'We need adoptive families': Heart Galleries of Texas gives ways to support foster children after graduation
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Over the next few weeks, high school graduates will soon be celebrated all over Central Texas for their accomplishments.
However, graduation season can be a scary time for hundreds of kids who are aging out of the Texas foster care system.
Just last year, nearly 900 kids turned 18 and aged out of the system facing, in some cases, an abrupt independence without the safety nets most young people rely on.
Erin Argue, the post-permanency director for Heart Galleries of Texas, joined KXAN’s Will DuPree and Avery Travis to provide some context on ways to help make that transition a little easier.
Read a transcription of the interview below, or watch in the video player above. Some responses have been edited for clarity.
Will DuPree: We mentioned the organization you work for. Talk to us about the work that it does.
Erin Argue: The Heart Galleries of Texas is actually a really incredible opportunity and partnership between multiple systems across the state of Texas. We have funding from the legislature that works with the Moritz Center for Societal Impact and the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, both at the University of Texas at Austin, along with the Texas Alliance for Child and Family Services, where I’m actually employed. Through all 11 regions in the state of Texas that serve child welfare systems, we’ve established heart galleries, which are a really beautiful storytelling opportunity for children who are in the care of Child Protective Services that are seeking that permanency through adoption and want those adoptive families and those adoptive relationships. We use volunteer, professional photographers to really just showcase the spirit and individuality and the uniqueness and honestly, just the coolness of each of these kids, and do a combination of community awareness to let the families in the community know that there are children here, and they want those types of relationships, and they want that permanency with the family.
Avery Travis: We know so much can be done through these pictures and these photos of these incredible kids. For youth, though, who reach their high school graduation without finding that forever adopted family, talk to us about what that process looks like, and why might it be a bit daunting for some of these kids.
Argue: Yeah, I think best case scenario, when you turn 18, we’re all struggling a little bit, right? We are not quite who we are going to be, and we have a lot of family and relational support that kind of help carry us through that. And maybe you turn 18 in June, and you don’t start college until August. So you can stay with your family, you can stay at your home, and you can get that support, and you can kind of work through things. Eighteen is kind of the magic number in the foster care system, and really across the term of legality in the state. And it means that regardless of where you are, circumstantially, you are expected to have that independence. So where it’s a really exciting time for a lot of people who aren’t in the foster care system — when you’re in foster care — it can mean that you don’t know where you’re going to go. You might be in a foster home, where at 18, they are no longer able to care for you, and so you need to move into a supervised, independent and living apartment, which is really great. But that means you just went from zero to entirely on your own at the drop of a hat, without those additional supports that are necessary to be successful.
DuPree: Can you talk to us about the types of resources and programs that are available to help these graduates navigate some of their life after foster care?
Argue: Yeah, absolutely. You know, there are a lot of resources that are out there, but of course, there’s never enough. The DFPS program here in the state of Texas has what’s called PAL, it’s Preparation for Adult Living. All children in the foster care system go through the PAL process, and it just really helps them get the basic skills that they might not have learned, bouncing between foster placements or treatment centers, wherever they landed, and it helps make sure that we are trying to provide them with those resources. But a lot of times, when you’re 15 and someone is telling you how to file your taxes or how to open a bank account, it’s not really applicable in the moment. So they’re really, really great, and they’re doing a lot of really, really good work, but we just need to make sure that we’re wrapping around them as a community as well?
Travis: I can only imagine. I know everybody sitting at home probably either remembers themselves graduating, or their child, their grandchild, making that big step. If anyone is touched by the stories of these children who are taking that step — oftentimes really alone — and they want to help, and they want to be a part of that process — is there ways that our community can really step in and hold their hand to?
Argue: This is my absolute favorite question, because specifically here in Central Texas, we are incredibly, incredibly blessed to be surrounded by resources. A lot of them are focused on the child welfare system. There are a million and a half things that you can do. If you are called to adopt, we have the Heart Gallery. The heartgallerytexas.org can connect you with your local, regional Heart Gallery. You can see the children who are waiting for adoption there. We obviously want adoptive families, and we need adoptive families. That’s not in the cards for everyone, and that’s totally okay. You can also foster. If you can’t foster, you can work with an organization and provide babysitting care for those families who are fostering and adopting. If you can’t do that, you can be a mentor. If you can’t be a mentor, you can be a tutor. If you can’t be a tutor, every single human has a time treasure or talent that they are capable of sharing with the world, and I can guarantee that every one of the listeners out there is somehow connected to the child welfare system, and they don’t even know it. So just having conversations and making sure that we are addressing this and not pretending it doesn’t exist, and understanding that these are kids, just like any other kid that’s out there, and we need to do what we can to support them.
Travis: I just want to note, too, for folks who may be looking through the Heart Gallery, even kids who are older, 16-17, still would love a family or a mentor to partner with them. You know, throughout the last final months of their transition and into adulthood, a place to come home at Christmas break from college. I mean, I can imagine how much that connection would mean.
Argue: Every single child that’s featured on the local Heart Gallery — we’ve had conversations with them, and they want to be there, and they are there because they want that relationship, and they want that support. It’s somewhere to go home. You know, we have tuition and fee waivers for these kids, and so they get their college and tuition paid for. But that doesn’t cover rent. It doesn’t cover somewhere to go for the holidays, like you said. So getting these children in adoptive homes is really the best thing that we can do, and if we can’t do that, we can wrap around them in a bunch of other ways.
