Everyone suffers, at some point in their lives, loss, disappointment, and heartbreak. For youth in care, it's not a matter of when they will suffer this, it's a guarantee that they will know loss, disappointment, and heartbreak more than anything else.
Permanency equals a sense of belonging. When it comes to permanency for youth in care, there's one simple fact: it's a basic human need that everyone should be entitled to. We should all know where we go at Christmas. We should all know where we go on our university breaks.
I was a foster child from the age of three. I did age out of the system. I'm now 32 years old, and I'm finally in university, of my own choice, not because of any support I ever had. When I was 20 years old, it was my last-shot opportunity to take advantage of any educational opportunities while still getting some support from the Children's Aid Society. I became a cosmetician, which left me in a low-end job with not very much security. Having a young family, that was very much a struggle, but I continued to volunteer and work very hard and build myself up so I could go to university. But I do it all on my own. So when it's a matter of trying to make a phone call to figure out what I should be doing with my very ill-tempered three-year-old, it's hard to know who to turn to. It's hard to know that sense of belonging.
I did have a permanent foster home, or at least what I thought was permanent. I was promised permanency and I was supposed to be adopted as a teenager. My foster dad died when I was 19. He never adopted me because he was in the midst of retirement and there wasn't enough support for him to adopt me. So when I was 19 and had a small child, all of a sudden I was left absolutely alone. The family that I thought I had, for many years, turned their back. I was just the foster child. There was no legal binding support for me. I even carried the name of my foster family, so that made it even harder when they turned their backs. This whole culture I'd grown up with and learned to enjoy was something that I no longer had. I had to make my own.
Nobody should ever have to not have that sense of belonging.
We come into the system and it's not our choice. We don't choose to be abused. We don't choose to be hit. We don't choose to be sexually assaulted. When there comes an opportunity to offer these children, like me and Alisha and Jon and Miranda, some permanency and stability in our lives, when nothing has ever been stable, it's an opportunity that means we are able to give back, instead of continuing to be in a system that will have to support us for many years.
There are many youth in care who are not as lucky as we are to be in university or to have opportunities to have somebody to call. Many of these kids end up on the streets. Many of them end up filling our jails. The percentage is absolutely humongous. The burden on the system is absolutely huge when you consider permanency would mean there'd be an attachment and a bond with somebody who has agreed to support you. I imagine many sitting at the table here today have had that opportunity to call their parents when they needed them, when they were struggling with something. Those are opportunities that we don't have, and it's something we would really like to have.
Thank you.