LEx Leaders Prove Power of Peer Support at Conference on Transitioning Out of Care

Transitioning out of care is hard. But the four Lived Experience (LEx) Leaders and three FosterClub staff who attended Daniel Kids’ 35th Annual National Independent Living Conference gotchu. 

The event, titled “Growing Pains,” focused on helping youth from foster care and their adult allies establish and maintain effective Independent Living Programs to aid in the transition out of foster care. Our four LEx Leaders who attended with FosterClub–Mayda Berrios (DE), Deza'rae Collins (OR), Rimy Morris (IN), and Jaqueline Reyes (OR)--hosted a total of five workshops for youth from care and their adult allies from all over the country. The sessions provided great networking opportunities for our LEx Leaders to connect with peers from care, and we even ran into a former LEx Leader who’s now a child welfare professional in Utah!

It was inspiring to see young people teach each other how to find strength and agency in both their healing and advocacy work. In the session titled “Advocacy 101: Crafting Powerful Advocacy Campaigns,” our LEx Leaders taught other young people the fundamentals of advocacy work, and in “Peer 2 Peer Connection: How Lived Experience can Change the Game!” they highlighted FosterClub’s “magic sauce” of youth-led system change. 

Thanks for some great memories, Daniel Kids, and for giving our LEx Leaders a platform to spark personal growth and system change!