employment opportunities for all Our Village Residents.

In some cases, our Corporation Partners will even choose to build the Villages themselves as our Village Partners.

Our Partnerships with our outstanding American Corporations and Leaders will create tremendous benefits and relationships for everyone.

Our Corporate Partners will also discover that there are a huge number of outstanding workers and people in our Villages who are working for them.

Outstanding People and Workers who had gotten lost in the old foster care and homeless system, but who have Risen Up to Fulfill Their Vast Potential when we created a Plan that gave them a Second Chance to Save and Rescue Their Lives.  

In the process, we will be creating a Winning Solution for Everyone because we will be Saving Lives, Saving Families, Adding Happiness and Meaning to Lives, and adding Great Purpose and Love to Every Person’s Life.

Every Foster Child is Someone’s Biological Child.

Every Foster Child is One of America’s Children.

Every Foster Child is America’s Child.

Every Foster Child is Our Child.

LET US BUILD A WONDERFUL WORLD FOR ALL OUR FOSTER CHILDREN

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