We’re looking for the wrong solutions to America’s biggest problems. That goes for poverty, homelessness, mental health, addiction, and many more. Given the scale of these challenges, we often assume they require even bigger answers: massive programs and taxpayer bailouts. But after decades of that approach, America’s problems have gotten worse.
What if the solutions are bigger? And smaller than most people think?
What happened at Possum Trot
That’s the message of “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” a film released this week. The film, named after a town in East Texas, is based on a true story. It follows the stories of dozens of local children who were taken from their families and placed in foster care. Their lives were hard, and foster care made them even harder. The children were seemingly destined for lives of violence, prison, addiction, poverty and, in many cases, death.
But the city wouldn’t let that happen. A local pastor, Bishop WC Martin, and his wife, Donna Martin, adopted two of the children and then called on their friends and fellow parishioners to take action.
A total of 22 families adopted 77 of the most difficult-to-place children in the local foster care system.
That was nearly three decades ago. While many of the former foster children still struggle with the trauma of being taken from their families, the majority have grown into thriving adults.
Children languish in foster care for years
It wouldn’t have happened if they had stayed in the system. Every year, over 600,000 children spend time in foster care. Even one day in foster care has been proven to be disastrous for a child’s long-term outcomes. But 60% of children in foster care are in the system for more than a year.
Four out of five foster children struggle with mental health problems and one in five children who leave foster care becomes homeless before they turn twenty.
I survived the foster care system. The only way forward is to dismantle the whole thing.
These dire outcomes are happening despite decades of reform efforts and massive funding. Combined federal, state, and local spending on child welfare services, much of which is foster care, increased by about 120% between the mid-1990s and 2020.
The federal government is paying for more programs in everything from mental health to substance abuse to skills training. Despite this huge investment, foster care still seems like an intractable problem.
But this problem is solvable. The city of Possum Trot showed how.
Strong communities are key to solving big problems
The solution to foster care—and all of America’s biggest problems—is the power of relationships. Social scientists call it “social capital,” while others call it “strong communities.” Whatever name you use, we’re talking about people helping each other on an individual basis. And while that may seem small, it’s the biggest solution you can imagine when you scale relationships nationwide.
In Possum Trot, one church changed the lives of dozens of families and children. But there are nearly 400,000 churches in America. If every church served just one of the approximately 400,000 children in foster care at any given time, the problem could largely be solved overnight.
And it’s not just about religious institutions. There are accessible ways for people to rescue children from the lifelong struggles of foster care, all through the power of people helping others.
Americans flee from the church. But we don’t have to run away from each other.
I’ve seen the evidence in communities across the country.
National Angels provides local support to foster families, making them 50 percent more likely to avoid burnout while providing more stability for children. Another group, Safe Families, helps children avoid foster care altogether by pairing trusted families with mothers and fathers who are struggling to care for their children. They care for the children for a few weeks or months while the parents get back on their feet.
Remarkably, most families are reunited, compared to less than half in foster care. In both cases, the relationships made the difference.
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And then there’s CarePortal. It connects local churches and community members in real time with struggling families, giving them the resources they need to care for their children. If a family can’t afford food, car seats, or anything else their children desperately need, neighbors step in so child protective services don’t have to.
There are probably many more groups that I don’t know of, who are making a big difference with the same insights.
Can something similar happen with other seemingly insoluble problems? Absolutely. Homelessness, addiction, gang violence, poverty — they’re all made worse by the loss of community. The solution is to create community, which we can all do. No amount of government spending or programming has done that, and no amount of government programming can do that, for the simple reason that government action isn’t big enough. The bigger, better solution starts somewhere much smaller but much more powerful: ordinary Americans.
Evan Feinberg is senior vice president of Stand Together and chairman of the Stand Together Foundation.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Can You Adopt a Child? ‘Sound of Hope’ Shows the Power of Helping Children
