Frank Anderson is a 24-year-old activist on behalf of kids in the foster care system and young adults who’ve survived it. Today a resident of Sacramento, California, he was born in San Francisco and removed from his parents at age two, entering foster care in a county an hour north. Eventually he was adopted by his foster mother but then was removed from her home as well and sent to live in various group homes. In March 2015 Frank founded Project Blue on behalf of foster youth with friend and fellow foster care alum Ethan Escobedo.
What do you hope to achieve with Project Blue?
I want to increase public awareness of the foster care system and its flaws and bring about lasting change. My life mission is to make sure others don’t go through what I experienced at the hands of that system.
Aren’t there already groups working to change the foster system?
Yes, with limited and sometimes unfortunate results … for example, the California state law that takes effect this winter, closing group homes rather than reforming them. It was pushed in the legislature by the California Alliance for Youth and Family Services, which represents social service agencies statewide. It’s safe to assume that the state won’t be able to provide the support or funding needed by foster families to help the increased number of traumatized children who come their way… or find enough families to take on the challenge.
A few years ago I went to the California state capital twice with California Youth Connection and shadowed assembly people, talking about the dramatic problems that foster youth face. I also was lucky enough to travel to Washington D.C. with other foster care alumni this past spring to talk to elected officials there, thanks to National Foster Youth Institute, Foster Club, Casey Family Programs, Foster Youth in Action, and Foster Alumni of America. This type of strategy is a helpful tactic but not enough; it’s an older way of addressing our difficulties. So are shotgun efforts by various groups that have targeted social worker accountability or the painful practice of separating siblings. Taking care of one problem area has often has created new crises down the line. That’s because there’s no comprehensive view, no big picture to get at the root of our difficulties.
Now CYC and the Project Blue team are collaborating with broader goals in mind, including educating the public at large, and we’ve begun by using social media and events that draw attention, like Go Blue Day, National Foster Care Day of Silence, and Thanksgiving with the Fosters. We want to be innovative in our approach and we want to draw local communities into the process, maybe by leading town hall-type conversations. These could be sponsored by local newspapers and include federal and state legislators as well as foster care advocates and community members.
What inspired you to create Project Blue and give it that name?
On Facebook I was invited to an anti-bullying campaign GLAAD conducted for the LGBT community. GLAAD uses the color purple to stand for spirit, has made it part of their flag, and asked people to tint their social profile picture purple to draw attention. For years GLAAD has linked up with various news media and celebrities to get the word out about preventing bullying and suicides, and they’ve had success at this. GLAAD’s awareness campaign seemed like a great model. It sparked my idea that we could do the same with the color blue for foster youth. I don’t know why, but a lot of people I knew in the foster community identified with that color.
I talked with a number of friends who transitioned out of foster care and also with people in CYC. They were instantly interested. Youth in San Francisco Bay Area CYC chapters were instrumental in making Project Blue happen. We set up a team and launched our first event, a Go Blue Day. About 2000 people committed on Facebook to changing their profile colors and wearing blue on May 27, 2015. A lot of us wore blue. In ten California cities there were events hosted by CYC, everything from barbeques to public speaking events – whatever former foster youth in those communities could think of.
I think we were able to educate a lot of people. On that day strangers stopped me on the street and stopped others wearing blue to ask questions about foster care. We told them it was Foster Care Awareness Day and said that there are a lot of problems in the foster care system that are not being looked at.
You mentioned Thanksgiving with the Fosters. Can you say more about that?
Last November Project Blue along with Oakland City Church hosted Thanksgiving with the Fosters in Oakland, California. The holidays can be awful for former foster youth who have nowhere to go at holiday time. Project Blue and CYC got together with the church and used social media and word of mouth to invite former foster youth from around the San Francisco Bay Area for dinner there on Thanksgiving Day. Oakland City Church took up a special offering from their congregation and some church members contributed food. Twenty people attended, and we agreed that it was a wonderful experience. We’re planning to hold that event again this year and encourage it in other cities.
What problems did you experience as a foster child?
Heavy drug use made my mother and father unfit parents, and when I was taken from them, I was placed in an adoptive home where there was physical abuse. Fortunately an older kid in our home reported what was happening to all of us, and I was placed in a positive environment after that, a very nurturing group home called The Children’s Village of Santa Rosa. Next I had a placement in a group home where the atmosphere was pretty harsh; it didn’t feel like a home at all and in fact didn’t feel safe. Finally, when I was old enough to transition out of foster care, I didn’t have the information and support structure I needed in order to make the transition successfully – at least not at first. It’s taken a number of years and help from a handful of caring adults, but now it feels like I’m on the right track, with a job and a rented room in a decent neighborhood.
In addition to the hardships foster youth face as they leave the system at age eighteen, what problems do you identify as major for foster kids?
Overmedication is one. Children being placed in foster homes bring emotional baggage with them from their past experiences and also suffer new emotional trauma simply from being inserted in new living situations. If a foster family or a poorly run group home is unequipped to handle the problems of a foster child, they’ll often resort to pills, especially if a kid is acting out. What’s needed for most foster children is to talk about issues that haven’t been talked about – more therapy – and fewer drugs.
Then there’s the question of poorly managed group homes. I’ve experienced one where there were all sorts of resources on hand – social worker, activities director, volunteers, therapy, even surrogate grandparents. And I’ve experienced one that felt more like a prison. My dream is to have the first kind be the model and the second kind be only a bad memory.
Losing siblings is another big crisis that foster youth experience. Losing your brothers or sisters comes as a big blow if you’ve already lost the only home you’ve ever known. But it’s hard to find foster families that will take in brother-and-sister groupings. Well-run group homes that can keep brothers and sisters together would be ideal, but in the short term at least that’s probably not going to happen.
A difficulty that piles itself on top of the other problems is stigma. If you are a foster child or have been one, many people label you as “trouble.” The public tends to be more aware that former foster youth who find themselves without resources too often end up in the criminal justice system and far fewer people seem to know that many others of us are much-admired celebrities… or just regular citizens leading decent lives. Project Blue wants to educate the public about our achievements in spite of the odds against us.
What’s in the future for Project Blue?
This coming March will be our two-year anniversary. As we turn two, we’re transitioning toward doing more policy work and concentrating on a couple of initiatives in other states that could be used as models for legislation on a national level. We’re very excited about that, and in a few days I’m going to Los Angeles to meet with U.S. Representative Karen Bass, who is sensitive to the needs of foster youth and an important advocate.
Project Blue hopes to establish a network of partners throughout California and also nationwide, joining forces with other organizations with similar goals. There are a lot of boats on this ocean, and we want to have one place where they can all dock. If we make this happen, we can have one cohesive faction that can really transform the foster care system.
You support yourself with a day job and also manage to find time to be an activist. What keeps you going?
It’s part of my own healing process to know that someone who’s five or six years old today and in the system won’t have to go through what I’ve gone through. I want to help make sure that he or she will have a far better experience in care.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski