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Baltimore, Maryland
2007
As her mother struggled with addiction, Shantel Randolph was shuttled in and out of foster care. She was bounced between living with her aunt and her mother until finally, at age 17, she went into an independent living facility in Baltimore. There, she lived in an apartment with other older foster youth until she turned 21 and "aged out" of the child welfare system.
Young people who age out of foster care often suffer poor outcomes. Many end up homeless, in trouble with the law or unable to support themselves. Randolph lost her health insurance, had difficulty paying her bills and almost got evicted. "I had to choose between working and going to school," she says. She dropped out of Baltimore City Community College, a decision that still haunts her.
Today, at age 26, Randolph is on track. Married for three years, she is the mother of a young son. She is using her OSI Baltimore Community Fellowship to help other young people in foster care successfully move to adulthood, working with a group of 15 to 18 students at the Baltimore Freedom Academy who are either in foster care or aging out of care. They participate in her program called "Foster Youth Incorporated" or FYI, which empowers foster youth to advocate for improvements to Maryland's foster care system.
Siblings are often split up when they go into foster care and see each other only very sporadically. "You miss out on that bond you should have with your siblings," says Randolph who was separated from her siblings. "Years later, it's hard to form that relationship with someone you hardly know. Even to this day, I'm not as close to my brothers and sisters as I would like to be."
Randolph's FYI group hosted a picnic at a Baltimore park in May and about 75 foster children - siblings living with different foster families - attended. She said that one of the best things about the picnic was watching siblings reunite. One girl dropped everything when she saw her sister across the grassy field. The sisters ran toward each other and collapsed in each other's arms. "It was a very beautiful, very satisfying day," Randolph said.
She also is working with the Maryland Department of Education to try to expand her FYI program to other Baltimore high schools. She wants to train some of her group's original members to act as liaisons between her and the new high school sites. These paid youth liaisons would counsel other youth about getting the most out of the foster care system.
FYI recently received an $18,000 grant from the city courts system to produce a short film to help foster children understand the legal system. Randolph is excited about the film and is working on the script now.
"The program is doing well and we are moving forward with fund-raising and grant-writing," she said. "It's a busy time, but I am loving every minute of it."
