Lived Experience Advisor Voices

We get out and we don't have anybody or anything. This is exactly what survivor benefits are for.

The state is taking my personal money when they're barely even taking care of me? That doesn't seem right.

I didn't realize I was basically paying for my own foster care — until some friends were like, guys, they've been taking our money.

“How are you going to make a child pay child support?

If you do not self-advocate for your money as a foster kid, you are pretty much screwed.

While I was a teenager I just had to learn how to cope with being poor, with only myself to survive.

I never thought that the system that was supposed to be helping me really was stealing from me the entire time.

If foster care was a service I was being charged for, I want a refund.

This income ongoing could have provided the clothes off my back the food in my belly and a warm home to come home to at the end of a rainy dark night.