(WGHP) — In her 22 years, Mary Doms has overcome a lot.
“There were times growing up where I didn’t have food, I didn’t have power, I didn’t have clothes,” said Doms. “I was lucky to get a meal from school.”
She was in and out of the foster care system before being adopted by the Doms family when she was 16 years old.
But many of the young people Doms works with today as a Regional Assistant with SaySo are not that lucky.
“When you’re aging out, the world is a lot,” said Doms. “It’s hard to live in a world where you don’t have these simple skills.”
There are roughly 11,000 children in foster care in North Carolina. In late 2015, the State General Assembly passed legislation extending foster care benefits and services to young people ages 18 to 21 as long as they’re in school or working.
Still, according to research by the UNC School of Social Work, nearly 500 youth aged out of North Carolina’s foster care system this year.
“Who’s catching them?” Kourtney White asked “If that crack of just losing their social worker, losing their funding, losing anyone that’s going to check on them and make sure that they’re okay, then at 21 we have a lot of youth that are going to prison, going to jail, becoming homeless. and that’s the goal is to try to reduce that.
Kourtney White is the Program Coordinator with SaySo which stands for Strong Able Youth Speaking Out.
It’s a youth-led, youth-run organization under the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina that aims to advocate for those in the foster care system who live in group homes or mental health placements.
“We have youth that sit on the Department of Health and Human Services design teams with other child welfare professionals just so there’s a seat at the table for lived experiences where decisions are being made about lived experience,” said White. “People there that can say ‘hey, this actually doesn’t work for youth in care,’ or ‘did you guys think of this?'”
Another big part of SaySo is teaching young people in substitute care their rights and basic– yet essential– independent living skills from doing laundry to opening a bank account. But according to Doms, SaySo’s most important role is that it becomes a family for too many young people who’ve never had one.
“SaySo has always made young people feel wanted,” said Doms. “We have so many youth that come to these events and cos me every time because they just feel wanted and they feel heard and seen.”
You can learn more about SaySo on their website.
