But SAT scores stood in the way – not only for him, he realized, but for peers who also struggled with standardized tests. My entire childhood and adolescence was filled with no, you can’t, it’s not possible, wait your turn, the system won’t allow, you really shouldn’t, stay in your place, you think you know better but you don’t.”Īs a high school sophomore in Connecticut, Sixto saw a way to independence and freedom via college. “Case workers decide many things – when you learn to drive, whether you can spend the night at a friend’s house, go to therapy, or travel with a school club. Decisions are made for them, not with them, and everything is set up to minimize short-term risk - at the expense of building healthy decision-making, agency, and changemaking. It also lacks a feedback loop to its primary users: the children, teens, and young adults in its care. ![]() Even in the best of circumstances, though, he says that foster care isn’t set up to support healing and self-sufficiency. Sixto’s growing up years were traumatic, marked by racism at ‘home’ and the deaths of two birth siblings. ![]() Now an adult and a newly elected Ashoka Fellow, he’s transforming foster care so that young people and their voices and choices are at the center. Today, nearly 875,000 Americans between ages 14 and 26 have spent time in foster care, often the result of neglect or abuse. Sixto Cancel, who entered foster care at eleven months old, has been reforming the system since he was a teen.
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